The Master of Baroncelli Portraits, Pentecost (around 1490)
Old Masters and 19th Century Paintings Auction, Sotheby’s, London, 5 July
Estimate £7–10 million
The Master of Portraits Baroncelli, an anonymous painter active in Bruges at the end of the 15th century, painted only four known works, and this 106cm x 122cm oil on panel is one of the largest. The artist takes his nickname from the double portrait he painted around 1490 of Pierantonio Bandini-Baroncelli and his wife Maria Bonciani (members of a wealthy family of Italian bankers), which now hangs in the Uffizi in Florence. The panel for sale at Sotheby’s is best known as Rapaert Pentecost, as it has spent more than three centuries in the collection of the Rapaert de Grass family in Bruges. It has changed hands only three times in the more than 400 years since it was painted, and the last was in 2010, when a member of the Weissenbruch family from Brussels sold it at Christie’s in London for 4 £.1 million (with costs) to the current seller. The panel has spent the past decade on loan to the Groeningemuseum in Bruges.
Damien Perronnet/Digital Art Studio
Felix Vallotton, Bathers in Dieppe (1903)
Sir Peter Ustinov Collection, Sotheby’s, Paris, July 6
Estimate: €500,000 to €700,000
Unseen at auction, this seascape by Vallotton hung in the Parisian mansion of British actor, writer and filmmaker Peter Ustinov. It was acquired by Ustinov in the 1960s from a gallery in Lausanne, directed by the artist’s grandson, and is now part of the Ustinov collection, entrusted to Sotheby’s by his children. The work dates from just a few years after the period of the Nabis de Vallotton – a modernist artistic group influenced by Japanese prints – where his most sought-after work comes from, according to Aurélie Vandervoorde, vice-president of Sotheby’s France: “With Vallotton , a few years makes a huge difference”. Vallotton’s auction record of $3.4 million was achieved in 2016 at Sotheby’s Zurich for a painting from the Nabi period of the 1890s. Nevertheless, Vandervoorde points out that the work still draws “a lot of inspiration des Nabis and can be seen as a bridge between this period and the later and more realistic style of Vallotton. She also notes that the work comes a few years after the artist discovered photography, which undoubtedly shaped the work’s “unusual and extremely modern” composition, in which the figures huddle together in a corner, leaving angular expanses of sea and sky. Vandervoorde adds that of all the works in the Ustinov sale, this one best embodies his taste, “very intellectual” and emblematic of his second homeland, Switzerland, where “the greatest collectors of Swiss Vallotton are and have always been”. . .
Fra Angelico, The Crucifixion, with the Virgin, St John the Baptist and the Magdalen (around 1395-1455)
Evening Sale of Old Master Paintings, Christie’s, London, July 6
Estimate: £4-6 million
Fra Angelico’s autograph works at auction are rare as hen’s teeth – only two are on record this century: a small panel, which sold at Christie’s in New York last year for $4.7 million (with fresh), and a little larger, which sold in Italy in 2003 for $1.2 million (fresh). But Christie’s has a gold-ground crucifixion scene that was rediscovered as a work by the Florentine artist by Christie’s UK vice-president Francis Russell. The work had previously been attributed to Lorenzo Monaco, in whose studio Fra Angelico is said to have been trained. The panel is believed to have been acquired by William Bingham Baring, 2nd Lord Ashburton, in the 18th century. It is not currently guaranteed and, says Russell, will not be available for warranty.
