A Superior Salvator Mundi, and 5 Other Masterpieces

If you missed out on spending $450.3 million at Christie’s in 2017 for the very hyped Leonardo da Vinci Salvator Mundi (ca. 1500), well, good, because now you can spend that money at Agnews of London, which is offering what to my eye is a better one. The gallery’s Cliff Shorer is too modest to say his Christ as Salvator Mundi (de Ganay version), from ca. 1505–15, is better than the one that Christie’s sold to Saudi crown prince Mohammed bin Salman. The gallery hasn’t attached a price to it, he said, not having any comparables (really? Not even one?).

An oil on walnut panel measuring just 27 inches high, the painting shows Christ as characterized in the Gospel of Saint John 4:14, which reads, “And we have seen and testify that the Father has sent his Son as the Saviour of the World.” It strongly resembles the $450.3 million one—the priciest artwork ever sold—with Christ raising his right hand in blessing and holding an orb in his left, but it appears in far superior condition (after some recent restoration).

Insiders joked when Christie’s sold the Salvator Mundi in a contemporary art sale, saying that was only fair since fifty percent of the paint had been added in the last fifty years. On the matter of attribution of Agnews’ example, over the years some experts have called it by “Leonardo and collaborators” or “partially autograph.” None other than the Louvre exhibited it in 2019–2020 as by a “faithful pupil…with his possible intervention.” It was long with the de Ganay family, and with the current owner since it sold at Sotheby’s in 1999 for a “modest” price, as Schorer put it. In the course of its life it has passed through the hands of, among others, a French baron and the collector Martine de Béhague, who sported green hair and hosted Marcel Proust and other writers.

“Why are people so fascinated with these?” said Nynke van der Ven of Vanderven Oriental Art, from the Dutch city of s-Hertogenbosch and one of the founders of TEFAF in 1988. “Well, it’s partly because they’re slightly weird.” 

Van Der Ven was standing outside her booth, where a pair of delightfully odd Japanese vases (ca. 1700), standing about 20 inches high, are given pride of place. Augustus II the Strong, Elector of Saxony and king of Poland, collected twenty examples of these distinctive pieces for his Japanese-style palace in Dresden. Each is in blue and white with flaring mouths, with gold lacquer added along with porcelain handles in the shapes of elephant heads (recently replaced by the gallery), and a gold lacquered wire cage holding a porcelain pheasant. Others from the group now reside in institutions including the Rijksmuseum in Amsterdam, the Ashmolean Museum at Oxford, and the Peabody Essex Museum, in Massachusetts.

They’re tagged at €750,000 (about $864,000) for the pair.

French Impressionist Claude Monet famously painted his subjects, like haystacks, water lilies, and the Rouen cathedral, in series, capturing the varying moods and hues of light as the day passed. London’s Alon Zakaim Fine Art is offering two that depict the Gothic church at Vernon nestled in the landscape, in velvety pale blue and purple, showing reflections of the church and the sky in the surface of the River Seine. 

“I discovered the curious silhouette of a church, and I undertook to paint it,” the artist wrote. “It was the beginning of summer…foggy fresh mornings were followed by sudden outbursts of sunshine whose hot rays could only slowly dissolve the mist surrounding every crevice of the edifice and covering the golden stones with an ideally vaporous envelope.” Two moments from the day are evocatively captured here. 

Both from 1894, between them the paintings have passed through the hands of famous galleries like Durand-Ruel and Knoedler and have come to auction a handful of times. The gallery, in its thirteenth year in Maastricht, hopes they won’t be separated again, and is offering them as a pair for $20 million.

This astonishing cylinder desk, standing nearly four feet high, is attributed to Johann Wolfgang Elias Weinsprach, from Bruchsal, and dates to ca. 1770. 

Franz Christoph von Hutten, the prince-bishop of Speyer, probably commissioned it to decorate his Bruchsal castle, built by German architect Balthasar Neumann. Its shape and details of its form echo the palace, with the top resembling a terrace, with wood inlay mimicking an elaborately tiled floor; the main front panel, with more inlay, shows a view of the castle and its ballroom, with figures standing inside, flanked by vases with floral bouquets; lower panels show seemingly more modest scenes, with people dining. Its luxe materials include walnut, plum, pear, maple, boxwood, and bog oak, with some details in bone. 

The piece, on offer from Christian Eduard Franke of Bamberg, Germany, is priced at €265,000 ($305,290).

The eighteenth-century artist Wilhelm Beuoni Knoll created this monumental cabinet, standing over three feet high, featuring a Baroque facade and an incredibly detailed sculptural program showing the Passion and the Resurrection. Bold Solomonic columns adorn the front, which incorporates two doors, behind which are multiple drawers, arranged in symmetrical tiers; St. Peter stands at the center, with book and keys. On the inside of the doors appear archangels Michael and Gabriel. 

Up top is the risen Christ surrounded by apostles and saints, including the Evangelists and a Virgin and Child. 

The piece came to Amsterdam’s Zebregs & Röell gallery only in 2025, and is already going to a Dutch museum, so owner Dickie Zebregs wasn’t talking price, but he did mention that due to his Brazilian boyfriend Pedro, in-house they like to call the saint inside São Pedro.

A mysterious maker named Edmund Joy created “Mr. Joy’s Surprise” – Queen Anne Child’s Wardrobe in the form of a House in 1709; this five-foot-high treasure, is one of just two known examples, the other one now residing in the Victoria & Albert Museum in London. The central door reveals a space for hanging coats and shirts; a left-hand door opens to show shelves covered in paper printed with a brickwork pattern; the right-hand door opens to reveal hand-painted drawers. While it might seem like a child’s toy, such a finely crafted object, with locks and keys, served only for adults. 

The architecture of the piece, on offer from Thomas Coulborn & Sons of West Midlands, UK, resembles 17th-century Dutch homes, a style that influenced English builders as well. London’s Kew Palace (1631) is also known as the “Dutch house.” Though the maker confidently signed his name, nothing is known about him, say the curators at the V&A, though there is an Edmund Joy buried at Barton Turf church in Norfolk. He died a bachelor in 1744, aged 63. 

The piece is priced €75,000 ($86,400).