Van Ham will kick off the Cologne autumn auctions with fine art with its event on November 18, at which 264 lots will be called: The highlight of ancient art is a wooden panel by Fernando Yáñez de la Almedina - one of the most important representatives of the Spanish Renaissance.

It shows the martyrdom of Saint Sebastian and is valued at 50,000 to 80,000 euros on its auction debut.

Sebastiano Lazzari's two “Trompe-l'Œils with fruits, globes and playing cards”, which relate to one another and were created between 1783 and 1785 (estimate 50,000 to 60,000 euros), are also fresh from the market.

Around 1567 Paolo Farinati made his picture of the "Holy Evangelist John", who hovers above the clouds as a blond youth (30,000 / 40,000). And around forty years later, Domenico Fiasella captured his version of “Saint Luke” on canvas: the Caravaggist's early work, measuring 174 by 118 centimeters, already reveals the perfection of his later composition and surface structure (15,000 / 18,000).

At Lempertz, 227 lots will be auctioned on November 20: Among the top lots with old art, Andrea Solario's impressive depiction of the man of sorrows "Ecce Homo" is the highest endowed with an estimate of 200,000 to 250,000 euros;

it is one of fifteen versions that Leonardo's pupil and successor created between 1507 and 1509.

A fruit still life by Cornelis de Heem is estimated at 200,000 to 240,000 euros, while his Italian contemporary Bartolomeo Bettera is offering a previously unpublished still life with musical instruments (30,000 / 40,000).

Find an unfinished master

The wooden panel with Mary as Mother of God and Queen of Heaven has an unusual history and provenance: in 2009 the picture appeared in a Westphalian collection in which it had been for more than a hundred years. After extensive restorations and examinations, it was identified as an autograph work by Peter Paul Rubens, which remained unfinished in the workshop until the master’s death and was then completed by an employee (180,000 / 240,000).

The "Portrait of a young Danzig patrician" comes from the East Prussian artist Anton Möller, which was created around 1580 and was possibly intended as a wedding picture (180,000 / 220,000). Caesar Boetius van Everdingen's picture, painted in the 17th century, of a “young peasant woman with a black hat on a fence” - half genre, half tronie - is still puzzling thanks to its strong underside and the undisguised eroticism of the open-hearted décolleté (140,000 / 180,000).

Among the sculptures at Van Ham Franz von Stuck's market-fresh and 65 centimeter high bronze of a "Riding Amazon", which was designed in 1897 and cast in the Munich foundry C. Leyrer after 1905 (20,000 / 30,000), as well as four Prussian cast zinc sculptures that come to the auction for the first time and were manufactured in the royal iron foundries in Berlin and Gleiwitz, among others: the use of indoor monuments (estimates between 5000 and 10,000 euros) has been established since the 1950s.

Lempertz also has sculptures on offer, including a limestone “Madonna and Child” made in Normandy around 1400 and measuring 105 centimeters (140,000 / 180,000).

A 90 centimeter high female saint made of oak comes from the master Arnt, who ran two workshops in Kalkar on the Lower Rhine and in Zwolle in the Netherlands from 1460 to 1491 (30,000 / 35,000).

Expectations in the millions

Among the most attractive offers at Van Ham's offer with art from the 19th century are the picturesque winter scene by Willem Koekkoek (60,000 / 70,000) and the 1903 port view by Friedrich Kallmorgen (25,000 / 35,000) from the collection of the Hamburg entrepreneur Rolf Kaletta. Emilie Preyer delivers one of her enchantingly delicate still lifes - fresh from the market for 25,000 to 30,000 euros - and Werner Peiner, who became professor for monumental painting at the Düsseldorf Art Academy in 1933, is calling for his cycle “The Apocalypse”, created between 1948 and 1949: The sequence of images consists of 25 intensely colored gouaches, each 64 by 50 centimeters in size, which one can still clearly see from Peiner's connection to New Objectivity (60,000 / 80,000).

Lempertz's offer for the 19th century is led by Petrus van Schendel's Nachtstück from the vegetable and fish market in The Hague from 1851 (60,000 / 80,000);

Michael Neher recorded the “Fish Market in Rome” about twenty years earlier: the 58 by 48 centimeter picture, fresh from the market, is a hitherto unknown painting by the artist that has been privately owned for over 100 years (30,000 / 35,000).

And Friedrich Nerly's view of the Palazzo Contarini in Venice is said to bring in 50,000 to 70,000 euros.

The expectations for Van Ham's Fine Art auctions are around 1.5 million euros, Lempertz reckons with 3.6 million euros.