Dorotheum Auction House
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Auction IndustryLost Titian Painting With Royal Provenance to Sell at Dorotheum
Vienna-based auction house Dorotheum will soon offer a lost Titian painting once owned by Europe’s kings and queens. The available work, titled The Penitent Magdalen, is offered with an estimate of EUR 1 million to €1.5 million (USD 1.1 million - $1.6 million). Dorotheum tracked its provenance back to Christina, Queen of Sweden, though it was also likely owned by Rudolf II, Holy Roman Emperor in the late 16th century. The auction house noted in a press release that this formerly lost Titian painting will appear at auction for the first time in 150 years. Tiziano Vecellio, called Titian (Pieve di Cadore, circa 1485/90–1576 Venice), The Penitent Magdalen, oil on canvas, 115 x 96.7 cm, framed, Auction 11 May 2022, estimate 1 - 1.5 million euros. © Dorotheum The image of the penitent Mary Magdalene has a respected place in Western art history, as well as in Titian’s own body of work. The motif shows up again and again in his oeuvre. This can be partially attributed to Renaissance fashions. Centuries prior, artists began to associate the Biblical figure of Mary Magdalene with an unnamed woman who falls to her knees before Christ, repents her sins, and bathes his feet in oil. This association gave the penitent Magdalene distinct characteristics: long hair, a jar of ointment, and occasionally a human skull or other memento mori object. Mary Magdalene became a recognizable and appealing subject for commissioned paintings. Early Renaissance-era collectors requested countless depictions of Mary Magdalene. Her figure was increasingly humanized and sexualized starting in the 16th century, which may have contributed to the rise of the penitent Magdalene theme. Artists started to show her as shapely but suffering, free but despairing. Titian understood this appeal. He made variations on the penitent Magdalene image throughout his career, adding slight variations to each commission. These details could range from the background composition to the color of Mary Magdalene’s ribbons. Titian (Tiziano Vecellio), The Penitent Magdalen. Image courtesy of Christie’s. There are several notable differences in this lost Titian painting compared to the artist’s previous works. The background opens to a lush,…
Auction IndustryDorotheum announces Contemporary Week with modern and contemporary art, wristwatches and pocket watches
Keith Haring (Kutztown 1958–1990 New York), Pyramid Sculpture, 1989, signed, dated (incised) on plate on the inside of the pyramid K. Haring 89, anodized aluminium, one of 2 PP aside the edition of 15 (+6 AP), fabricators: Domberger, Stuttgart and Aluplan GmbH, Korb/ Stuttgart, edited by Schellman Art Production Munich/ New York (stamped on the plate), 144 x 144 x 75 cm, estimate € 120,000 - 160, 000. VIENNA.- At the end of June, Dorotheum will be switching into ‘Contemporary’ mode. The auction week for modern and contemporary art will take place from 23 to 25 June 2020 and will include pieces of art from every era of the 20th and early 21st centuries. Wristwatches and pocket watches will follow on 26 June. Modern HieroglyphicsContemporary art sale 24 June 2020Both Keith Haring and A. R. Penck worked with striking visual effects and symbols. Their works, which will make an appearance at the auction of contemporary art on 24 June 2020, are based on ancient signs and patterns. Modern hieroglyphics can be spied on Keith Haring’s pyramid sculpture stretching 75 cm tall and completed in 1989, one year before his death (€ 120,000 – 160,000). Some of Haring’s characteristic symbols appear on this ecstatic celebration of life and take these figures (originally created for New York’s subway system) to the next level. From Dresden’s underground, in turn, come the lively formats of A. R. Penck. Cave painting meets graffiti, expressionism meets op art, with stylistic devices which earned him the reputation of ‘father of the Junge Wilde’. His characteristic stick figures can be found on both of the monochrome paintings ‘Kreislauf der Spiele (Cycle of Games)’ from 2005 and on ‘Where I come from’ from 1999 (€ 100,000 - 150,000, € 35,000 - 50,000). Anti-PaintingGraphic structures and textures are also the subject explored by Carla Accardi and her husband Antonio Sanfilippo, albeit in the 1950s and 1960s. They strove to create a form of anti-painting based on contrast and inversion, consisting of intertwining graphic signs. Examples of this ‘art autre’ include Accardi’s ‘Integrazione n. 2’ and Sanfilippo’s untitled canvas from 1960 (€ 75,000 –…
Auction IndustryDorotheum opens its season for live auctions
Jan Brueghel II (Antwerp 1601–1678), An Allegory of Tulipomania, oil on panel, 25.5 x 36 cm, estimate € 250,000 - 350,000. VIENNA.- The month of June will encompass the two major spring auction weeks at Dorotheum, which were postponed from April and May. They will feature Ribera, Brueghel, and Eugen von Blaas as well as Egon Schiele, Tamara de Lempicka, Hans Hartung and A. R. Penck. The two auction weeks will take place from 4 to 10 June 2020 and from 23 to 26 June 2020. The Classic Week will get things underway with Old Masters, 19th century paintings, antiques and jewellery, while the Contemporary Week at the end of June will feature works of modern art and contemporary art as well as wristwatches and pocket watches. All these auctions are now planned to take place as live auctions, in compliance with all the safety measures in force at the time in question. Bids can be placed in many ways: via live bidding, by telephone, in writing, and via a broker. The artworks will be on public display from 27 May 2020 at the Palais Dorotheum in central Vienna, one of the largest auction houses in the world in terms of space. Innovative PaintingsOld Master Paintings, auction on 9 June 2020Outstanding examples of Northern European painting from the 15th to 17th centuries are included in the sale - including a work by Pieter Coecke van der Aelst, once owned by the king of the Netherlands (€ 400,000 – 600,000) and a painting of a Young Woman resting her head by the Anthony Van Dyck (€ 300,000 – 400,000) as well as an important a series of four altar panels from the South German School of circa 1490, which are stylistic close to the early work of Albrecht Dürer (€ 500,000 – 600,000). Also works by celebrated Italian artists are creating interest for collectors in the auction of Old Master paintings to be held at Dorotheum in Vienna on 9 June 2020, with new discoveries such as the hitherto unpublished painting by Massimo Stanzione, Lot and his Daughters, which comes from a private…
Auction IndustryIs this a Raphael? Madonna and Child painting to be auctioned at Dorotheum in Vienna
The work, previously unknown to scholars, was until now in a private ducal collection Madonna and Child is described by Dorotheum as being by an associate of Raffaello Sanzio, called Raphael, and is estimated at €300,000-€400,000 Vienna’s Dorotheum is offering a painting of Madonna and child with the attribution “close to Raphael” at its Old Master paintings sale on 22 October, when it is estimated to fetch between €300,000 and €400,000. The work, billed as a discovery, was once in the collection of Adèle d’Affry, a 19th-century Swiss noblewoman and artist who married Carlo Colonna, the duke of Castiglione. It is not known whether the painting came into her possession through her marriage, but it has remained in her family ever since. The Colonna family also owned known works by Raphael, including the Colonna Altarpiece in the Metropolitan Museum and the Colonna Madonna in Berlin’s Gemäldegalerie. “Until now, this painting has been unknown,” says Mark MacDonnell, an expert in Old Masters at the Dorotheum. “It is an exciting painting to work on, but a complex one.” Though the work is in many ways typical of paintings and drawings by Raphael from his time in Umbria between 1497 and 1504, the auction house could not secure an attribution to Raphael, MacDonnell says. It bears a particularly close resemblance to the Northbrook Madonna, a painting at the Worcester Art Museum in Massachusetts once attributed to Raphael. There is now no clear consensus on the Northbrook Madonna’s attribution, though most scholars say that Raphael may have designed it or supervised its execution, MacDonnell says. “It is very difficult to get anyone to say a work is a Raphael, and they are very wary if it’s an early work,” MacDonnell says. Dorotheum has opted for the terminology “an artist close to Raphael,” he says. “To go a step further is very problematic. The most obvious way would be to call it a studio work, but at that time, Raphael didn’t have a studio. The most we can say is that it was probably by an associate of Raphael, perhaps working under Raphael’s supervision.” Technical analyses of…
