NEW YORK, NY.- Christie's announced Heroes and Lovers—a collection of nine ambitious masterpieces representing pinnacles of spirituality, sensuality and raw human emotion across 500 years of art history. The collection spans sublime Old Master paintings and sculpture through to icons of Modernism with works by Tilman Riemenschneider, Cornelis Cornelisz. van Haarlem, François Le Moyne, Jean-Honoré Fragonard, Édouard Manet, and four examples by Pablo Picasso. Collectively, these works create a visual map of extreme and intimate moments of the human experience—exploring notions of passion, morality, courage and connection, as captured by six of the most influential artists dating from the fifteenth through the twentieth centuries. Together, the collection is estimated in the region of $100 million.
Seven of the works will be headlining November's 20th Century Evening Sale. The final two Old Master works will be showcased as highlights of Classic Week in 2027.
As a whole, this collection is a testament to the ever-evolving layers of art history and an intimate look at the figures who have guided it. The leading highlight, Le Baiser is a monumental work by Picasso painted in October 1969, featuring a scene of two lovers enrapt in a powerful kiss. Executed just four years before the artist's death, the painting stands as both a meaningful declaration of his love for Jacqueline, Picasso's wife and final great muse, and a simultaneous encapsulation of the spirited vitality and passion the icon brought to his celebrated and prolific output throughout the entirety of his life.
A second Picasso jewel within the collection is Tête de femme (Dora Maar), a striking painting of the artist's infamous wartime paramour, Surrealist photographer Dora Maar. The work was created in May 1941, nearly a year into the Nazi Occupation of Paris, as ever-worsening circumstances continued to unfold in the city. Irrepressible, Picasso turned to the canvas in an act of defiance, throwing himself wholly into his artistic practice, and in a remarkable surge of creative genius, this bold and prismatic portrait of the tear-streaked Maar—his eternal 'weeping woman'—was born.
Leading the Old Master selection is Hercules and Achelous, an unequivocal masterpiece of Dutch Mannerism by van Haarlem. The massive canvas is an exemplary depiction of heroism, featuring a dramatic struggle between Hercules and the river god, Achelous, as told in the ninth book of Ovid's Metamorphoses. In its last appearance at auction nearly two decades ago, the painting achieved four times its high estimate, ultimately establishing a new record for the artist that still stands today, and was subsequently on long-term loan at the Metropolitan Museum of Art. Marking a first for Old Master sculpture in the November marquee week sales is Saint Catherine by Tilman Riemenschneider, among the most revered, talented and innovative sculptors of the Late Gothic period. The sole sculpture in the group, this delicate limewood figure features superb, expressive detailing, demonstrative of the German woodcarver's singular skill and unmatched prowess in the limewood medium.
Highlights from the collection will embark on a global tour this fall ahead of the November sale, beginning October 6 with Hong Kong, followed by stops in London, Paris and Taipei. The full collection of nine works will be on view at Christie's Rockefeller Center headquarters in the heart of New York City in November along with the full marquee week exhibition ahead of the auction.
