In January, I had lunch with an advisor who is deeply entrenched in contemporary art, which is what his clients collect and where his expertise lies. But we spent much of the meal discussing his burgeoning interest in Old Masters paintings. The advisor was hyperaware of his amateur status in the category, but he was combing through this season’s catalogues with enthusiasm—and kept coming back to the low, low prices.

Case in point: Last week, after touring the exhibitions of Old Masters paintings and drawings at Sotheby’s and Christie’s, I sent the advisor a shot of a small red chalk drawing by an artist known as Il Pomarancio. I initially misread the estimate as being a paltry $4,000. But even at the $15,000 that Sotheby’s was asking for the work, from the portfolio of the well-respected collector Diane A. Nixon, the drawing seemed like a steal. The advisor texted me back: “One for your collection?”

If I’m being honest, the Old Masters are beginning to grow on me, too. Sure, the category can be intimidating. It’s a blizzard of names in multiple languages from across hundreds of years and dozens of civilizations. So much of what gives each work relevance, value, and meaning—culturally and financially—depends on a complex web of social, economic, political, and religious history. And yet, the point of art is that while it can be better understood with more knowledge and erudition, it must nevertheless speak to the viewer directly, without any of that mediation. In other words, a great picture is a great picture for reasons we usually cannot fully articulate. That’s the fun of it. You see something different every time you look at the work. If art is a luxury good, the experience it affords the owner is the value acquired—and Old Masters paintings offer very good value these days.

Sotheby’s decision to move its galleries to the Breuer Building on Madison Avenue really seems to have paid off with these Old Masters sales. The spaces for displaying art are intimate and varied. A two-sided German work sits in the middle of one small gallery to great effect—and the building affords numerous similar moments of discovery.

Which is useful, because the house has a lot to highlight this season. There are works on offer from numerous named collectors, including the estate of dealer Stanley Moss, as well as that of former ambassador and Navy Secretary J. William Middendorf II. (Christie’s, too, has works from the Middendorf estate.) A number of works from the Bass Museum in Miami are being sold to fund new acquisitions.

But the single largest collection on offer this week—all of the lots are now covered by irrevocable bids—is made up of the dozen paintings assembled by real estate investor Lester Weindling, the former owner of the Newsweek Building on Broadway. Sotheby’s David Pollack told me that Weindling was the kind of collector who refined his holdings and traded up when better works became available; he acquired some of these paintings as early as the 1980s, and some as recently as 2017 and 2019. A Jan Jansz. den Uyl the Elder still life, featuring impressive reflections and glints of light, is estimated at $2 million, as is a Jan van de Cappelle shipping scene. I was partial to the two Pieter Claesz still life paintings, each estimated at $800,000: one a lush table filled with ripe fruit, and the other tobacco-themed. And who doesn’t like an Abel Grimmer cathedral interior, estimated at $200,000?

The top lot in the main sale is Antonello da Messina’s Ecce Homo, estimated at $10 million, which Wall Power has already previewed. Works by this artist are extremely rare—this may be the last of his paintings in private hands—but more to the point, the piece is just incredible in its pathos. Someone recognized this, because it, too, has an irrevocable bid. Jan Lievens’s Allegory of the Five Senses is estimated at $2 million and likewise already covered, as is a painting estimated at $700,000 and attributed to the workshop of Andrea del Verrocchio, about whom little is known, though Leonardo trained with him, as did Ghirlandaio and Perugino. Finally, a Jean-Honoré Fragonard study for the Head of a Bearded Man, estimated at $600,000 and covered by an I.B., could easily be collected by someone who owns the work of Lucian Freud or Frank Auerbach.

One last interesting story at Sotheby’s: This Portrait of Cecilia Killigrew, on offer for $400,000, has no guarantee or irrevocable bid because the consignor had bought the painting on a hunch in 2023, when it was attributed to the “Circle of van Dyck.” Cleaning revealed that the work had pentimenti, or changes made during the painting process—a telltale sign that it was made by Anthony van Dyck himself. (A copy made by van Dyck’s studio wouldn’t have had evidence of the artist’s path to the final image.) The work is now attributed to the artist.

At Christie’s, the top lot for the Old Masters sales is Canaletto’s depiction of Venice during the feast of Ascension Day, with the glory of the Venetian barges on view. The whisper estimate is $30 million, because Christie’s managed to sell another version of the same image—painted for Robert Walpole, the first prime minister of Great Britain—for nearly $44 million last year.

Other notable works include a Madonna and Child painted by Sandro Botticelli and his workshop, offered for $4 million. Artemisia Gentileschi’s Self-Portrait as Saint Catherine of Alexandria is coming to market for the first time with an estimate of $2.5 million, having been sold privately in 2016 and again in 2018, when there was a flurry of market activity around the painting. Another version of the same image sold for $4.7 million that year—a record for the artist—and the next year someone paid slightly more, $5.3 million, for Gentileschi’s Lucretia. That work eventually found its way to the Getty Museum in Los Angeles.

There is also a great Pieter Brueghel the Younger painting of a village scene, estimated at $1 million; a stunning small portrait of an anonymous man by Jacometto Veneziano, estimated at $500,000; a pair of portraits by Élisabeth-Louise Vigée Le Brun, also priced at $500,000; and a very small Frans Hals, estimated at $400,000. Of course, there are a number of other striking images available at prices well below that level. Take this portrait by Anton Woensam, for example, with an estimate of only $30,000. Perhaps that’s one for your collection?

I’ll be sticking close to the results of these sales, so I’ll let you know what happens later in the week. Until then, Inner Circle members are going to get some data from the second half of last year revealing what sold at the middle-market auction houses. Sign up here if you want access.

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