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Calcite sur Heulandite, Deolali, Maharashtra, Inde

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Calcite sur Heulandite, Deolali, Maharashtra, Inde. Taille: 22 mm. Photo Andreas Schmid.


Sphalerite, Seravezza Quarries, Seravezza, Apuan Alps, Lucca Province, Tuscany, Italy

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Sphalerite, Seravezza Quarries, Seravezza, Apuan Alps, Lucca Province, Tuscany, Italy. Taille: 0.78 mm. Collection et photo Matteo Chinellato

1930s fashion exhibition opens at Sudley House

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LIVERPOOL.- Sudley House is getting the Hollywood treatment with Putting on the Glitz, a glamorous 1930s fashion exhibition. 

A stunning selection of 20 outfits from National Museums Liverpool’s costume collection is being displayed at the South Liverpool gallery, revealing how the glitz and glamour of Hollywood was reflected in the fashions of the period. 

Visitors can expect to see an elegant exhibition, exploring 1930s fashions at their best, when women embraced more fitted styles with longer hemlines, in contrast to the loose, flapper-style silhouettes of the previous decade. 

The exhibition has already proved to be a hit in Port Sunlight at the Lady Lever Art Gallery, with more than 30,000 people visiting during its four-month run, before it closed in February. 

Pauline Rushton, Curator of Costume and Textiles at National Museums Liverpool, said: “The exhibition was so popular over at the Lady Lever Art Gallery - we didn’t want it to end! Being able to have it on display at Sudley House is wonderful, as it’s the perfect setting for such an elegant exhibition. We hope more people will come and see the exhibition, either for the first time, or even a second visit with the charming backdrop of Sudley. ” 

Visitors who saw the exhibition at the Lady Lever Art Gallery said this of their visits: “What amazing frocks and accessories – such a glamorous period! Thank you for putting on the exhibition” 

Amazing to see the things that influence fashion and how it has changed since then. Nice music too!” 

My second visit to this fabulous exhibition – so interesting and I could come back again!”.

Exhibition highlights include: 

• An evening dress that belonged to the daughter of the Chief Officer on the Titanic.

• A pearl and diamanté encrusted silk wedding dress bought from Brown’s of Chester and garments purchased from Liverpool department stores George Henry Lee & Co. and Owen Owen Ltd. 

• A wonderful selection of accessories including shoes, stoles, handbags and hats, some of which were purchased by Liverpool doctor’s wife and renowned shopper Mrs Emily Tinne (1887-1966). 

• A set of striking fashion illustrations which were designed for George Henry Lee & Co. by local illustrator Miss Winifred Aileen Brown (1907-1993). Born in Wallasey, Miss Brown worked as a fashion illustrator for the Basnett Street department store, later purchased by John Lewis, in the 1930s.

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Fashion illustration for George Henry Lee Co by illustrator Winifred Aileen Brown©National Museums Liverpool.

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Evening coat, George Henry Lee and Co Ltd, around 1930-1936,  Merseyside, Liverpool, England. Black Silk (Velvet); White Silk (Crepe de Chine); White Fur (Angora).  Gift of Dr. Alexine Tinne, 2001. Lady Lever Art Gallery collections, WAG 2001.45.22 ©National Museums Liverpool.

This coat of angora rabbit fur and silk belonged to Liverpool doctor’s wife and renowned Liverpool shopper Mrs Emily Tinne (1887-1966).

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Evening dress, circa 1935. Sequins - Metal; Cotton - Net. Gift of Mr Christopher Bayliss, 2012. Lady Lever Art Gallery collections, WAG 2014.14 ©National Museums Liverpool.

Sequined evening dresses were fashionable throughout the 1920s and 1930s.
This dress belonged to Mrs Jane Moreton (née Wilde,1900-1986), daughter of the Chief Officer on the Titanic, Henry Tingle Wilde, who perished with the ship in 1912. Jane married wealthy businessman Henry Stafford Moreton. Her busy social life gave her the opportunity to wear expensive clothes.

Shoulder Cape, 1930-1939Fur - Rabbit; Lamé - SilverGift of Lady Hoyar Millar, 1961Lady Lever Art Gallery collections, 1961.246.41 ©National Museums Liverpool.

This shoulder cape belonged to Elizabeth van Swinderen (1878-1955), an American who married a Dutch diplomat.

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Evening dress, around 1932-1935. Silk Satin. Gift of Miss M Mylechreest. Lady Lever Art Gallery collections, 56.99.1 ©National Museums Liverpool.

This bias-cut dress is typical of the styles first developed during the 1920s by the French designer Madeleine Vionnet. In this technique, the separate pattern pieces were cut out of the fabric on a diagonal to the direction of the threads. When the garment was sewn together, the fabric could be stretched and closely moulded to the shape of the body. 

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Callot Soeurs Ltd, Evening dress, 1934. Silk Brocade. Gift of Lady Hoyer Millar, 1961. Lady Lever Art Gallery collections, 1961.246.24 ©National Museums Liverpool.

Fabrics made from a mixture of silk and metal threads were often used for evening dresses during the 1930s. They caught the light and sparkled as the wearer moved.

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Shoulder Cape, around 1932-1934. Feather - Cockerel. Purchased, 1956Lady Lever Art Gallery collections, 56.173.12 ©National Museums Liverpool.

Feathered capes like this one, imitating flamingo feathers, added a touch of the exotic to outfits.

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Callot Soeurs Ltd, Evening dress, 1936. Woven net; Silk - satinGift of Lady Hoyer Millar, 1961. Lady Lever Art Gallery collections, 1961.246.23 ©National Museums Liverpool.

An evening dress incorporating silk satin and metallic netting, made by Callot Soeurs, a French dressmaking company based in Paris.

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Evening dress, 1935-1937. Rayon - crepe; Lamé - gold. Gift of Dr Joy Gordon, 1984. Lady Lever Art Gallery collections, 1984.286.3 ©National Museums Liverpool.

During the 1930s there was renewed interest in the styles of the medieval period, influenced by cinema. Films such as The Adventures of Robin Hood, starring Errol Flynn, popularised the fashions of the past. 
This dress displays elements of what was imagined to be medieval style, in its shape, its batwing sleeves and the long waist sash. 

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Installation view. Putting on the Glitz. ©National Museums Liverpool.

Bernardo Daddi (active Florence c. 1318-1348), The Madonna and Child enthroned with saints

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Lot 125. Bernardo Daddi (active Florence c. 1318-1348), The Madonna and Child enthroned with saints, tempera and gold on panel, in an engaged frame, 30 1/8 x 20 ½ in. (76.5 x 52.1 cm.). Estimate on request. Photo Christie's Image Ltd 2016. 

Provenance: Mrs. Bredin, Bath, Somerset, England, until 1969.
Acquired from the above by the present owner.

LiteratureS. Chiodo in M. Boskovits, ed., A Critical and Historical Corpus of Florentine Painting, Sect. IV, Vol. IX, Painters in Florence after the “Black Death”. The Master of the Misericordia and Matteo di Pacino, Milan, 2011, pp. 82 note 240, 83, 312-316, pl. LIII.
C. Sciacca, ed., Florence at the Dawn of the Renaissance: Painting and Illumination, 1300-1350, exhibition catalogue, Los Angeles, 2012, p. 113, under no. 23, fig. 2.17 (entry by A. Tartuferi).

NoteThis magnificent miniature altarpiece is one of the finest and most important Trecento pictures to come to auction in the last decade. The central panel, framed along its upper edge with an ogival molding, features all the ravishing colors, painstaking attention to pattern and detail, and tender intimacy which characterize the highest achievements in Bernardo Daddi’s oeuvre. Described by Richard Offner as ‘certainly the greatest master in the Florence of his day’, Daddi worked both on a monumental, Giottesque scale – possibly even collaborating with Giotto on the decorations of the great Franciscan church of Santa Croce in Florence – and in a smaller format, producing private devotional pictures of great delicacy. These paintings, of which the present work is an exceptionally refined example, led Offner to describe Daddi as the epitome of what he termed the Florentine “miniaturist tendency”, a sophisticated style of painting which would become popular, in no small part due to Daddi’s enormous success, in the 14th century.

The Enthroned Madonna surrounded by saints and angels at the center of this complex, probably originally conceived as the center of a triptych, reveals Daddi at his most lyrical and enchanting. The exquisitely modeled robes range from luxurious blues to cool, sage greens, to bright vermilion and deep rose, and are characterized by a consciously exaggerated, lyrical use of line. The background gilding is equally sumptuous, adorned with elegant punched decorations as well as sophisticated hand-tooled designs, and the mordant gilding which embellishes the figures’ robes is applied with similar meticulousness. 

The richly embroidered cloth of honor behind the Virgin, which features a pattern common to Persian textiles that had become popular models in Trecento Florentine workshops, is carefully described to indicate its three-dimensionality: the sides are painted in a slightly darker shade to show their recession into space and shadow, and the cloth appears to fall with real weight, gathering in a swollen bunch at the seat of the throne and flowing naturalistically over its edge. The throne itself, meanwhile, is a tour-de-force of painted architecture, featuring a proliferation of fictive moldings and porphyry inlay. Its real, spatial presence is painstakingly delineated, from the carved arms and arches to the twisting florets surmounting the marble structure, and is underscored by the angels at left and right, who delicately grasp its vertical elements. Because he has placed this remarkable structure slightly off-center, Daddi has been careful to reveal a little more of the punched border at upper left than at upper right – most evident in two lone punches between the upper florets of the top of the throne at left. The insistent three-dimensionality of the scene proves that Daddi, even on such an intimate scale, never abandons the solidity of form and monumental figural presence pioneered by Giotto a generation earlier. 

The Enthroned Madonna is datable to the mid- to late 1330s, and is comparable to several other mature devotional works by Daddi, including the portable tabernacles in the Courtauld Institute of Art, London and the Minneapolis Museum of Arts. Some thirty years later – after Daddi’s death – the Enthroned Madonna was given a new frame, including the lateral pinnacles, double predella, and striking scene showing The Apparition of God the Father at upper center that adorn it today. The figural components of these additions have been convincingly attributed by Laurence B. Kanter and Sonia Chiodo to the Master of the Misericordia, an artist named in 1958 by Richard Offner after the impressive altarpiece now in the Accademia at Florence. 

The Misericordia Master was one of the most effective and productive artists in Florence from the mid-14th century until about 1385/1390. Like Daddi, this accomplished painter worked on both a monumental and “miniaturist” scale; in this case, he has adopted the latter mode, working to emulate Daddi as closely as possible and even replicating the freehand incisions in the haloes from the central panel. The remarkable scene in the upper register shows two pairs of angels looking up towards the blinding luminosity of God the Father, a divine apparition from which they are forced to shield their eyes with their hands or dark lenses. This relatively rare motif was certainly inspired by the work of the great Giotto di Bondone, the father of Florentine painting, who produced a similar scene for the pinnacle of his monumental Baroncelli altarpiece (Fig. 1). This altarpiece, most of which is still in situ at Santa Croce, was of central inspiration to the development of Florentine painting in the second quarter of the 14th century, as the present work attests.

sdma-giotto-godthefather1330

Fig. 1, Giotto di Bondone, God the Father with Angels, tempera and gold on panel (San Diego, Museum of Fine Arts, 1945.26)

Although Sonia Chodio (loc. cit.) had, on the basis of photographs only, argued that the framing elements described above might have been added as late as the 19th century, Laurence B. Kanter has, on the basis of firsthand inspection, demonstrated conclusively that the gesso application – and indeed the entire construction of this miniature maestà – dates to the 14th century (verbal communication, October 2015). This is perhaps most evident in the upper register, where the gold leaf is entirely original, as in much of the rest of the complex. This upper section is comprised both of gilding applied by Daddi (to the pinnacle above the ogival arch of his central panel, still visible in raking light underneath the figure of God the Father) and gilding applied by the Misericordia Master (to the remainder of the scene), which displays a different pattern of craquelure, proving that the old and new panels were joined before the Misericordia Master began painting. One theory, which remains hypothetical, is that Daddi’s panel was reformatted in the late 1360s to serve as a standalone altarpiece, perhaps for some small personal or guildhall chapel, and that the key to this secondary commission may be in the as-yet-unidentified coats-of-arms on the predella at left and right.

Christie's. OLD MASTERS: PART I14 April 2016, New York, Rockefeller Plaza

Doménikos Theotokópoulos, called El Greco (Crete 1541-1614 Toledo), The Entombment of Christ

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Doménikos Theotokópoulos, called El Greco (Crete 1541-1614 Toledo), The Entombment of Christ, oil on panel, 11 x 7 5/8 in. (28 x 19.4 cm.), with the inventory number '18.' (lower right). Estimate $4,000,000 – $6,000,000Photo Christie's Image Ltd 2016.

Provenance(Possibly) Miguel Lasso de la Vega y Madariaga (1783-1863), 10th Marqués de las Torres, and thence by descent to,
Miguel Lasso de la Vega y Quintanilla (1830-1900), 12th Marqués de las Torres, and (probably) by descent to his son,
José María de Ybarra y Menchacatorre (1880-1930), by whom (probably) bequeathed to his widow,
Josefa Lasso de la Vega y Quintanilla (1884-1967), Condesa Viuda de Ybarra, Seville.
Private collection, London.

We are grateful to Professor Andrea Donati for providing the additional literature below. Professor Donati has suggested that the present work was painted after El Greco had left the Farnese palace and enrolled in Rome’s Compagnia di San Luca, which he joined in October 1572, and when he would have been working for his living. Small-scale works of similar religious subjects were popular in Rome under Pius V, and would have been saleable to El Greco’s early Italian and Spanish patrons in that city. If it was acquired by a Spanish collector, the presentEntombment would have been among the first – if not the very first – of the artist’s pictures to enter a Spanish collection. 
Professor Donati also notes that the inclusion of Titian’s portrait in the present panel reinforces the much-debated theory that El Greco was the Italian master’s pupil. Indeed, as Professor Donati notes, El Greco was officially introduced in 1570 to Cardinal Farnese in Rome by Giulio Clovio as a student of Titian, and a contemporary copy of Vasari’s Lives owned by the jurist and scholar Durante Dorio da Leonessa also records this master-pupil relationship. 

Additional literatureA. Donati, “Il Greco a Roma, 1570-1575 circa” in El Greco in Italia: metamorfosi di un genio, exhibition catalogue, Milan, 2015, pp. 125, 133, ns. 167, 168.
A. Donati, Tiziano: Indagini sulla pittura, Foligno, 2016, pp. 10-12, fig. 3. 

LiteratureJ. Camón Aznar, Dominico Greco, Madrid, 1950, II, p. 1367, no. 202.
M.S. Soria, 'Greco's Italian Period', Arte veneta: Rivista di storia dell'arte, VIII, 1954, pp. 214 and 221, no. 64.
H. Soehner, 'Greco in Spanien: Teil I: Grecos Stilentwicklung in Spanien', Münchner Jahrbuch der Bildenden Kunst, VIII, 1957, pp. 126 and 132, fig. 2.
H. Soehner, 'Greco in Spanien: Teil III: Katalog der Gemälde Grecos, seines Ateliers und Seiner Nachfolge in Spanischem Besitz', Münchner Jahrbuch der Bildenden Kunst, IX-X, 1958-1959, p. 176, no. 3.
H.E. Wethey, El Greco and His School, Princeton, 1962, II, p. 183, no. X79, as 'Follower of El Greco' but 'the best and presumably the earliest' of the three similar pictures of The Entombment, incorrectly described as 'tempera on panel'.
J. Camón Aznar, Dominico Greco, Madrid, 1970, II, p. 1349, no. 214.
L. Steinberg, 'An El Greco 'Entombment' Eyed Awry’, The Burlington Magazine, CXVI, no. 857, August 1974, pp. 474-475 and 477, fig. 90.
N. Hadjinicolaou, ed., El Greco: Works in Spain, Rethymno, 1990, pp. 382 and 385 (reprinting Soehner, op. cit.).
A.G. Xydis, 'El Greco's Iconographical Sources', in N. Hadjinicolaou, ed., El Greco of Crete: Proceedings of the International Symposium held on the occasion of the 450th anniversary of the artist's birth Iraklion, Crete, 1-5 September 1990, Iraklion, 1995, pp. 149-150 and 152-3, note 39, with an incorrect illustration.
J. Álvarez Lopera, El Greco. La obra esencial, Madrid, 1993, no. 29.
J. Álvarez Lopera, El Greco. Estudio Y Catálogo, II, 1, Madrid, 2005, no. 29, fig. 44.

NoteThis remarkable panel executed on a small scale packs eighteen figures into a tightly compressed space with all the expressive grandeur and brilliant colorism for which El Greco is renowned, but on the reduced scale of a cabinet picture. In a tempestuous landscape with the three crosses on Golgotha visible at upper left, a vivid blue sky with swirling clouds and distant mountains are outlined in flaming reds and pinks. The crowd of protagonists (including St Joseph of Arimethea, immediately recognizable as a portrait of the aging Titian – El Greco's great influence during his seminal visit to Venice in 1568-1570) cluster around the body of Christ which is solicitously lowered into his tomb, while the Magdalene and Virgin Mary together with a group of female attendants grieve. The instruments of the passion – the nails and crown of thorns – are placed in the immediate foreground. A thick veil of discolored varnish mutes what is undoubtedly a rich, iridescent palette.

El Greco is unusual in the breadth of the hugely varied cultures to which he was exposed. Trained as an icon painter in the Venetian colony of Crete, he never entirely abandons the Byzantine origins to which his simplified forms, flattened picture plane, brilliant colorism and emotional intensity bear witness. In Venice he responds to the rapidly painted expressive drama of Tintoretto and the high palette of Titian as well as to the nocturnes of Jacopo Bassano. When he moves to Rome in 1570 his artistic language is profoundly affected by the unavoidable presence of Michelangelo. Thereafter he moves to Spain, looking for the patronage of Philip II and although that proved to be a dead end, he remains there, working largely from Toledo, where his style resonates perfectly with the Counter-Reformation mystic fervor of Catholic late 16th-century Spain. He is claimed by art historians as the greatest genius of late Byzantine Crete, an artist steeped in the cultural and philosophic discoveries being made in Italy and as the father and soul of Spanish art. He is also hailed as a precursor of modernism, the forebear of Cezanne, Picasso and even Jackson Pollock. 

This panel has rarely been studied in person since it was first published by Aznar in 1950. This was rectified when it was examined and then published by Lopera and subsequently exhibited in Toledo in 2014. It belongs to a series of works depicting the Passion painted on a similar scale by El Greco notably a Pietà in the Hispanic Society, New York (fig. 1); another in the Johnson Collection, Philadelphia; and two other Entombments, one (now lost) formerly in the Palazzo Reale, Madrid and the second formerly with Giancarlo Baroni (fig. 2, sold Sotheby's, New York, 20 January 2013, lot 7). Another treatment of the same subject with additions giving it an arched format was in the Anstruther Collection (sold Christie's, 1965) and then the Marshall Collection (sold Bonham's, 28 March 1974). Based on 'an imprecise black and white photograph' Soener and Wethey rejected our panel which upon firsthand inspection has now been rehabilitated by Alvarez Lopera (see literature), Leo Steinberg and Fernando Marias among others. The general consensus is that it was painted in Rome, though Aznar, Hadjinacolau and Soehner (see literature above) all believe it to be painted shortly after his arrival in Spain.

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Fig. 1 El Greco, Pietà, c. 1575, The Hispanic Society of America, New York. 

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Fig. 2 El Greco, The Entombment of Christ, Private collection

Our understanding of El Greco's Italian period has deepened, especially thanks to Lopera's recent work. Wethey had dismissed this entire group of early small-scale paintings as pastiches by another hand, perhaps an Italian workshop assistant, which ignored El Greco's evident references to what he was seeing in Italy. The debt to Michelangelo points to a Roman dating; Steinberg discusses this connection in a Burlington Shorter Notice (op. cit.) where he compares it to the dead Christ in Michelangelo's celebrated Bandini Madonna (fig. 3, now Museo dell' Opera del Duomo, Florence), then in Rome and also known through engravings by Cornelis Cort. Steinberg points to the rarity of such a direct quotation, writing: 'Such close replication is not normally found in El Greco…But in the Entombment, the whole of an alien figure, celebrated for unprecedented complexity and unmistakable, has been lifted, tilted and inserted intact. And so accurate is the transposition that one suspects the artist is not merely representing a Christ, but a Christ in quotation marks - 'Michelangelo's Christ.' El Greco is famous for his bold declaration that he could successfully repaint the Sistine Chapel, and it is entirely plausible to suggest that El Greco is, as Titian had done before, not just copying Michelangelo but competing with him. His figure of Christ is not merely a repetition of an instantly recognizable figure but an incorporation of it into a far more complex composition replete with all the expressive power of color and dramatic landscape which sculpture could not provide. Steinberg suggests that the prototype was painted in Rome, probably after El Greco saw the Pietà at Francesco Bandini's villa in Monte Cavallo, and that the other repetitions may have been painted in Spain. Of all the versions (and this differs in small details from the ex-Madrid and ex-Baroni versions), some known only from photographs, the present is of a superior quality and intensity of execution and should be regarded as the prototype. Marias writes of it, 'the London Entombment of Christ with the three crosses of Golgotha on the small hill on the left, and with the crown of thorns and basket on the left further away from the tomb, just under the arm of the Magdalene dressed in green rather than blue and yellow, is differentiated also by other stylistic features, from the finer drawing to the subtler light and color, and the different tones of tunics and cloaks, from the Ruiz Vernacci photo [ex-Madrid picture] and the other one or two panels'. 

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Fig. 3 Michelangelo Buonarroti, Pietà, 1553 / Opera del Duomo, Florence, Italy / Bridgeman Images

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Fig. 4 The present lot (rotated; detail)

Scholars now believe this panel to have been painted shortly after El Greco's arrival in Rome, c. 1571-2. The inclusion of a portrait of Titian combined with its subject matter has led others to suggest that it was conceived as an homage to Titian, who died of the plague in August 1576, which would make it a later Roman work. It is recorded that there were a number of small paintings by El Greco left in his studio at his death which were intended to be used as modelli for larger works. If this is one of them, and it does have a Spanish provenance, El Greco would have taken it with him when he left for Spain in 1577. Indeed, this painting has a distinguished 19th-century Spanish provenance, being said to come from the collection at the villa of Carmona of the 12th Marques de las Torres de la Pressa, Miguel Lasso de la Vega y Quintamilla (1830-1900). The 10th marquess (1783-1863) had in his collection 'a small picture of the Entombment of the Saviour, gilded frame, Flemish School, 200 reales' cited among the goods inherited by his second son, Miguel, which may, given the state of El Greco scholarship in 1863, well have been this picture. 

El Greco as Modernist

Like a number of Old Master painters we most admire today, notably Caravaggio, Vermeer and Frans Hals, El Greco's current popularity is a relatively recent phenomenon. Among the earliest 'modern' artists to appreciate El Greco was Eugene Delacroix, who painted a version of a small Pietà (fig. 5) which relates to El Greco's Pietà in the Hispanic Society, New York. Not knowing anything about El Greco, Van Gogh painted an homage to Delacroix's homage to El Greco (fig. 6). El Greco's true 'rediscovery', however, perhaps begins in 1902 with the monographic exhibition devoted to him at the Prado. This was preceded by the recognition of his genius by Spanish artists Ignacio Zuloaga and Santiago Rusinol, who championed his work and arranged for the section of a monument in his honor on the promenade in Sitges in 1894. More importantly for the role of El Greco in the development of Modernism was Zulouga's purchase of The Opening of the Fifth Seal (fig. 7, Metropolitan Museum, New York) which the young Pablo Picasso saw in Zuloaga's studio in Paris in 1905 and which profoundly influenced the conception of Picasso's landmark painting the Desmoiselles d'Avignon (fig. 8, Museum of Modern Art, New York). In fact, Picasso had clearly taken note of his Spanish forebear's significance much earlier, as is evident from a 1899 drawing by Picasso entitled Yo El Greco. Of this artistic dependence, in 1912, Paul Fredinand Schmidt commented 'He [Picasso] was a portraitist of tragic significance and it is no accident that a Greco hangs in the same gallery as they share that Spanish sense of isolation, the gloom, the brooding feeling, and a sense of metaphysical with the perfect beauty of their paintings. Even if their means and goals are infinitely diverse: the Greek Spaniard and the Spanish Frenchman 'shake hands across the centuries''.  

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Fig. 5 Eugène Delacroix, Pietà, 1850, Nasjonalgalleriet, Oslo, Norway.

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Fig. 6 Vincent van Gogh, Pietà, c. 1890 / Vatican Museums and Galleries, Vatican City© Stefano Baldini / Bridgeman Images

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Fig. 7 El Greco, The Vision of Saint John, c. 1609–1614, The Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York.

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Fig. 8 Pablo Picasso, Les Demoiselles d’Avignon, 1907 / Museum of Modern Art, New York / Bridgeman Images

But the intrusion of El Greco onto the consciousness of the European avant-garde was far more complex and begins albeit more randomly in the middle of the 19th century. The first significant advocate for El Greco was the Romantic critic Théophile Gautier, who declared his admiration in Voyage en Espagne (1843), but also claimed that El Greco had gone mad through excessive artistic sensitivity. Although Gautier appreciated El Greco's late work, the idea that he went mad, and that this 'explains' the increasing eccentricity of his paintings, was widely held. In the 18th century, Palomino had written disapprovingly that El Greco ‘tried to change his style with such extravagance that he finally made his painting style worthless and ridiculous'. Even John Charles Robinson, upon giving the National Gallery in London Christ Driving the Traders from the Temple (fig. 9), described it as 'above the average of this most eccentric master's work…at the same time, you know the man was as mad as a hatter'. Reactions to the 'mad' genius of El Greco have always been mixed. His early Byzantine style has only recently begun to be understood and even his Italian works did not always conform to critics' notion of El Greco's genius. Wethey, a significant authority on the artist, described this Entombment using similar language to that of his detractors in the 19th century, writing 'the picture is a caricature of motives drawn from the artist's work'. This parallels the words of Federico de Madrazo, director of the Prado, who in 1881 complained of having to store the 'quite absurd caricatures' by El Greco. El Greco's departure from aesthetic norms had the capacity to disturb his own biographer in 1962 as well as a director of the Prado eighty one years before.

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Fig. 9 El Greco, Christ Driving the Traders from the Temple, c. 1600 / National Gallery, London, UK / Bridgeman Images

It was in Germany as much as in France that El Greco's qualities began to be reappraised. In 1874, the same year as the celebrated exhibition of 'Impressionists' at the studio of the photographer Felix Nadar, a German art historian from Bonn named Carl Justi recognized the first paintings by El Greco in Germany, formerly attributed to Bassano. He would go on to publish Domenico Theodocopoli von Kreta in 1897. Justi, among El Greco's first admirers, was far from a supporter of Modernism and, like many of El Greco's earliest enthusiasts, appreciated that his early works were influenced by Titian and Tintoretto but dismissed his later works as the 'degenerate product of a pathological genius.' Nevertheless, Justi would describe El Greco as 'in fact a prophet of Modernism' and wrote about El Greco's Martyrdom of St Maurice (1580-1582, Escorial) as the 'outrageous music of the future' expressed in the 'crudest contrasts of color, watery blue and sulphuric yellow, in harsh splashes of sunshine and lightning'. However, it was his countryman Julius Meier-Graefe whose enormously influential Spanische Reise (Spanish Journey) carried the torch for El Greco as a proto-modernist. Comparing him to Cezanne, Meier-Graef wrote 'I do not know if even today, Greco would have enjoyed the public reputation in the same way as the recently deceased modernist. Before Cezanne he carried the honorable title of a madman, was as secretive as the other and little familiar with the blessings of public validation; altogether he was so remarkably like our contemporary that one is tempted to take back everything that has been said about the idiosyncrasies of our era, and count the most independent minds of our time as the immediate successors to El Greco…they have the same violence of expression and reduced physicality in the details'. 

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Fig. 10 Paul Cézanne, Baigneurs en plein air, 1890–1891, Hermitage Museum, Saint Petersburg (formerly in the Marczell von Nemes collection)

 

A critical moment for the appreciation of El Greco in this context was the exhibition of the collection of the Hungarian collector Marczell von Nemes at the Alte Pinakotek, Munich in 1911. It included a mixture of eight works by El Greco and contemporary art, and among the many visitors was the young Paul Klee who wrote, 'to point out what is most current, I will join the stream of Pinakotek visitors as they line up to view the works of El Greco…I particularly admire the Laocöon (now Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York) and see in it a puzzle of compositional and painterly perfection'. The following year in the Der Blaue Reiter almanac the Saint John by El Greco (now Museum of Fine Arts, Boston) was illustrated side-by-side with Robert Delaunay's Eiffel Tower, both from the Koehler collection. This conjunction of El Greco and the early 20th century contemporary art movement was eloquently described by Roger Fry, a modernist critic and former curator at the Metropolitan Museum, who described the reactions of the public to the London National Gallery's newly acquired Agony in the Garden of Gethsemane as 'an electric shock…people gather in crowds in front of it, they argue and discuss and lose their tempers…they talk about it as they might talk about some contemporary picture, a thing which they have a right to feel delighted or infuriated by as the case may be – it is not like the most of the old pictures, a thing classified or mummified, set altogether apart from life, an object of vague and listless reverence, but an actual, living thing, expressing something which one has got either to agree or disagree…that the artists are excited – never more so – is no wonder, for here is an old master who is not merely modern but actually appears a good many steps ahead of us, turning back to show us the way.' That way was taken not only by Picasso and Cézanne but also the Blaue Reiter group, German Expressionists such as Max Beckman, even Marcel Duchamp and, in series of drawings explicitly acknowledging his debt, by Jackson Pollock (fig. 11) and less directly by Willem de Kooning. Of the latter Diane Waldman writes, ‘It is however…appropriate to point out de Kooning’s relationship with El Greco and Chaim Soutine, two other artists who have been characterized as Expressionists…but who do not entirely fit into this tradition...[Their] emphasis upon tactility, motion and light as a dynamic force is evident. El Greco appealed to De Kooning not by virtue of his tortured and twisted figures, but because of his active painting handling and abstract forms’. De Kooning himself said '[El Greco] is someone else I’ve always liked. In his paintings material is broken into only a few enormous planes. It’s so much more interesting to look at than all those intricate creases painted so naturalistically by someone like Tintoretto'.

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Fig. 11 Jackson Pollock, Analytical study of lower half of El Greco’s ‘Resurrection of Christ’, sketchbook, c. 1933-1938, Lee Krasner Pollock collection

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Fig. 12 Willem de Kooning, Figure in a Landscape, 1966 / Museum of Fine Arts, Houston, Texas, Bequest of Caroline Wiess Law/Bridgeman Images

This emotionally charged Entombment, early as it is, exemplifies so many of the qualities which troubled El Greco's critics and enthralled his admirers. Imagined with little regard for the conventions of spatial perspective and Renaissance idealization in the drawing of face or body, the artist achieves, on a tiny scale, a vision of remarkable dramatic intensity: the complex knot of protagonists, rendered in vivid strokes of blues, green, carmines, pinks, greys and white. In this scene of restless movement enlivened with flickering accents of light, the action pushed forcefully to the very front of the picture plane, El Greco, though mindful of his sources, has already established himself as an independent master in every sense.

Christie's. OLD MASTERS: PART I14 April 2016, New York, Rockefeller Plaza

Platinum and Diamond Double-Clip Pendant-Brooch, Jean Schlumberger, circa 1960

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Lot 312. Platinum and Diamond Double-Clip Pendant-Brooch, Jean Schlumberger, circa 1960. Estimate 250,000 — 350,000 USD. Photo: Sotheby's.

Designed as a pair of stylized wings, centering two marquise-shaped diamonds weighing 5.28 and 5.22 carats, accented by round and marquise-shaped diamonds weighing approximately 6.00 carats, the detachable carrier further set with marquise-shaped diamonds weighing approximately 4.00 carats, both clips signed Schlumberger; circa 1960.

ProvenanceThe Collection of Alex & Elisabeth Lewyt, Sotheby's New York, Important Jewels, September 24 2013, lot 509.

Accompanied by GIA report no. 1152471498 stating that the 5.28 carat diamond is E color, VS1 clarity. Together with the original working diagram stating that the diamond may be potentially Internally Flawless.

Accompanied by GIA report no. 2155471494 stating that the 5.22 carat diamond is E color, VS1 clarity. 

Sotheby's. Magnificent Jewels: Starring the Shirley Temple Blue Diamond, New York, 19 avr. 2016, 02:00 PM

Platinum, Diamond and Onyx Brooch, René Boivin, France, circa 1910-1915

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Lot 315. Platinum, 7.01 and 6.98 carats Diamond and Onyx Brooch, René Boivin, France. Estimate 250,000 — 350,000 USD. Photo: Sotheby's.

The elongated C-form, with terminals set with old mine-cut diamonds weighing 7.01 and 6.98 carats, accented by calibré-cut onyx, with French assay and maker's marks; circa 1910-1915.

Accompanied by a Certificate of Authenticity from Françoise Cailles

Accompanied by GIA report no. 2165215966 stating that the 7.01 carat diamond is G color, VS2 clarity.

Accompanied by GIA report no. 5161215980 stating that the 6.98 carat diamond is I color, SI2 clarity.

Note: Founded by René Boivin in the 1890s, the house of Boivin holds a remarkable place in the history of jewelry. Boivin was trained as goldsmith and initially earned a reputation throughout Paris for his skill as an engraver. His use of unconventional materials, his remarkable attention to detail, and his unbounding imagination allowed him to create fantastical and beautiful pieces. The French elite found his jewels which were inspired by botany, Animalia, as well as ancient Asian, European and Middle Eastern cultures, irresistible. Following his death in 1917, Maison Boivin was left to his wife, Jeanne, who proved to be a female pioneer in a trade dominated by men. She not only established herself as an innovator and an artist experimenting with color, form, and size, but also as a visionary who is responsible for hiring Suzanne Belperron,  one of the most prominent female jewelry designers of the early 20th century. 

The brooch offered here, features two old European-cut diamonds in a platinum setting, linked together by pieces of calibré-cut black onyx, also mounted in platinum. The curved line of black onyx, which appears to grow out of the old mine-cut diamonds, mirrors the curve of the stones to create a sense of continuous movement in the brooch. The black and white color scheme, simplicity in design and well-proportioned shapes make for elegant and wearable brooch. Boivin created jewelry that was both modern and captivating in design and unparalleled in quality; the jewelry from the house of Boivin still achieves this today, their distinct and forward-thinking designs remaining as they were in the early 20th century.

Sotheby's. Magnificent Jewels: Starring the Shirley Temple Blue Diamond, New York, 19 avr. 2016, 02:00 PM

Le tableau découvert dans un grenier de Toulouse serait-il un "authentique" Caravage ?

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Le tableau représentant la décapitation d'Holopherne par Judith retrouvé dans un grenier de la région de ToulouseStudio SEBERT

PARIS (AFP).- Un tableau découvert par hasard dans le sud-ouest de la France est une oeuvre "authentique" du peintre italien Le Caravage (1571-1610), selon plusieurs experts dont le Français Eric Turquin, une "conviction" tempérée à ce stade par d'autres spécialistes de l'histoire de l'art.

"Cet éclairage particulier, cette énergie typique du Caravage, sans corrections, d'une main sûre, et les matières picturales, font que ce tableau est authentique. Mais il y aura plus de controverses que d'expertises", a déclaré cet expert qui a reçu un soutien de taille : l'avis de Nicola Spinoza, ancien directeur du musée de Naples, l'un des grands spécialistes du Caravage.

"Il faut reconnaître dans la toile en question un véritable original du maître lombard, presque certainement identifiable, même si nous n'avons aucune preuve tangible et irréfutable", indique M. Spinoza dans son compte-rendu d'expertise.

Puissante, de facture très sûre et dans un état remarquable, l'oeuvre représente Judith et Holopherne. Réalisée entre 1600 et 1610, cette huile sur toile de grand format, a été retrouvée il y a deux ans à l'occasion d'une fuite d'eau dans une soupente d'un grenier d'une propriété près de Toulouse.

En l'état du marché international de l'art, le tableau est estimé 120 millions d'euros par le cabinet Turquin.

Après l'étude du tableau par le musée du Louvre pendant trois semaines, a indiqué Eric Turquin, un arrêté du ministère de la Culture paru le 31 mars, a refusé le certificat d'exportation à titre conservatoire dans l'attente de son expertise officielle.

"Cette œuvre récemment redécouverte et d'une grande valeur artistique, qui pourrait être identifiée comme une composition disparue du Caravage, connue jusqu'à présent par des éléments indirects, mérite d'être retenue sur le territoire comme un jalon très important du caravagisme, dont le parcours et l'attribution restent encore à approfondir", selon le Ministère de la Culture.

"Des gens sérieux attribuent ce tableau à Finson (NDLR : Louis Finson, peintre flamand (1580-1617), disciple du caravagisme)", reconnaît l'expert Eric Turquin qui fait part de son intime conviction pour authentifier l'oeuvre.

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Louis Finson (1580-1617), Judith décapitant Holopherne, visible à Naples, présenté comme une copie d'un Caravage disparu. Collezione Intesa Sanpaolo

Selon Le Quotidien de l’Art, "une spécialiste de Caravage, Mina Gregori, estime qu’il ne s'agit pas d'un original du Caravage, mais elle reconnaît en contrepartie la qualité indéniable de l'oeuvre".

"C'est une oeuvre importante, qu'elle soit du Caravage ou d'un autre peintre, rappelle-t-on de sources proches du dossier. "Caravage est un artiste problématique à attribuer. Il n'y a de signature. Il y a eu beaucoup de copies. L'histoire de l'art n'est une science exacte. L'attribution d'un tableau à un peintre se fait sur un faisceau d'indices. Cela peut prendre des années et on peut ne jamais trouver la réponse". AFP

l-expert-eric-turquin-pose-devant-judith-et-holopherne-le-12_2578861

L'expert Eric Turquin pose devant Judith et Holopherne le 12 avril 2016 - PATRICK KOVARIK/AFP.

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French painting expert Eric Turquin speaks on April 12, 2016 in Paris in front of the painting entitled "Judith cutting off the head of Holofernes", presented as being painted by Italian artist Caravaggio (1571-1610), while experts are still to determine its authenticity. The painting was found out in an attic of a house near Toulouse, southwestern France. PATRICK KOVA

PARIS (AFP).- A painting discovered in the attic of a house in France is an "authentic" work by Italian Renaissance master Caravaggio that could be worth up to 120 million euros, two experts said Tuesday. 

But others still have doubts over the spectacular canvas.  

The owners of the house near the southwestern city of Toulouse discovered the dramatic 400-year-old painting when investigating a leak in the ceiling in 2014. 

It depicts the beheading of General Holofernes by Judith from the biblical Book of Judith. It is in remarkably good condition, and was painted between 1600 and 1610, specialists believe. 

Expert Eric Turquin said it could be worth as much as 120 million euros ($137 million), describing the painting as having "the light, the energy typical of Caravaggio, without mistakes, done with a sure hand and a pictorial style that makes it authentic".  

While other specialists have questioned its provenance, Turquin got the backing of a top Caravaggio specialist, Nicola Spinosa, former director of a prestigious Naples museum. 

In an expert assessment seen by AFP, Spinosa wrote: "One has to recognise the canvas in question as a true original of the Lombard master, almost certainly identifiable, even if we do not have any tangible or irrefutable proof." 

iudita-il-decapiteaza-pe-holofern-caravaggio

Caravaggio, "Judith Beheading Holofernes", 1597. Roma, Galleria Nazionale d’Arte Antica in Palazzo Barberini S.S.P.A.A. Polo Museale della Città di Roma.

Gruesome scene 
Turquin told reporters that Caravaggio may have painted the gruesome scene, which also features a haggard old lady with goiters, in Naples while he was on the run from a murder charge in Rome. 

He had earlier painted a different version there, which now hangs in the National Gallery of Ancient Art in the Italian capital. 

The French culture minister has slapped an export ban on the canvas after experts from the Louvre museum in Paris spent three weeks studying it. 

The ministry said the painting should stay on French soil "as a very important Caravaggian landmark, the history and attribution of which are still to be fully investigated". 

Marc Labarbe, the auctioneer called in by the family who discovered the painting, said it had been damaged by a previous leak. 

He said the family had had the painting since at least the middle of the 19th century and that it may have been brought from Spain by an ancestor who served under Napoleon. 

"It probably was left in the attic because of its particularly violent content, which would not have been easy to hang in a bedroom or living room," he added. 

Turquin admitted "some serious" art historians "had attributed the work to (Louis) Finson", a Flemish painter and disciple of Caravaggio who died in 1617. 

The French art newspaper Le Quotidien de l’Art quoted another expert on the artist, Mina Gregori, as saying that it was "not an original" although she recognised the "undeniable quality of the work". 

If the painting -- which measures 144 cm by 175 cm (57 inches by 69 inches) -- is confirmed as an original, it will have been the biggest such discovery since another Caravaggio was discovered in Dublin in the early 1990s. 

"The Taking of Christ" had been hanging in the dining room of a Jesuit residence in the Irish capital since the 1930s, having long been considered a copy. By: Franck Iovene and Jean-Francois Guyot © 1994-2016 Agence France-Presse

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French art expert Stephane Pinta shows a radiography of the painting entitled "Judith cutting off the head of Holofernes", presented as being painted by Italian artist Caravaggio (1571-1610), while experts are still to determine its authenticity, on April 12, 2016 in Paris. The painting was found out in an attic of a house near Toulouse, southwestern France. PATRICK KOVARIK / AFP.


The National Gallery allocated Signorelli's Man on a Ladder under the Acceptance-in-Lieu scheme

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Luca Signorelli (about 1440/50 - 1523), Man on a Ladder, 1504-5. Oil on wood, 88.3 × 52 cm© The National Gallery, London. 

LONDON.- Man on a Ladder by Luca Signorelli, one of the most important central Italian Renaissance painters and a contemporary of Raphael and Michelangelo, has been allocated to the National Gallery under the Acceptance-in-Lieu scheme. 

Originally part of a vast altarpiece depicting the Lamentation at the Foot of the Cross commissioned in 1504 for the church of Sant’Agostino in Matelica, a town in central Italy, the large panel was subsequently cut into separate pieces for sale to different purchasers. Man on a Ladder is one of six known fragments of this altarpiece. The others are currently housed in museums and collections around the world, including the Museo Civico, Bologna, the National Gallery of Art, Washington DC, and private collections in Genoa, Rome and England. Man on a Ladder is the only fragment that can be seen in a UK public collection. 

Man on a Ladder depicts the figure of a man who carries a pair of pliers which have been used to remove the nails from the crucified Christ. It is thought to come from the upper section of the now dismembered altarpiece. The full composition showed the dead Christ at the foot of the cross, mourned by his mother and his followers. The haloed head of Saint John the Evangelist is just visible at the lower edge of Man on a Ladder. 

Born in Cortona, a cousin of the artist and art historian Giorgio Vasari and a pupil of Piero della Francesca, Luca Signorelli has been largely forgotten by art historians of the twentieth and twenty-first centuries. In his day he was an extremely successful painter, celebrated for his skill in depicting the human body and his mastery of foreshortening. The painting is a superb example of the unique figurative style for which Signorelli was famed. 

The first documented owner of Man on a Ladder - the arts patron and politician Sir William Graham - loaned the painting to the Pre-Raphaelite painter and designer Sir Edward Burne-Jones, who had a special interest in the works of Signorelli. 

Man on a Ladder joins a group of eight paintings by Signorelli in the National Gallery. With this acquisition, which shows Signorelli’s extraordinary talents as a painter of the human body in complex poses, the Gallery can now represent this important Renaissance painter’s inventive talents at their best. Man on a Ladder also plays a key role in demonstrating the development of the representation of the human figure in Renaissance painting, constituting a bridge between fifteenth-century artists like Perugino and Piero della Francesca and those of the High Renaissance at the beginning of the sixteenth century. 

Caroline Campbell, National Gallery Jacob Rothschild Head of the Curatorial Department said “Luca Signorelli is one of the most underappreciated artists of the Italian Renaissance. This muscular figure demonstrates the two qualities central to his work: his mastery of design and interest in the human form.” 

National Gallery Director, Dr Gabriele Finaldi said “Thanks to the allocation to the National Gallery of‘Man on a Ladder’ through the Acceptance in Lieu scheme, the public can now see the full range of Signorelli’s artistic achievement on show in Trafalgar Square.” 

Man on a Ladder can now be seen in Gallery 60 of the Sainsbury Wing hanging alongside other important Signorelli paintings in the collection such as The Adoration of the Shepherds and The Holy Family

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Luca Signorelli (about 1440/50 - 1523), The Adoration of the Shepherds, about 1496. Oil on wood, 215 x 170.2 cm. Bought, 1882. Inv. n° NG1133 © The National Gallery, London.

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Luca Signorelli (about 1440/50 - 1523), The Holy Family, probably about 1490-5. Oil on wood, 80.6 x 64.8 cm. Salting Bequest, 1910. Inv. n° NG2488 © The National Gallery, London.

Exceptional Chanel 'Diamond Forever' Flap Bag sparkles in New York Luxury auction

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Lot 58207. Chanel Limited Edition Matte White Alligator Diamond Forever Flap Bag with 18K White Gold Hardware. Estimate: $80,000 - $100,000. Photo Heritage Auctions.

NEW YORK, NY.- One of just 13 Chanel Limited Edition Matte White Alligator Diamond Forever Flap Bag with 18K White Gold Hardware, one of the most exclusive and expensive handbags in existence, is expected to bring $80,000+ as the lead lot inHeritage's April 18-19, 2016 Spring Luxury Accessories Signature® Auction, taking place at The Fletcher-Sinclair Mansion (2 East 79th Street, at 5th Ave). 

"This is the bag that shook the luxury world in 2008 when it was announced that Chanel would release a limited edition series of classic flap bags," said Diane D'Amato, Director of Luxury Accessories at Heritage Auctions. "These bags were dubbed the'Diamond Forever'bags and this auction gives collectors an eminently rare opportunity." 

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Lot 58207. Chanel Limited Edition Matte White Alligator Diamond Forever Flap Bag with 18K White Gold Hardware. Estimate: $80,000 - $100,000. Photo Heritage Auctions.

10" Width x 6" Height x 2.5" Depth
This Chanel bag shook the luxury world in 2008, when it was announced that the astute fashion house would be releasing a limited edition series of classic flap bags, dubbed the Diamond Forever bags. A tour de force of fashion, and only thirteen currently in existence, this bag is certainly for the most elite of clientele and collectors. With a staggering retail price of $261,000, and a matte black alligator version recently auctioned with amfAR Cinema Against AIDS event for an impressive $675,000, this Diamond Forever Flap bag is the current record holder for the most expensive handbag in the world. This is not simply due to charity, however, given this bag is done in milky matte white alligator, featuring a CC turnlock closure replete with a dazzling 334 diamonds mounted in 18K White Gold hardware totaling in weight at an astonishing 3.56 carats. This bag is an incredible opportunity to own one of luxury's most exclusive and highly prized handbags. This bag features one 18K white gold and stationary matte white alligator Reissue shoulder chain, one slip pocket on the reverse exterior, and a flap top with this stunning CC turnlock closure. The interior is done in white lambskin leather, featuring two adjacent slip pockets, and one slip pocket in front of the main interior compartment.

Collectors will also thrill to the appearance of a Hermès Limited Edition 25cm Matte So Black Nilo Crocodile Birkin Bag with PVD Hardware, an incredibly rare auction presence of this much sought-after handbag in crocodile. This auction marks the first time that Heritage will have offered this luxury rarity. It carries a pre-auction estimate of $80,000+

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Lot 58201. Hermès 25cm Matte White Himalayan Nilo Crocodile Birkin Bag with Palladium Hardware. R Square, 2014. Estimate: $80,000 - $100,000Photo Heritage Auctions.

9.5" Width x 8" Height x 5" Depth
The Himalayan Birkin, the capstone piece for any serious collector, is the rarest of all Hermes handbags. This truly stunning piece carries the viewer on a exhilarating journey through its namesake mountain range. From frosty gray to stark white, the Himalayan ombre pattern is easily the most sought after look of any handbag, exuding the utmost luxury. With the rising tide of 25cm size popularity, this exquisite combination and design will make even the most jaded of Hermes frequenteurs gasp. This bag is done in a gorgeous array of Matte Niloticus Crocodile, featuring two handles, icy Palladium Hardware, and a flap top with a turnlock closure. The interior is done in expertly paired Gris Cendre Chevre Leather, featuring one slip pocket and one zip pocket. This bag includes two keys, a lock, and a clochette.

A pristine Hermès 35cm Matte White Himalayan Nilo Crocodile Birkin Bag with Palladium Hardware, the paramount handbag for the most advanced collectors and style mavens, is expected to bring $100,000+ 

 

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Lot 58204. Hermès 35cm Matte White Himalayan Nilo Crocodile Birkin Bag with Palladium Hardware. T, 2015. Estimate: $100,000 - $140,000Photo Heritage Auctions.

14" Width x 10" Height x 7" Depth
The paramount handbag, the Himalayan Birkin is the key piece to complete any collection. With a beautiful ombre from gray to white, the Himalayan coloration has become the holy grail of Hermes accessories. Named for the eponymous mountain range, this incredible bag is nothing short of breathtaking. Constructed in the 35cm size, this bag is a rare opportunity that only comes once so often. This bag is done in extraordinary Matte White Himalayan Niloticus Crocodile, featuring two rolled handles, Palladium Hardware, and a flap top with a turnlock closure. The interior is done in Gris Cendre Chevre Leather, featuring one slip pocket and one zip pocket. This bag includes two keys, a lock, and a clochette.

"The Himalayan Birkin is the key piece to complete any collection," said D'Amato. "The Himalayan coloration has become the holy grail of Hermès accessories. This incredible bag is nothing short of breathtaking." 

A Hermès Extraordinary Collection 25cm Diamond, Shiny Vert Emerald Sellier Kelly Bag with 18K White Gold Hardware give Hermès aficionados not in the market for a Himalayan the change to acquire an almost equally arresting handbag. It comes with a pre-auction estimate of $80,000+.  

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Lot 58224. Hermès Extraordinary Collection 25cm Diamond, Shiny Vert Emerald Sellier Kelly Bag with 18K White Gold Hardware. I Square, 2005. Estimate: $80,000 - $120,000Photo Heritage Auctions.

10" Width x 7" Height x 3.5" Depth
Discerning collectors, this is an immensely unique opportunity to own an incredible work of spectacular craft. Meant for the top tier of Hermes clientele, diamond encrusted handbags are a tour de force of accessories, particularly when done by this unsurpassable house. The ultimate luxury, this particular Kelly bag creates an allure fit for a fashion deity. This bag is done in Shiny Vert Emerald Porosus Crocodile, with fine scales that perfect this exotic look, and Hermes's highest prized skin. The deep, rich green is beautifully complimented by 18K White Gold Hardware, which is replete with shimmering White Diamonds. The cadena lock is enshrined in 54.4 grams of 18K White Gold and encrusted with 40 VVS F White Round Brilliant Diamonds, totaling 4 Carats. On the bag itself, the touret and plaquees feature 40.3 grams of 18K White Gold and a total Diamond weight of 1.36 Carats. The interior is done in Vert Emerald Chevre Leather, featuring one zip pocket and one slip pocket. This bag includes two keys, a lock, and a clochette

Further highlights include, but are not limited to: 

 

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Lot 58120. Hermès 30cm Shiny Geranium Nilo Crocodile Birkin Bag with Gold Hardware. R Square, 2014. Estimate: $40,000 - $50,000Photo Heritage Auctions.

12" Width x 8" Height x 6" Depth
The Birkin bag has become the most sought after bag in history due to its functionality, lasting value, and practicality. This particular Birkin is extremely luxurious and valuable. Its shiny finish makes the bag glisten, and its bright and rich color, Geranium, is jaw-dropping. The exterior is done in Niloticus Crocodile, and it features two rolled handles, and beautifully paired Gold Hardware. The interior of this bag is done in matching Geranium Chevre Leather and includes one slip pocket and one zip pocket. This bag includes two keys, a lock, and a clochette.

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Lot 58171. Hermès 25cm Shiny Blue Brighton Nilo Crocodile Birkin Bag with Palladium Hardware. N Square, 2010Estimate: $40,000 - $50,000Photo Heritage Auctions.

9.5" Width x 8" Height x 5" Depth
One of Hermes's most sought after colors, Blue Brighton is inspired by the beautiful waters of Brighton, United Kingdom. Inspired by this resort town, known for its exquisite blue waters and luxurious atmosphere, Blue Brighton is an exquisite coloration that is meant for the most astute of collectors. This bag is done in Shiny Blue Brighton Niloticus Crocodile, featuring two rolled handles, Palladium Hardware, and a flap top with a turnlock closure. The interior is done in Blue Brighton Chevre Leather, featuring one zip pocket and one slip pocket. This bag includes two keys, a lock, and a clochette. 

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Lot 58227. Hermès 25cm Shiny Vert Fonce Nilo Crocodile Birkin Bag with Palladium Hardware. N Square, 2010Estimate: $35,000 - $45,000Photo Heritage Auctions.

9.5" Width x 8" Height x 5" Depth
This Birkin bag is nothing short of stunning. With a rarity that we have come to expect from Hermes, it is truly a unique opportunity to bring a Birkin bag of this caliber to the luxury market. This bag is done in remarkable Shiny Vert Fonce Niloticus Crocodile, and when constructed in the highly prized 25cm size, this bag makes the perfect addition to a collection of elite rank. This bag features two rolled handles, tasteful Palladium Hardware, and a flap top with a turnlock closure. The interior is done in Vert Fonce Chevre Leather, featuring one zip pocket and one slip pocket. This bag includes two keys, a lock, and a clochette.

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Lot 58138. Hermès Special Order Horseshoe 35cm 5P Bubblegum Pink, Tosca& Crocus Epsom Leather Birkin Bag with Gold Hardware. Q Square, 2013Estimate: $19,000 - $23,000Photo Heritage Auctions.

14" Width x 10" Height x 7" Depth
Incredibly collectible, Special Order Birkin bags are the epitome of luxury. Created by special request to match the taste of elite clientele, it is rare to gain access to such a unique opportunity. This particular Birkin bag is spectacular, done in extremely rare 5P Bubblegum Pink, Tosca and Crocus Epsom Leather, featuring two rolled handles, tastefully paired Gold Hardware, and a flap top with a turnlock closure. The interior is done in Crocus Chevre Leather, featuring one zip pocket, one slip pocket, and a crowning feature, one mobile device slip pocket. This bag includes two keys, a lock, and a clochette.

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Lot 58140.Hermès Rose Tea & Rouge H Clemence Leather Double Sens GM Reversible Tote Bag. Estimate: $2,000 - $3,000Photo Heritage Auctions.

3.5" Width x 17.5" Height x 5" Depth
The Double Sens is Hermes's answer to the basic tote bag, with a luxurious quality feel that cannot be beat. This bag is done in Rose Tea Clemence Leather, and is so designed to be able to reverse, with a Rouge H Clemence Leather interior. This bag features two leather handles.

The 1954 Aston Martin DB35 raced by the great Stirling Moss offered at Bonhams

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This historic Aston Martin began life as the personal road car of David Brown, the multi-millionaire industrialist owner of the Aston Martin marque. Photo: Bonhams.

LONDON.- A rare Aston Martin Works team car – chassis number DB3S/5 – which was campaigned in period by such legendary racing drivers as Sir Stirling Moss, Peter Collins and Roy Salvadori, and latterly went on to co-star with Terry-Thomas in 1960s movie classic ‘School for Scoundrels’, will be offered at Bonhams Aston Martin Works Sale on 21 May 2016. It is estimated at £6,000,000-7,000,000. 

This historic Aston Martin began life as the personal road car of David Brown, the multi-millionaire industrialist owner of the Aston Martin marque. Under Brown’s reign the legendary post-World War 2 'DB' series of Aston Martin cars were built, including the Atom, the DB2, DB3, DB4, DB5, DB6, DB7, DB9 and the DBS, all named using Brown’s initials. 

Aston Martin also built a number of DB3S models for the Works racing team. Following a severe set-back during the 1954 Le Mans 24-hour race, when three of the cars were destroyed in a series of crashes, the Aston Martin Competitions Department commandeered David Brown’s personal DB3S - chassis 5 now offered here - to replace one of the wrecked vehicles, changing its use from high-performance road car, to frontline Works Team race car. 

The DB3S originally featured experimental glass fibre bodywork, which was the height of cutting-edge technology for the period. However, after Brown handed it over to the Works team, it was given an aluminum body-shell and upgraded to full Works specification. It never returned to David Brown’s personal ownership, and instead went on to be raced by some of the most daring drivers of the time, in some of the motor sporting world’s most prestigious races. 

Few cars that have appeared in film can also boast an association with so many great names from the heyday of the British racing sports car, but this Aston Martin DB3S does just that,” said Tim Schofield, Bonhams UK Head Motoring. “Drivers who raced it include such legends as Peter Collins, Roy Salvadori, and Sir Stirling Moss, competing at world-class level in such gruelling races as the Mille Miglia, the Spa Grand Prix and the Nürburgring 1,000kms.” 

The Aston Martin DB3S later starred in the 1960s British comedy, ‘School for Scoundrels’, in which Ian Carmichael battled with caddish (but much loved) Terry-Thomas for the affections of Janette Scott. The movie is a classic tale of one-upmanship, and its plot features several notable vehicles, such as the ‘Swiftmobile’, which was in reality a 1928 Bentley 4½-Litre Open Tourer in disguise, an ex-Works Austin-Healey 100-Six, and - of course - the car driven by Terry-Thomas, named the ‘Bellini’, which was none other than this magnificent Aston Martin DB3S.

National Portrait Gallery to stage first major exhibition of Picasso portraits for twenty years

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Portrait of Olga Picasso by Pablo Picasso, 1923; Private Collection. © Succession Picasso/DACS London, 2016

LONDON.- The National Portrait Gallery is to stage a major exhibition of portraits by Pablo Picasso (1881-1973) this autumn, it was announced today, Monday 11 April 2016. 

Picasso Portraits (6 October 2016-5 February 2017), sponsored by Goldman Sachs, and in association with the Museu Picasso, Barcelona, will include over 75 portraits by the artist in all media, ranging from well-known masterpieces to works that have never been shown in Britain before. 

The latter include the extraordinary cubist portrait from 1910 of the German art dealer and early champion of Picasso’s work, Daniel-Henry Kahnweiler, loaned by the Art Institute of Chicago; and from a private collection the exquisite portrait executed in 1938 of Nusch Eluard, acrobat, artist and wife of the Surrealist poet Paul Eluard. 

All phases of the artist’s career will be represented, from the realist portraits of his boyhood to the more gestural canvases of his old age. It is the first large-scale exhibition devoted to his portraiture since Picasso and Portraiture at the Museum of Modern Art, New York and the Grand Palais, Paris in 1996. 

Because Picasso did not work to commission and depicted people in his intimate circle, he enjoyed exceptional freedom as a portraitist and worked in different modes as well as many different styles. Formal posed portraits coexisted with witty caricatures, classic drawings from life with expressive paintings created from memory reflecting his understanding of the sitter’s identity and character. 

The exhibition includes a group of revealing self-portraits as well as portraits and caricatures of Picasso’s friends, lovers, wives and children. Guillaume Apollinaire, Carles Casagemas, Santiago Rusiñol, Jaume Sabartés, Jean Cocteau, Igor Stravinsky, Fernande Olivier, Olga Picasso, Marie-Thérèse Walter, Dora Maar, Lee Miller, Françoise Gilot and Jacqueline Picasso are among the people visitors will encounter. Complementing these images of Picasso’s intimates are portraits and caricatures inspired by artists of the past – Velázquez and Rembrandt among them – with whom he identified most closely. 

The Museu Picasso, Barcelona is lending most generously to the National Portrait Gallery. Other lending institutions include: the British Museum; Tate; Fitzwilliam Museum, Cambridge; Musée national Picasso, Paris; Centre Pompidou, Paris; Musée national d’art moderne de la ville de Paris; Museum Berggruen, Berlin; Fondation Hubert Looser, Zurich; The Museum of Modern Art, New York; The Solomon R. Guggenheim Museum, New York; Art Institute of Chicago; Philadelphia Museum of Art and the National Gallery of Iceland. The exhibition also benefits from important loans from the artist’s heirs and other private collectors. 

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Daniel-Henry Kahnweiler, autumn 1910 by Pablo Picasso, 1910; Art Institute of Chicago © Succession Picasso/DACS London, 2016; 2015 Estate of Pablo Picasso/Artists Rights Society (ARS) New York.

The copiously illustrated catalogue provides an original, broadly based account of Picasso’s portraiture and analysis of every work on display. Among the issues explored in detail are the artist’s sources of inspiration, differences between his approach to portraying men and women, and the complex motivation behind his switches of mode and style and defiance of representational norms. 

Dr Nicholas Cullinan, Director, National Portrait Gallery, London, says: ‘We are delighted to stage Picasso Portraits at the National Portrait Gallery, a collaboration with Museu Picasso, Barcelona, which focuses on the artist’s reinvention of time-honoured conventions of portraiture, and his genius for caricature. The exhibition gathers together major loans from public and private collections that demonstrate the breadth of Picasso’s oeuvre and the extraordinary range of styles he employed across all media and from all periods of his career.’ 

Bernardo Laniado-Romero, Director, Museu Picasso, Barcelona, says: ‘The two organising museums, one dedicated to portraiture and the other to Picasso, are the natural instruments to bring forth a reassessment on how Picasso, time and time again, redefined portraiture throughout the twentieth century. The exhibition will surprise and confront one’s preconceived ideas of what a portrait should be and how a portrait by Picasso ought to look like.’ 

The support of the exhibition’s sponsor Goldman Sachs is enabling the Gallery to introduce for the first time a special ticket offer, whereby every Friday morning throughout the run of Picasso Portraits, the first 100 tickets will be £5. In addition they are supporting a wide ranging Learning programme linked to the exhibition. 

Michelle Pinggera, Partner, Goldman Sachs, says: ‘We are extremely proud to partner with the National Portrait Gallery to bring this fascinating exhibition to London. Goldman Sachs has a long history of supporting arts and culture in the UK and through our sponsorship, we are very pleased to be able to support the Gallery’s wider access and learning programme linked to this exhibition.’ 

Picasso Portraits is curated by Elizabeth Cowling, Emeritus Professor of the History of Art at the University of Edinburgh. Her publications include Picasso: Style and Meaning (2002) and Visiting Picasso: The Notebooks and Letters of Roland Penrose (2006). She has co-curated several exhibitions, including Picasso Sculptor/Painter (1994), Matisse Picasso (2002–3), and Picasso Looks at Degas (2010–11).

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Woman in a Hat (Olga) by Pablo Picasso, 1935; Centre Pompidou, Paris. Musee national d'art moderne. ©Succession Picasso/DACS London, 2016 Photo: Centre Pompidou, MNAM-CCI, Dist. RMN-Grand Palais/Rights reserved.

A rare limestone head of a luohan, Song dynasty

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Lot 2835. A rare limestone head of a luohan, Song dynasty. Estimate 600,000 — 800,000 HKD (67,756 - 90,342 EUR). Lot sold 750,000 HKD (84,695 EUR). Photo Sotheby's 2016.

the light grey stone with buff coloured areas vividly rendered with a bare head exposing a protruding crown, the face framed by a deeply lined forehead and arched bushy eyebrows extending to a refined aquiline nose, with taut rounded cheeks above a pursed mouth encircled by wrinkles spreading towards the long pendulous ears, the face revealing an expression of quiet power and compassion, wood stand; 31 cm, 12 1/4  in.

ProvenanceA private collection, Munich.

NoteThe sensitive rendering of the luohan's expressive countenance is particularly finely rendered on this superbly carved head, impressive and unusual for the three-quarter depiction, with the head slightly tilted forward as if in deep contemplation. Its distinctive facial features, specifically the high cheekbones, prominent nose and wrinkled forehead indicate that this luohan is elderly, and appears to represent Kasyapa, who was one of Sakyamuni Buddha's ten principal disciples. Kasyapa came from the kingdom of Magadha and by the time he met Buddha, was already well into his eighties. He was a renowned ascetic and had a large following of his own.

In the Chan Buddhist tradition, Kasyapa is considered the first Indian patriarch and Ananda, the second. They are often portrayed together on either side of Buddha. This arrangement is commonly found in caves in China dating from the Northern Wei dynasty (386-535), with Ananda to Buddha's right and Kasyapa to the left, as seen in the Central Binyang Cave at Longmen, illustrated in Angela Falco Howard, Li Song, Wu Hung and Yang Hong, Chinese Sculpture, New Haven, 2006, p. 238, fig. 3.39. This standard iconographic arrangement continued through the Sui, Tang, Liao and Song periods, all the way to the Ming dynasty.

Other examples of Song dynasty luohan are illustrated in Osvald Siren, A History of Early Chinese ArtSculpture, London, 1930, pl. 115A. For a closely related limestone head of a luohan, similarly carved with a prominent forehead and wrinkled forehead, see the example in the Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York, accession number 60.74. For an example sold at auction, see the luohan head from the collection of J.T. Tai & Co., sold in our New York rooms, 22nd March 2011, lot 270.

Sotheby's. Literati / Curiosity II, Hong Kong, 05 Apr 2016

A large 'Yungang' sandstone head of Buddha , Northern Wei dynasty (386-534)

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Lot 2814. A large 'Yungang' sandstone head of Buddha , Northern Wei dynasty (386-534). Estimate 500,000 — 600,000 HKD (56,463 — 67,756 EUR). Lot sold 750,000 HKD (84,695 EUR). Photo Sotheby's 2016.

the eyebrows rising across the broad brow in a slight curve issuing from the low bridge of the nose, the eyes with gaze gently cast downwards, with small full lips upturned at the corners in a benevolent smile, the slender face framed by ears ending in fragmentary pendulous lobes, all beneath a straight hairline, the thick hair piled high in a large ushnisha, metal stand; 43 cm, 16 7/8  in.

ProvenanceHoward Hollis & Co., 1957.
Collection of Carnegie Museum of Art, Pittsburgh (inventory no. 57.45.1).
Eskenazi Ltd., London.

NoteThe carving of this head draws on the tradition of the Yungang caves near Datong in Shanxi province, which were largely constructed between 398 AD and 494 AD, when Pingcheng, modern Datong, was capital of the Northern Wei period.  Several sandstone carved heads of the Buddha with similar features can be seen in the niches of Cave I or II.

Compare a sandstone head of a Buddha from the Nelson-Atkins Museum of Art with similar features but a slightly different treatment of the eyes, illustrated in Handbook of the Collection, 1993, p. 303; and a complete standing figure with a similar head, in the Musée Guimet, Paris, published in Chinese Art in Overseas Collections: Buddhist Sculpture, vol. II, Tokyo, 1990, pl. 9. For a head of similar quality sold at auction, see a smaller sandstone head of Buddha from the collection of the Albright-Knox Art Gallery, Buffalo, New York, sold in our New York rooms, 20th March 2007, lot 727.

Sotheby's. Literati / Curiosity II, Hong Kong, 05 Apr 2016

A finely carved double-Bodhisattva marble stele, Sui dynasty (581-618) , dated 608

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Lot 2911. A finely carved double-Bodhisattva marble stele, Sui dynasty (581-618) , dated 608. Estimate 350,000 — 450,000 HKD (39,524 - 50,817 EUR). Lot sold 437,500 HKD (49,406 EUR). Photo Sotheby's 2016.

depicting two Bodhisattvas portrayed mirror-image, each standing on a lotus base holding a ritual implement in a pendent hand and clutching a lotus bud or representation of a Buddhist jewel in the other, dressed in a tall foliate crown and robes draped in a loose knot at the waist, both set between tonsured monks adorned with aureoles and simple robes, their hands conjoined in prayer, all with eyes downcast, faint smiles and benevolent expressions, the four figures standing side by side and raised on a rectangular plinth in front of a truncated leaf-shaped mandorla, the reverse incised and dated to the fourth year, the sixth month and the 20th day in the Daye period (corresponding to AD 608 in the reign of Emperor Yang, Sui Dynasty), affixed to metal stand; 31 cm, 12 1/4  in.

ProvenanceAn old French collection (label).
Eskenazi Ltd., London. 

NoteThe inscription on the reverse of the stele is indistinct, but likely to be a dedicatory inscription from devoted Buddhists. The dating however is clear, detailing the fourth year, the sixth month and the 20th day in the Daye period, corresponding to the year 608 of the Sui dynasty.

Marble steles decorated with double bodhisattvas were popular, particularly from the Northern Qi period onwards. The stylistic influences on this stele reflect those of the preceding dynasty. The nature of the marble on the present example relates it closely to other examples from Hebei province, including a marble stele of similar size in the Palace Museum, Beijing, dated  591, carved with Maitreya Buddha flanked by two disciples, discovered at the site of Xiude Temple in Quyang, Hebei, 1953, illustrated in Zhongguo Meishu Quanji. Diaosu 4.Sui Tang Diaosu, Beijing, 1988, pl. 5. The texture of the marble and precise carving style, specifically the rendition of the figures and the rectangular plinth itself, closely match that of the current stele.

Compare also the famous Maitreya steles in 'pensive thought' pose, including one now in the Asian Art Museum of San Francisco, illustrated by Rene Lefebvre d'Argence, Chinese, Korean and Japanese Sculpture in the Avery Brundage Collection, 1974, no.56, pp. 130-133. Compare a famous double-bodhisattva stele, identified as two emanations of Maitreya, with an inscription dated AD 565, from Quyang county, Hebei province, in the Freer Gallery of Art, Washington DC, illustrated in Matsubara Saburo, Chinese Buddhist Sculpture, Tokyo, 1966, pl. 149(b), and also discussed by Jan Stuart & Chang Qing, 'Chinese Buddhist Sculpture in a New Light at the Freer Gallery of Art', Orientations, April 2002, p. 33, fig. 7.

Sotheby's. Literati / Curiosity II, Hong Kong, 05 Apr 2016


Paul Bril (Antwerp c. 1554-1626 Rome), Autumn and Spring, 1598

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Lot 134. Paul Bril (Antwerp c. 1554-1626 Rome), Autumn: A wooded landscape with apples being harvested in the foreground, a villa and lake beyond; and Spring: Elegantly dressed figures playing music in a rowboat in the foreground, with shepherds watering a flock of sheep and other figures merrymaking, a villa and town beyond, the former signed and dated 'P · BRILL 1598' (lower left); the latter signed and dated 'P · BRIL 1598' (lower center), oil on copper, circular, 5 3/8 in. (13.6 cm.) diameter, a pair. Estimate $100,000 – $150,000Photo Christie's Image Ltd 2016.

Provenancewith P. de Boer, Amsterdam, 1972, according to a label on the reverse.
Edmond Hertzberger, Aerdenhout, from at least 1963, and by descent until 2008.
Anonymous sale; Christie's, London, 2 July 2013, lot 26.

LiteratureG.T. Faggin, 'Per Paolo Bril', Paragone, 185/5, XVI, July 1965, 2, p. 31, nos. 1, 2. 
F. Cappelletti, Paul Bril e la pittura di paesaggio a Roma, 1580-1630, Rome, 2006, p. 236, nos. 46, 47.

ExhibitedLaren, Singer Museum, Modernen van toen 1570-1630: vlaamse schilderkunst en haar invloed, 15 June-1 September 1963, nos. 29 and 30.
Amsterdam, Kunsthandel P. de Boer, Nederland Waterland, Jubileum Exhibition, 1972, no. 9.

NotesThese jewel-like coppers, beautifully preserved and vividly colored, exemplify the attention to minute detail and diffusion of light typical of Bril's work in the late 1590s. Signed and dated 1598, the pendants are among the finest examples in the artist's oeuvre of agricultural scenes associated with the seasons, which had been popularized in the preceding years by Pieter Bruegel and his followers, and which would become a predominant theme for later Flemish painters also working in Italy. A group of similar circular coppers, executed between 1599 and 1601, is in the Institut Néerlandais, Paris (see Attraverso il Cinquecento neerlandese: Disegni della collezione Frits Lugt, Paris and Florence, 1980-1981, pp. 46-48, nos. 31-34).

Paul Bril was among the most influential landscape painters of his time. Trained in an obscure Antwerp studio, he supported himself as a teenager by painting landscapes on harpsichords, but traveled in his early twenties to Rome, where he painted frescoes in the Vatican and in other churches and palaces alongside his elder brother, Matthijs. It was not until the 1590s that Bril began to paint the cabinet and pictures on panel and copper, of which the present works are particularly precious examples, for which he became renowned. Indeed, aside from his work for the Barberini family in Rome, Bril's paintings appeared in prestigious Neetherlandish collections, such as that of the merchant Hendrick van Os, as mentioned by Karel van Mander in his Schilderboeck of 1604.

Christie's. OLD MASTERS: PART I, 14 April 2016, New York, Rockefeller Plaza

Platinum, Padparadscha Sapphire and Diamond Ring

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Lot 99. Platinum, 12.94 carats Ceylon Padparadscha Sapphire and Diamond Ring. Estimate 200,000 — 250,000 USD. Photo Sotheby's.

The heart-shaped padparadscha sapphire weighing 12.94 carats, framed and accented by round diamonds weighing .65 carat, size 6.

Accompanied by AGL report no. CS 1072574 stating that the padparadscha sapphire is of Ceylon origin, with no indications of heating. Together with a letter from the AGL on the rarity of the stone stating '...the stones' visual appeal is further complemented by the fine cutting of its heart-shape form, resulting in numerous bright, internal color reflections and brilliance.'

Sotheby's. Magnificent Jewels: Starring the Shirley Temple Blue Diamond, New York, 19 Apr 2016, 02:00 PM

18 Karat Gold, Platinum, Opal, Enamel and Diamond Necklace, David Webb

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Lot 301. 18 Karat Gold, Platinum, Opal, Enamel and Diamond Necklace, David Webb. Estimate 180,000 — 220,000 USD. Photo Sotheby's.

Of graduated design, composed of 29 opal beads measuring approximately 24.4 to 11.2 mm, spaced by carved emeralds and links applied with black enamel, completed by rondelles set with round diamonds weighing approximately 3.70 carats, length 36½ inches, signed Webb, numbered ES305.

Accompanied by a Certificate of Authenticity from David Webb.

Sotheby's. Magnificent Jewels: Starring the Shirley Temple Blue Diamond, New York, 19 Apr 2016, 02:00 PM

Platinum, Emerald and Diamond Brooch, Marianne Ostier

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Lot 205. Platinum, Colombian Emerald and Diamond Brooch, Marianne Ostier. Estimate 175,000 — 275,000 USD. Photo Sotheby's.

The round hollow-back mixed-cut emerald measuring approximately 21.3 to 20.9 mm by 9.6 mm, framed by pear and marquise-shaped diamonds weighing approximately 19.50 carats, with maker's mark. With signed box.

Accompanied by AGL report no. CS 1073946 stating that the emerald is of Colombian origin, clarity enhancement: minor, type: traditional.

Sotheby's. Magnificent Jewels: Starring the Shirley Temple Blue Diamond, New York, 19 Apr 2016, 02:00 PM

Hermès Scarves and Ties Spring/Summer 2016

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Tim Schuhmacher is leading the new Hermès Scarves and Ties Spring/Summer 2016 shot by Walter Pfeiffer. (source FASHIONABLYMALE)

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