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About Auction House

The Art Newspaper, an online and print publication that covers the international art world, was founded in 1990 by Umberto Allemandi and Anna Somers Cocks on the original concept of Il Giornale dell'Arte, founded 1983. The Art Newspaper International Edition has offices in London and New York. Its unrivalled news and events coverage is fed by a network of sister editions, which together have more than 50 correspondents working in more than 30 countries, with editorial offices in Paris, Moscow, Shanghai and Athens.

Auction Previews & News

13 Results
  • Auction Industry
    Christie’s contemporary sale fails to pack a punch as auction house records lowest total in a decade

    Brexit casts a shadow over consignments in London, but young American female painters add some pizazz Andy Warhol, Muhammad Ali (1977) sold for almost £5m Courtesy of Christie's Consigning for Christie’s contemporary art evening sale last night was, by all accounts, brutally difficult and it showed in the total: £46.8m (£56.2m with fees)—down around 30% on last year and the auction house’s lowest result for this season in a decade. The pre-sale estimate was £43.4m-£62.3m. A dearth of big-ticket lots—none breached the £5m mark—contributed to the drop; last year Christie’s bottom line was boosted by a David Hockney double portrait, which sold for for £33m (£37.7m with fees). It was also a Hockney that swelled Sotheby’s coffers by £21m (£23.2m with premium) on Tuesday night, albeit on a single bid, possibly to the guarantor. Acknowledging “it was not our season for masterpieces”, Cristian Albu, Christie’s co-head of contemporary art, said after the sale that three years’ of Brexit had put a strain on business, as had the added uncertainty of a general election, which landed in the middle of the winter consignment period. Perhaps out of necessity, Christie’s “tried to make the sale more diverse”, Albu said, and generally the room responded well, with only 11 lots selling on a single bid. There was some pizazz around the first three lots, which foregrounded young female painters from the US. Jordan Casteel’s tender portrait of her mother from 2013, acquired by the consignor from the artist in 2014 and just off view from Denver Art Museum, attracted multiple bids, doubling its high estimate to sell to a phone bidder for £420,000 (£515,000)—a record for the artist. Jordan Casteel, Mom (2013) sold for £515,250 Courtesy of Chrisitie's Asian underbidders, meanwhile, drove up the prices for Dana Schutz and Tschabalala Self, in second and third place, respectively. Schutz’s cacophonous painting, Kissing the Dump (2004), just nudged its high estimate, selling to Alice de Roquemaurel, Christie’s head of private sales in Europe, for £570,000 (£695,250 with fees). Self’s, Spare Moment, executed in 2015, the year before she was propelled onto the global stage, had six phone bidders, but Katherine Arnold, Christie’s co-head of contemporary…

  • Artists
    Kicking off Frieze LA week at the Getty, art world honours Art for Justice Fund

    Performance and panel discussion underline the plight of the incarcerated The writer and actress Liza Jessie Peterson performing a scene from her one-woman show The Peculiar Patriot at the Getty Center in Los Angeles Monday night On Monday evening, scores of luminaries from the worlds of art, entertainment and activism gathered at the Getty Center, schmoozing over trays of canapés and petit fours. Klaus Biesenbach, director of the Museum of Contemporary Art, Los Angeles, and the artist Marina Abramovic were there, as were the architect Kulapat Yantrasast, the artist Alex Israel and the director of the Studio Museum of Harlem, Thelma Golden. They had come to the Getty with a double purpose: celebrating the kick-off of a week of activity centred about the Frieze Los Angeles fair, and honouring the Art for Justice Fund and its founder, Agnes Gund, who started the organisation in 2017 with the goal of bringing artists and advocates together to support criminal justice reform. Frieze launched its inaugural Los Angeles art fair at Hollywood’s Paramount Studios last year and will open its second edition later this week alongside other fairs like Felix and Art Los Angeles Contemporary, as well as several openings, performances and events taking place throughout the city this week. “To have this many people here on a Monday night, it’s a sign that Frieze is catching on,” James Cuno, president and chief executive of the J. Paul Getty Trust, told The Art Newspaper. “The prospects are good for its long life in LA.” The link between Frieze and the Art for Justice Fund goes back to Frieze Los Angeles 2019, when the LA-based artist Mark Bradford created an image of a police body camera that was reproduced on a billboard at the fair as well as on a print edition called Life Size. Bradford raised $1 million from the sales of the edition, which he donated to the fund. After opening remarks by the Getty trustee Maria Hummer-Tuttle, the crowd was led downstairs into the Getty’s theater, where the writer and actress Liza Jessie Peterson performed a scene from her one-woman show The Peculiar…

  • Artists
    Sonia Boyce chosen as UK’s first post-Brexit Venice Biennale artist

    Selection committee says British Afro-Caribbean artist "has consistently probed one of society’s big questions: how do we live with difference?” Sonia Boyce Photo: Paul Cochrane. Courtesy of UAL The British Afro-Caribbean artist Sonia Boyce will represent the UK at the 59th Venice Biennale next year (May-November 2021), the first artist to secure the prestigious commission in the post-Brexit era. Emma Dexter, the British Council’s director visual arts who chairs the pavilion selection committee, says that at such a pivotal moment in the UK’s history “the committee has chosen an artist whose work embodies inclusiveness, generosity, experimentation and the importance of working together”. Boyce came to prominence as part of the Black Arts Movement in the 1980s, tackling and upturning notions of race in her work, encompassing performance, drawing, print, photography, and audio-visual elements. In 2018, she told Frieze magazine: “I genuinely don’t understand why everyone isn’t a feminist; it’s simply about being treated fairly. It’s the same with race: what is so difficult about all people being treated equally.” The artist is currently working with local communities to produce a mural for the 1.8km wall running through Custom House, Silvertown and North Woolwich as part of the Crossrail transport project (the final design in Newham is due to be unveiled later this year). In the Crossrail video, Boyce describes her practice, saying that she “started off as a kind of painter… I kind of stopped painting and I started using some of the material that I’d used to make the drawings and paintings from”. This led her to work “in a kind of multimedia way”. In 2007, she was awarded an MBE for services to art, and in 2016 she became a Royal Academician (Royal Academy of Arts). She is the professor of Fine Arts at Middlesex University, London, and also the professor of Black Art and Design at University of the Arts London. On the university's website, she says: “Since the 1990s, my own art practice has relied on working with other people in collaborative and participatory situations, often demanding of those collaborators spontaneity and unrehearsed performative actions.” Sonia Boyce's installation Paper Tiger Whisky…

  • Auction Industry
    Bonhams chief executive Matthew Girling to leave auction house

    Former jewellery specialist, who joined the firm in 1988, will be replaced by Bruno Vinciguerra, who will also continue in his role as executive chairman Matthew Girling joined Bonhams in 1988 Courtesy of Bonhams Bonhams's chief executive Matthew Girling is to leave Bonhams after 32 years. Girling, a jewellery specialist who became chief executive in 2015, will be replaced with immediate effect by Bruno Vinciguerra, who joined the auction house as executive chairman in 2018 (Vinciguerra will now assume both roles). Girling, who described himself as “an auction animal at the end of the day” in an interview with The Art Newspaper in 2018, joined Bonhams in 1988, becoming director of jewellery in 1996 (he spent six years at Christie's in the 1990s). “I started working for Bonhams as a family-owned business with one saleroom in Knightsbridge and one saleroom in Chelsea, and a small regional saleroom down in the west country, in Devon,” he said in the 2018 interview. In a statement issued last night, Girling says: “I am proud to have led a management team that successfully attracted new investors into the business. Compared to the company I first joined, Bonhams has changed beyond recognition, becoming an international forward-thinking art auction business. I owe a huge debt of thanks to my colleagues worldwide for all that they have done to make this possible. I look forward to seeing the company’s continued success." Vinciguerra says: “We cannot thank Matthew enough for his extraordinary dedication to Bonhams. He has played a major role in the history of this auction house. His expertise in jewellery is world-renowned and he will continue to be held in high esteem by colleagues.” Bonhams's senior management team has shifted considerably since it was bought by the private equity firm Epiris in September 2018. Following Vinciguerra's appointment as executive chairman shortly after the Epiris acquisition, Chris Tolson was brought in as chief technology officer in January 2019 followed by Marc Sands, formerly the Christie's marketing guru behind the Salvator Mundi campaign, as chief marketing officer last March. Speaking at Invaluable's Global Auction Summit in Paris last week, Vinciguerra said Alex Fortescue, the managing…

  • Artists
    Embroiled in Palestine row, artist Zineb Sedira says she will not stand down as France’s representative at 2021 Venice Biennale

    Pro-Israel arts group protested to French culture ministry about her appointment Zineb Sedira Photo: Musthafa Aboobacker. Courtesy of Third Line gallery The French-Algerian artist Zineb Sedira says she will not stand down as the representative of France at the 2021 Venice Biennale after being caught up in an ongoing row over her support for Palestine. The latest development comes after Isart, a group that promotes cultural exchange between France and Israel, called on the French culture minister, Franck Riester, to “renounce” Sedira’s appointment. “I have decided to not renounce representing France at the next Venice Biennale, despite this attempt to silence me and infringe on my freedom of expression,” Sedira says in a statement (published in full below). The dispute erupted late last month when the French writer Bernard-Henri Lévy tweeted: “How, after the moving trip to Israel by President Emmanuel Macron [late January], can France choose an artist for the next Venice Biennale [who]… calls for a boycott of Israel?” He also accused Sedira of being an activist for BDS (Boycott, Divestment and Sanctions), a Palestinian movement that “works to end international support for Israel's oppression of Palestinians” according to its website. Lévy posted a letter from Jacqueline Frydman, the director of Isart, dated 25 January, which was addressed to Riester. Frydman writes that she represents “the Paris art world which is shocked by your choice of Zineb Sedira as the French representative [for the 2021 biennale].” In the letter, Frydman refers to Sedira’s decision to pull her works from the Mediterranean biennial held in Sakhnin, an Arab city in Israel’s northern district, in 2017. She writes: “This artist [Sedira] co-signed a request to withdraw her work from the 2017 Mediterranean Biennial in Sakhnin... because one of her works was exhibited in Israel which [Sedira] called Occupied Palestine in her message.” Crucially, she also says that selecting Sedira is an endorsement of the BDS group. The “message” cited by Frydman refers to a Facebook post dating from 24 June 2017 which reads: “A message from Yto Barrada, Bouchra Khalili & Zineb Sedira. Artists demand removal of their work from the…

  • Exhibitions
    Beyond the wall: a golden period of exchange between Mexican and US artists is revisited in new show

    Whitney Museum exhibition will explore the enduring influence of artists such as David Alfaro Siqueiros on US counterparts including Jackson Pollock and Philip Guston José Clemente Orozco’s Mexican Revolution work Barricade (1931) Photo: Courtesy of the Whitney Museum of American Art; © The Estate of Philip Guston, courtesy McKee Gallery The profound influence Mexican artists had on the American avant-garde in the two decades following the end of the Mexican Revolution in 1920 is to be revealed this month in a groundbreaking exhibition at the Whitney Museum of American Art. Vida Americana: Mexican Muralists Remake American Art 1925-45, which explores the overlooked creative exchange between Mexican and US artists in that era, will “reorient the understanding of art history”, says the show’s curator Barbara Haskell. The exhibition will juxtapose around 200 works of art and delineate the political and artistic alliance of around 60 artists. “In these 20 years, art truly had a social role; its mission was to be accessible, to engage with everyday life and to create a better world,” Haskell says. “The myth of the revolution as a heroic fight of social justice—and the idea of Mexico as this authentic and idyllic place, as opposed to the fragmented modernity of the US—must have seemed exhilarating to American artists,” she says. A major part of the show will be devoted to David Alfaro Siqueiros, who was expelled from Mexico in 1932 for his political activism and was “one of the more radical and experimental of the Mexican artists who came to the US”, Haskell says. Siqueiros founded the Siqueiros Experimental Workshop in 1936 in New York, where students including a young Jackson Pollock worked with unorthodox materials such as cement and cigarette butts. “When you see a work by Pollock from the late 1930s next to a work by Siqueiros, the influence is clear,” Haskell says. Jackson Pollock's Landscape with Steer (around 1936-37) The Museum of Modern Art, New York/Scala, Florence The exhibition will detail the controversial history of Siqueiros’s 1932 Los Angeles mural América Tropical: Oprimida y Destrozada por los Imperialismos (Tropical America: oppressed and destroyed by Imperialism). The work’s patrons…

  • Exhibitions
    Three exhibitions to see in London this weekend

    From today's finest figurative painters to British Baroque in the post-Brexit age. Michael Armitage's #mydressmychoice (2015) © Michael Armitage. Photo © White Cube (George Darrell) Singling out the top figurative painters of today is a bold move for any institution.Radical Figures: Painting in the New Millenniumat the Whitechapel Gallery (until 10 May; tickets £9.50, concessions available) takes the temperature of painting in 2020 by selecting ten painters who “represent the body in experimental and expressive ways”, the organisers say. In the age of video and the internet onslaught, the death of painting has long been anticipated. But curators at the Whitechapel adroitly point out that in today’s super-fast disposable society, “the slow process of painting the figure is at odds with our instantaneous culture of taking, editing and sharing images.” Sanya Kantarovsky of Russia paints unsettling and unapologetic scenes depicting figures in dysfunctional relationships. In Deprivation (2018), for instance, a male figure tightly grips the hand of a reclining woman, reflecting an uneasy power dynamic. Kenyan-born Michael Armitage’s intimate representation of two men kissing beneath a frieze with scenes of firing squads (Kampala Suburb, 2014) is another highlight as are the US artists Christina Quarles and Tschabalala Self, all of whom take the ancient medium into exciting new directions. British Baroque: Power and Illusion(until 19 April; tickets £16, concessions available) at Tate Britain seems prescient in the post-Brexit age, focusing on events such as the Union of England and Scotland (1707) and the Revolution of 1688-9 which gave the “political elite” in Parliament even more power. The show, surprisingly the first exhibition to focus on baroque culture in Britain, covers the reigns of the last Stuart monarchs, from the restoration of Charles II in 1660 to the death of Queen Anne in 1714 (immortalised by Olivia Colman in the film The Favourite). Most works on show revel in excess; Jacob Huysmans’ portrait of James, Duke of Monmouth as St John the Baptist (around 1662-65) presents Charles II’s illegitimate son as a forlorn, camp shepherd while Antonio Verrio’s The Sea Triumph of Charles II (around 1674) depicts the slight god-like monarch as Neptune, the mythical god of the sea. A room filled with the Hampton…

  • Auction Industry
    Dalí and Gala with their ‘heads full of clouds’ go up for sale at Bonhams

    Work will be offered without guarantee from the collection of the late Modernist composer Giancinto Scelsi Salvador Dalí, Couple aux têtes pleines de nuages, 1937 Bonhams An Elysian diptych Salvador Dalí painted of himself and his wife Gala with their “heads full of clouds” is set to lead Bonhams's Impressionist and Modern Art sale in London on 26 March. Dalí made the oil-on-wood-panel painting Couple aux têtes pleines de nuages (1937) (est £7m-£10m) at the height of his Surrealist period, when the Spanish Civil War drove the artist to produce several pieces considered to be masterworks for their mesmeric portrayals of the unconscious mind and Freudian paradigms. The work is being offered from the collection of the Fondazione Isabella Scelsi, the foundation of the descendants of Giacinto Scelsi, the Italian Modernist composer and aristocrat. The late composer was associated with the Surrealist circle from his time as a music student in Paris in the 1920s, and spent time with Dalí and Gala during their Italian holidays with the Surrealist patron Edward James in the late 1930s. The painting hung in the composer’s living room until his death in 1988, when his home was converted into a museum and the work went on long-term loan to the Museum of Modern and Contemporary Art of Trento and Rovereto. Scholars believe—but have not confirmed—that Scelsi was not the original owner of the work, and that Dalí first gave the painting to the French poet Paul Éluard, Gala’s ex-husband, who then sold it to Scelsi (as Éluard, Gala and Dalí had an enduring but complicated relationship). Like many of Dali’s works, the painting is signed Gala Salvador Dalí to honour his wife. The painting was shown at the Palazzo Grassi in 2004 and the Palazzo Reale in Milan in 2010. In 2018, the work was included in the exhibition Dalí/Duchamp at the Royal Academy of Arts in London, which explored the seemingly unlikely relationship between these two artists. A related double portrait of the same title, made in 1936, is on permanent display at the Museum Boijmans van Beuningen in Rotterdam. The work is being offered at auction for…

  • Artists
    Capturing the streets: the Lebanese revolution through the eyes of an artist

    Three months into the uprising we speak to Abed Al Kadiri about popular unity, state brutality and why he is documenting events through Chinese-style ink drawings Screams of protest rang out on the streets of Lebanon on the evening of 17 October. Hundreds, and soon thousands, of people occupied the city in the following days, initially decrying the lack of action against sweeping forest fires and challenging the government’s proposed charge on internet calls and plans to raise VAT. Soon the movement escalated into a full-blown revolution denouncing a range of governmental failings from corruption, sectarianism and unemployment, to inadequate healthcare and endless electrical power outages. On 29 October, the prime minister Saad Hariri finally resigned, but the protests continue. Here, the artist Abed Al Kadiri tells the story of the revolution through his eyes; he explains why the Lebanese people are still fighting; and shares the photos, videos and art that he has made to document this significant moment in Lebanon’s history. The Art Newspaper: Where were you when the protests first started? Abed Al Kadiri: That first night hundreds of protestors swept across the streets of Beirut, burning tyres and blocking various important roads shortly after the government announced new tax measures. I was on my way to China to give a talk as part of a seminar on artist’s books at the CAFA Art Museum in Beijing. On the second day, tens of thousands of peaceful protestors gathered across the country demanding the fall of the government, along with its nepotism and sectarian identity that have dominated politics in Lebanon since the Civil War. It was a historical moment, witnessing the remarkable awakening of my people from a distance. I quickly changed my plans and took a plane back from China after spending only three days there. It was important for me to be in the streets with everyone, unified under one cause and one battle to reclaim our most basic rights. How have you documented the protests? From the moment I left my house in Beirut to go to the airport that first night, I have been…

  • Artists
    How a vast Käthe Kollwitz collection ended up at the Getty

    Richard Simms, the 93-year-old donor, built up the enviable collection on a dentist’s salary starting in the 1960s Woman with Dead Child (1903), one of the 650 works that Richard Simms gave to the Getty © 2019 Artists Rights Society (ARS), New York The German artist Käthe Kollwitz envisioned the anguish of war, poverty and worker exploitation with great emotional immediacy, often showing how trauma impacts the body, but she rarely made work in the heat of the crisis. As the new show Kathe Kollwitz: Prints, Process, Politics (until 29 March) at the Getty Research Institute (GRI) in Los Angeles makes clear, the artist was one of Modern art’s greatest revisionists, who meticulously and skillfully worked to create different versions of her prints before arriving at the most trenchant composition. But the artist’s technical prowess is not the only revelation in the exhibition. The other surprise is the source of the material: all from a 93-year-old donor, Richard Simms, who built an enviable collection on a dentist’s salary starting in the 1960s. Early on, Simms was a member of the graphic arts council at the Los Angeles County Museum of Art (Lacma) and then served as a trustee there for 12 years. But in 2016, he gave the Getty (part gift, part purchase) more than 650 works on paper, nearly half by Kollwitz. “I like everything Köllwitz did,” Simms tells us. “She was opposed to war but you never see the war. You see the effects of war: poverty, alcoholism on those that remain, mainly women and children.” The exhibition’s lead curator, Louis Marchesano (who last year left the Getty to become a senior curator at the Philadelphia Museum of Art), called the Simms material “the most important Kollwitz collection” outside Germany. “There are other Kollwitz holdings in the US,” he said at the show’s opening last month, “but none with so many important preparatory sheets”, referring both to her drawings and working proofs, finished and unfinished, where “she would draw corrections or new ideas as she was thinking about how to move forward in the printmaking process.” And Kollwitz was adept at…

  • Auction Industry
    Charismatic Oliver Hoare’s eclectic collection makes £1.5m at Christie’s

    Timurid manuscript, estimated at £1m-£1.5m, from the late dealer's collection, failed to sell but many other pieces go over estimate A mille-fleurs tapestry of The Lady and the Unicorn (around 1500) was the top lot of the sale Though occasionally controversial—and sometimes sailing close to the wind—the late dealer Oliver Hoare was remembered overwhelmingly for his extraordinary warmth and charisma at Christie’s sale of his collection on 25 October. With only 12 lots unsold out of the 123 items offered, the sale made over £1.5m (with fees). The variety of Hoare’s collection matched his enthusiasm for all aspects of life and art. Items in the sale ranged from a 19th century Indian painting from the Fraser Album (£87,500, all prices with fees), through a rare colourway Man Ray lithograph (£93,750) and a turbine disc from a Concorde engine (£13,750), to a curious 17th century English skull pomander (£65,000) and 1,020 auction catalogues dating back to the 1960s (£9000). All sold well over estimate. Meanwhile, three lots of Hoare’s own linocuts, the highest selling for £1,125 (with fees), showed his artistic eye was not just reserved for dealing. The top lot was a 16th century Lady and Unicorn mille-fleurs tapestry, rarely found outside museums, which sold amid bidding on eight phones to a European collector for £539,250 (with fees), double what Hoare paid for it in 2017. A 17th century skull pomander, estimated at £12,000-£18,000, sold for £65,000 However, the lot with the highest estimate of £1m-£1.5m—a 1459 copy of a Persian mystical poem—the Jam-i Jam, failed to sell. That this was a fine Timurid manuscript was largely undisputed, but a few factors conspired against it. First, though described as “previously unknown”, it was not completely fresh to the market, having been part of Hoare’s stock. Secondly, re-margining and a dull patina left the manuscript without the eye-catching beauty desired by many collectors. Thirdly, the attribution of the four illustrations to Bihzad—a world-class Persian miniature painter on which the hefty price tag rested—though soundly based, was a matter of scholarly opinion and unprovable. But that the story told by every object is never…

  • Auction Industry
    Pew Center for Arts and Heritage announces over $8.4m in grants

    Fellowships and project stipends go to 12 artists and 27 cultural projects in the Philadelphia area The artist Ibrahim Said, whose work is on view at the Clay Studio in Philadelphia. The studio has been awarded a project grant by the Pew Center for Arts & Heritage. Courtesy of the Clay Studio The non-profit Pew Center for Arts and Heritage has announced over $8.4m in annual grants for Philadelphia artists and art organisations, with funding going to 12 Pew fellowships and 27 project grants. Each Pew fellowship is an award of $75,000 given to an artist. Among this year’s fellows are the painter Jonathan Lyndon Chase, the ceramicist Robert Lugo, the writer Imani Perry and the choreographer Dinita Clark. The Philadelphia-based Pew Center’s project grants for public events, exhibitions and performances are awards of up to $400,000, with an additional 20 percent for operating costs, to support cultural programming presented by local institutions. This year’s 27 recipients include an exhibition of the artists Mary Reid Kelley and Patrick Kelley at the Fabric Workshop and Museum, newly commissioned artworks at the William Way LGBT Community Center memorialising Philadelphians who died during the AIDS crisis, and a solo show for the artist Polly Apfelbaum at Arcadia Exhibitions, among others. “These artists and organisations represent what makes our region such a great destination for culture,” says the center's executive director, Paula Marincola. “We’re proud to elevate their work.”

  • Auction Industry
    Is 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…