ZURICH.- Fine Art and works of art from Renaissance and Baroque masters, ancient Egypt and the 19th century will be presented in Koller’s March auctions. Highlights include fine paintings from Pieter Brueghel the Younger, Ruysdael and van Goyen, an outstanding marble Roman statue of Venus, and works by Aivazovsky and Füssli.

A remarkable oil on panel by Pieter Brueghel the Younger, fully signed and dated 1622, will be offered in the Old Master Paintings auction on 27 March (lot 3027, estimate CHF 300 000 / 500 000). Most likely from a series of the Four Seasons, this Allegory of Autumn is a fascinating glimpse into everyday life during the Northen Renaissance, and has remained in the same family collection for four generations.

Recently rediscovered, François Boucher’s grisaille painting, ‘The marriage of Ariadne and Bacchus’, is an important edition to this major 18th-century artist’s oeuvre (lot 3072, estimate CHF 200 000 / 300 000). Its provenance can be traced to the period of its creation, and it has not appeared on the auction market in almost 250 years.

Works by Jan van Goyen (lot 3038, CHF 200 000 / 350 000) and Salomon van Ruysdael (lot 3046, CHF 300 000 / 500 000) offer a stimulating comparison of their distinctive styles and treatment of similar landscapes.

Among the 19th-Century Paintings on 27 March, four works by Ivan Konstantinovich Aivazovsky will go under the hammer, headed by a dramatic scene of a shipwreck on a rocky coast (lot 3210, CHF 180 000 / 250 000). An important oil on canvas by Johann Heinrich Füssli depicts a symbol-laden moment when the tomb of Christian Rosenkreutz, the founder of Rosacruscianism, is discovered. It was formerly part of the Thyssen collection, and now comes to auction from a private Swiss collection (lot 3215, CHF 150 000 / 250 000).

The star of the Works of Art & Decorative Arts auction on 26 March is an ancient Roman torso of the goddess Venus, known as The Bartholoni Venus. Created in the 2nd century CE, this magnificent sculpture was part of the Bartholoni collection in their luxurious villa on the shores of Lake Geneva for the better part of the 19th and early 20th centuries. Now in a Swiss private collection, it has not been seen on the market in nearly 50 years (lot 1006, CHF 500 000 / 800 000). Another rarity in the Works of Art sale is a monumental Coptic wall hanging, dating from the 5th – 7th century CE (lot 1011, CHF 300 000 / 500 000).

The Books auction on 25 March features a collection of important manuscripts and letters, including two letters from Albert Einstein to the mathematician Ernst Gabor Strauss (lot 4221, CHF 30 000 / 40 000), an original manuscript of Ranier Maria Rilke’s classic poem, ‘Der Panther’ (lot 4248, CHF 14 000 / 20 000), and a touching letter of thanks by Franz Kafka to a benefactor (lot 4233, CHF 30 000 / 40 000).