Paris (AFP)
"Lucrece", painting by Baroque painter Artemisia Gentileschi, which depicts the outraged honor of a woman, was awarded nearly 4.8 million euros, a record for the artist, Wednesday in Paris, has announced the Artcurial house.
After a "long bidding battle" over the phone, the painting was awarded 4,777,000 euros to a European collector, said the French auction house, while it was estimated between 600,000 and 800,000 euros.
The record for Artemisia so far amounted to 2,360,000 euros for a painting sold in December 2017 at the Hotel Drouot, representing St. Catherine of Alexandria.
This work of this woman painter of the first half of the seventeenth century Italian (1593-1654) had been recently discovered in a collection in Lyon where she had been for more than 40 years.
From 95.50 cm to 75 cm, "Lucrèce" is a new centerpiece of the old painting put on sale in France this year after the Caravaggio of Toulouse and the Cimabue of Senlis.
"The interest in old paintings is growing stronger," said Matthieu Fournier, director of the former Masters of Artcurial, who led the sale, and Eric Turquin, expert for the table, in a statement. "For the first time, we see collectors of contemporary art migrating to ancient art."
A masterpiece of the painter Bernardino Luini, who once worked for Leonardo da Vinci, must be auctioned Thursday at Drouot, with an estimate of nearly two million euros.
The painting of Artemisia is "worthy of the greatest museums of the world" and "reaches us in an exceptional state of conservation", which is "very rare" for a painting of this time, according to Eric Turquin.
The expert sees "a desire to shock, to hit, to get the viewer".
The works of Artemisia Gentileschi are very rare on the market. The artist had a brilliant international career, receiving orders from major European courts. Falling into oblivion for nearly two centuries, it was rediscovered by the art historian Roberto Longhi in the 1910s.
"Lucretia" was executed in the 1630s during the artist's first Neapolitan stay.
© 2019 AFP