New York Old Masters Sales Set Records for Michelangelo and Rembrandt

Editor’s Note: This story originally appeared in On Balance, the ARTnews newsletter about the art market and beyond. Sign up here to receive it every Wednesday.

As an Old Masters auction started up in a packed room at Sotheby’s new Madison Avenue headquarters on Thursday morning, the auctioneer, David Pollack, made an unusual announcement. By far the top-priced work in the sale, a two-sided panel painting by Italy’s Antonello da Messina tagged at up to $15 million (Ecce Homo on one side, Saint Jerome in Penitence on the other), would not come to the block—not because it had been withdrawn for lack of interest, the typical reason for such removals, but rather because it had been sold privately to a public institution.

“A good one,” Pollack, the New York head of Sotheby’s Old Masters department, added. “You’ll all be happy.”

The piece, measuring just 8 inches high and guaranteed with an irrevocable bid, had been exhibited at institutions from Madrid’s Museo Thyssen-Bornemisza to the Metropolitan Museum of Art in New York. The artist’s previous auction record was extraordinarily slim, with just one signature work appearing in Artnet’s price database, also a small, two-sided panel, which sold for £251,650 ($409,850) at Christie’s London in 2003. On Monday, the house announced that the Italian Ministry of Culture had acquired the painting and paid $14.9 million for it.

It “softens the blow,” Tom Davies, a director at London’s Daniel Katz Gallery, told ARTnews as the sale unfolded, to know the piece will go to an institution, not a competitor. “There were strong results, deep bidding, and very good attendance, with lots of museums circulating, which is good for the field,” he said of the sale, which took place as part of Old Masters week in New York, with major sales at both Christie’s and Sotheby’s. The week, which ran concurrently with Art Basel Qatar, generated records for Artemisia Gentileschi and Michelangelo. It also saw the sale of the most expensive drawing by Rembrandt van Rijn.

“It’s perhaps not a masterpiece-laden week, but the overall level is very good,” said Davies. He had unsuccessfully bid on a piece or two, he said, but observed that “as a dealer you have to occasionally accept that the people outbidding you are probably your clients anyway.”

Dutch Old Master dealer Salomon Lilian was more concise in his assessment: “Old Masters are back!”

Exceeding Expectations, Set by Modest Estimates

Last week’s sales in New York came seven months after a high-profile event that fell far short of expectations, when the vaunted collection of the late banker Thomas A. Saunders III and his wife, Jordan, went on offer at Sotheby’s London. Billed as the most valuable Old Masters collection ever to come to auction, it was estimated to fetch as much as $120 million, but it ended up totaling just $64.7 million, with an anemic sell-through rate of 58.5 percent. (To be fair, the sale did notch new highs for Jan Davidsz. de Heem, Luis Meléndez, and Frans Post, and one dealer told ARTnews at the time that the house had achieved “very strong results.”)

The contrast revealed the importance of reasonable estimates, said experts last week. 

“The Saunders sale was completely over-estimated,” said London adviser Hugo Nathan, of the firm Beaumont Nathan. “It’s as simple as that.”

As for last week, observed New York adviser Jacob King, “Across the board they pushed the estimates pretty low, so things still were selling for less than they would have in the past.” All the same, he characterized the sales, especially those at Sotheby’s, as “especially strong.”

Sotheby’s racked up some newsworthy results. Drawings from the estate of Diane A. Nixon, a New York travel agent, went to the block Wednesday; the sale achieved a 95 percent sell-through rate, exceeded its $7.7 million high estimate to total $10.8 million, and set a record for Carel Fabritius. Also on Wednesday, a sale of master drawings totaled a within-estimate $19.8 million, the highest ever various-owner sale total in the house’s history, with an 83 percent sell-through rate and 47 percent of works exceeding estimates. The next day came a white-glove sale of works from the estate of New York real estate mogul Lester L. Weindling, who fled Hitler’s Germany and kept his collection of 17th-century Dutch art largely out of the public eye until after he died in 2024. It sold within estimates, totaling $16.8 million. Also Thursday, a various-owner sale exceeded its $22.5 million high estimate to fetch $27.9 million, with 85 percent sold by lot and 56 precent of works selling above their high estimates. Jean-Honoré Fragonard’s Head of a Bearded Man (ca. 1770) far exceeded its $800,000 high estimate and went for $2.7 million.

Sotheby’s star offering for the week was a Rembrandt drawing, Young Lion Resting (ca. 1638–42), which fetched $17.9 million, demolishing the Dutchman’s previous high for a work on paper, $3.7 million, set at Christie’s New York in 2000. The work came from the holdings of Thomas S. Kaplan, his wife Daphne Recanati Kaplan, and Florida philanthropist Jon Ayers. Proceeds will benefit Panthera, a charity devoted to the conservation of the world’s 40 species of wild cats, founded by the Kaplans and the late Alan Rabinowitz. If anything tempered the good news, it was the fact that the piece had been estimated at $20 million; it hammered short of that, at $15 million. 

Christie’s, too, had some notable results, with the week’s sales totaling some $100 million. The Old Master paintings sale was the strongest New York sale the house has had in 10 years, while the drawings sale was one of the biggest in Christie’s history, said a spokesperson.

Two highlights came at its Old Master sale on Wednesday, which racked up a total of $54.1 million, within its presale estimate of $45 million to $64 million, with an impressive 84 percent of works finding buyers. 

A painting by Canaletto, called Venice, the Bucintoro at the Molo on Ascension Day (ca. 1754), met its estimate and fetched $30.5 million to become the artist’s third-best-selling work at auction. It last appeared at auction at Christie’s London in 2005, when it sold for $20.1 million, nearly double its high estimate (his third-highest price, until last week). The painting bore a third-party guarantee. The artist’s record remains $43.8 million, set just last year at Christie’s London for another painting of the same subject.

Artemesia Gentileschi’s Self-Portrait as Saint Catherine (ca. 1613-1620), meanwhile, set a new world record for the artist, more than doubling its $2.5 million low estimate to sell for $5.7 million. Her previous high was €4.8 million ($5.3 million), achieved at Artcurial in 2019 for the artist’s Lucrèce, which smashed its high estimate of €800,000 ($880,300). The artist was in the headlines the same day when the National Gallery of Art in Washington, D.C. announced that her Mary Magdalene in Ecstasy (ca. 1625) had entered its collection. 

Crossover Collectors, and a Record Michelangelo Found Online

It’s widely discussed that contemporary artists often collect Old Masters, where you can get high-quality works for far less than buyers routinely shell out for those by living figures. And in fact, New York artist and Pioneer Works cofounder Dustin Yellin was among the standing-room-only crowd at Sotheby’s on Thursday. He wasn’t bidding, but he had been viewing the works in the galleries and happened upon his first sale in progress, so maybe he’ll catch the bug.

Also on the scene was New York adviser Laura Paulson. She was particularly impressed with a ca. 1500 Franco-Flemish tapestry from the holdings of Chicago philanthropists Cindy and Jay Pritzker that was estimated at up to $500,000 but sold for $1.9 million after a ten-minute contest. (Treasures by Van Gogh, Gauguin, Matisse et al. from the family had come to the block in the fall.) Measuring some 11 feet high, the piece exhibits a millefleur (“thousand flowers”) pattern and a unicorn, recalling the famed tapestries at the Cloisters in New York. It had real contemporary appeal, said Paulson, noting that it had gone to a collector better known for buying new art. (The house declined to confirm the buyer’s identity or typical focus.)

You never know where a valuable work is going to turn up, as we all were reminded this week by Christie’s. In March 2025, the house received a photo of a chalk drawing of a foot through its online portal for requesting estimates. It turned out to be a Michelangelo study of the foot of a Sibyl for the Sistine Chapel ceiling. Estimated at $1.5 million to $2 million, it gave rise to an unheard-of 45-minute bidding war at the house’s Rockefeller Center salesroom on Thursday, achieving nearly 20 times its low estimate and selling for $27.2 million, an artist record. It is one of only about 10 drawings by the Renaissance master in private hands, says the house, and it’s the only previously unrecorded study for the ceiling ever to come to the block. The artist’s previous high was $24.3 million, set by another drawing at Christie’s Paris in 2022.

Giada Damen, the specialist who identified the Michelangelo drawing from the online submission, noted in a statement that the sale was one of the most successful Old Master drawings sales in the house’s 260-year history. “What an incredible day, and a highlight of my career,” said Damen. “As someone who truly loves and appreciates Old Master drawings, it was exhilarating to have multiple bidders on the phone, in the room, and online, all of whom realized the rarity and significance of this extraordinary object and the once-in-a-lifetime opportunity being presented. It was a privilege to be part of it.”

For Hugo Nathan, of London advisory firm Beaumont Nathan, the Michelangelo sale compared instructively with the Rembrandt drawing of the lion, which was guaranteed to sell, possibly stripping away some of the potential excitement; only two bidders vied for the piece. On the Michelangelo, he said, “I was one of three bidders over $20 million—and the estimate was $1.5 million to $2 million! That’s the magic of the Old Masters. There’s an element of luck and unpredictability that makes it a very fun market.”

In 2024, ARTnews’s George Nelson wrote that auctioneers are working to lure new collectors into the category, and in Nathan’s eyes, this week was a success in that regard. Indeed, at the Sotheby’s sale with the record-setting Rembrandt, the house reports that 15 percent of buyers are in their 30s, and nearly 20 percent of bidders were new to the house.

“We predicted that people from the more modern end of the market would look back and take an interest,” said Nathan. “There were enough museum-caliber things in these sales to excite those people and I think there was more activity from newcomers to Old Masters who are experienced collectors.”

For him, finding a supply of museum-caliber works still does present a challenge. The kind of material that legendary dealer Joseph Duveen sold to robber barons like the Fricks, Morgans, and Rockefellers is very hard to find, he said, “because generations of American collectors have gifted things to museums, and the museums themselves have been prolific buyers. There are plenty of people in the marketplace who could afford a Vermeer or Raphael—if there was one. There were three people who were quite happy to bid above $20 million for a Michelangelo drawing.”

The task for dealers today, he said, is to “reconfigure tastes to what’s available.”