The auction business thrives on superlatives, and this collection surpassed everything seen before: Within one evening, sixty works belonging to Microsoft co-founder Paul G. Allen brought in 1.5 billion dollars at their auction by Christie's in New York on Wednesday.

The exceeded expectations had been up to 1.38 billion.

This makes the Allen collection the most expensive private collection ever auctioned: it trumps the Rockefeller collection, which achieved 835 million dollars at Christie's in 2018 with around 1,500 objects, and the turnover of 922 million that the Macklowe collection achieved at Sotheby's in May.

Five works from Allen's estate surpassed the hundred million dollar mark, including the buyer's premium, and twenty reached new record prices for the respective artists.

The following day, another 94 lots from Allen's property changed hands for a total of almost 116 million dollars.

All profits will benefit Allen's philanthropic foundations.

"We may never see such a range, number and quality of masterpieces in a private collection again," said Max Carter, Christie's vice chairman of 20th and 21st Century Art, after the auction.

Three works from 1888 were valued at "more than" 100 million dollars: Seurat's "Les Poseuses Ensemble (Petite version)" was sold at 130 million.

Shortly thereafter, Cézanne's mountain view 'La montagne Sainte-Victoire' was sold at 120 million, followed by Van Gogh's springtime orchard 'Verger avec cypres' at 102 million.

Gustav Klimt's "Birch Forest" from 1903, in which you think you can hear the leaves rustling, rose to 91 million, as expected.

Allen had the picture at Christie's in 2006 for the then-record Klimt price of 40,

3 million auctioned with premium.

Gauguin's "Maternite II" (estimate "more than" 90 million) was brokered at $92 million.

These five top works all set new auction records.

Lucian Freud's "Large Interior, W11 (after Watteau)" from the 1980s also set a record with a final bid of 75 million.

Among the handful of old masters on offer, Sandro Botticelli's tondo “Madonna des Magnificat” grew just beyond his expectations at 42 million.

Allen, who retired from Microsoft's day-to-day business after being diagnosed with cancer in 1983 and died in 2018, collected art of outstanding quality and with encyclopedic aspirations.

From the 1970s to the present, every decade of Western art history has been represented by representative artists in his collection.

Allen trusted his own judgment rather than advisors.

He was particularly enthusiastic about landscapes, still lifes and abstractions;

there are hardly any portraits in the catalogue, and there is also no capital Picasso.

This paints the picture of a collector who was looking for peace and nature in art or a glimpse into another world - in line with his interest in brain research.

"They say our brains are wired to look at landscapes,"

said Allen in 2016 in Washington on the occasion of the exhibition "Seeing Nature" with works from his previously little-known collection.

“This means that landscape paintings are almost universally attractive.

They are a contemplation of the outside, but at the same time an individual expression of the artist.”