Christie’s to Auction $17 M. Bellotto Landscape Poised to Break Record
As the market for Old Master paintings continues to prove fertile, Christie’s will auction a potentially record-breaking landscape by Italian artist Bernardo Bellotto during it’s July 8 evening sale in London dedicated to the category. The 18th-century painting, View of Verona with the Ponte delle Navi (ca. 1745-47) depicts a view of a canal in the Italian city. Coming to auction after 50 years in private hands, it is expected to fetch a price of £12 million–£18 million ($17 million–$25 million).
Measuring at more than 5 by 7 feet, the work was purchased by its current owner in 1971 at Christie’s for £300,000 ($720,000). Since 1973, it has been on long-term loan at the National Galleries of Scotland in Edinburgh.
“It is a picture that defined [Bellotto’s] artistic vision and shaped the extraordinary pan-European success he enjoyed as a topographical view painter,” Henry Pettifer, Christie’s London head of Old Masters, … Read the rest
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