Might Baby Jesus, a Spanish Pointer, or a Pair of Ruby Slippers Land Under Your Tree?

Old Masters sales in London test Christmas wish lists.

I’ m in Christmas mode — the most wonderful time of the year — so today I’ll look at the Old Masters sales at Sotheby’s on December 4 and Christie’s on December 3, signaling that end of the fall art season is near. Old Master art, religious or not, augments all kinds of Christmas décor by adding the patina of vintage values. I suppose as well that some of the purchases at the auctions are to be Christmas gifts. Will I find a Botticelli under my tree? A snowball’s chance in . . . google Harry Reid’s current address . . . but who knows?  I’ve been celestially good this year.

Here are the highlights among the evergreens, tried and true, and oldies but goodies.

Both sales were in London. No, it’s not entirely because Europeans are more erudite or the Old Master market is heavy on Europeans. It’s their art, after all. I’ve heard many times from the auction specialists that Americans don’t collect Old Masters well, and the rich Europeans collect and buy better. Rather, the big auction houses have five Old Master sales a year. They alternate between New York and London, with one in Paris that for years was in Monte Carlo.

At Sotheby’s, Botticelli’s Virgin and Child Enthroned from around 1470 was the big kahuna in the price department and in showroom tension as nine bidders competed, quickly moving from its estimate of £2 million to £3 million ($2.5 million to $3.8 million) to nearly £10 million ($12.6 million), including the buyer’s premium. It takes only two determined bidders to drive an auction price higher than expected, but $12.6 million is a turbocharger. The picture’s been in the same aristocratic English family since 1904 and, until the auction preview, hadn’t been seen in public since 1945.

I’m sure it’s beautiful, but the curious thing, at least for me, is how ferocious the bidding got in view of the picture’s attribution for most of the last century to Botticelli’s studio. When Lady Harriet Wantage bought it in 1904, it was considered a Botticelli, but that was subsequently debunked by scholars who hadn’t seen it. Between 1930 and 1945, it was displayed as a studio picture three times. The tide turned when the author of the 1989 Botticelli catalogue raisonné said a young Botticelli painted it, given how similar in style it is to the work of Fra Filippo Lippi, his teacher. Everyone agrees that Botticelli didn’t have an army of assistants until the 1480s.

Technology helped, too. X-rays show us that under the paint is a network of incisions and perspective lines, all too precise and painstaking for an assistant. Sotheby’s catalogue entry is detailed on the evolution in thinking. If you’re spending millions, you’ve done your own vetting, too. Sotheby’s had a lowball estimate to entice bidders. The auction record for Botticelli is, after all, $92.1 million, set in 2021. He’s a proven draw.

I think I’m the only member of the Michele Marieschi Fan Club, which is sad since it means I’m truly antiquated and that this master of Venetian views will soon be totally eclipsed by Canaletto and Guardi. Marieschi (1710–1743) inspired both, and his prints of views of Venice inspired Piranesi’s Vedute di Roma a generation after his death. Canaletto’s work is far more famous and often hits eight figures, but Marieschi’s handling of paint is livelier. Canalettos can look as dry as a jigsaw puzzle. The little figures look like so many busy-bee cutouts.

Christie’s sold a sparkling, distinguished pair of Marieschi views, sparkling for light bouncing back and forth between the stone façades of the old palazzi and the water, and distinguished for their provenance. The two were in the same British family from 1738 to 2008, when they were sold at Christie’s. They’re in Rococo English frames. Marieschi painted mostly for the English Grand Tourist market, which prized only dog and horse portraits more than their views of La Serenissima. On an estimate of £600,000 to £800,000 ($750,000 to $1 million), they went for £1.1 million ($1.4 million).

Speaking of portraits of man’s best friend, Sotheby’s sold The Spanish Pointer, by George Stubbs (1724–1809), Britain’s great animal painter. Stubbs depicted horses, dogs, lions, tigers, and not bears, but he did do zebras, leopards, kangaroos, and a cheetah or two. The Spanish Pointer, from about 1767, is Stubbs’s first dog and became famous from Stubbs’s engraved version. Spanish pointers came to England in the 1710s, possibly via returning officers who’d fought in the War of the Spanish Succession. Hunting was just becoming an aristocratic sport when Stubbs started painting dogs, so there was a new market. Spanish pointers excelled in finding partridges, and this dog has just spotted one. Standing taut, one paw raised, muzzle stretched and pointed, he — or she — has spotted Christmas lunch, if the master’s a good shot.

The Spanish Pointer hasn’t been on the market since 1972. It’s not as much of a market virgin as, say, the two Marieschis were in 2008 — in the same family for 250 years — but it’s fresh enough. And Stubbs was a remarkably slow painter, producing only 400 works during a very long life. A version of The Spanish Pointer belonged to the elector of Bavaria, on the one hand a plus since that was an important princely collection. On the other, there’s a replica, though it’s in a German museum now. The Spanish Pointer isn’t for everyone. Our dog, Augie, a standard schnauzer, is very jealous and would surely resent this pointer’s efficiency, not that he much notices art unless it’s chewy. Then there are those spinster cat ladies, who, by and large, don’t like dogs. And vegans wouldn’t touch it with a ten-foot, organic, free-trade zucchini from Gaza. All this pointer wants is to get that partridge out of that pear tree, plucked, and into the deep fryer. Crispy skin treats. Yum.  On an estimate of £1.5 million to £2 million ($1.9 million to $2.5 million), it went for £1.8 million ($2.3 million).

And speaking of horses, Anthony van Dyke’s Andalusian Horse, sold at Christie’s, isn’t exactly enough Van Dyke to choke a horse, but it’s a rare twofer. Van Dyke became the master of the royal equestrian portrait, and while Andalusian Horse, from around 1620, has no king, prince, duke, or earl atop it, it’s considered his first painting of a horse. When it was last sold — at Christie’s in 2000 — the new owner had it cleaned. Then, the old lining on the back of the painting was removed. Lo and behold, there was a van Dyke landscape painted in back of the horse picture. Van Dyke is thought to have painted only a handful of landscapes — around five — and this is the only one that, as far as we know, is still with us.

Van Dyke was still studying painting in Antwerp, taught by Rubens, but Andalusian Horse is far from juvenilia. Months later, having moved to Italy, he painted his first equestrian portrait, depicting Charles V, the Holy Roman emperor and king of Spain, riding a white Andalusian horse. It’s said that Rubens gave van Dyke a horse as a going-away present. Andalusian Horse might very well be a portrait of this present. Estimated at £2.5 million to £3 million ($3.2 million to $3.8 million), it went for £3.5 million ($4.4 million). It’s a dramatic, expressive picture, and it’s a van Dyke, but very much an outlier. A serious horse-paintings collector would go for Stubbs or Munnings. A van Dyke fan would want a portrait — of a human, preferably one with blue blood.

How were people feeling about the Old Master market? Both Christie’s and Sotheby’s fared far worse in this round of Old Master sales than in their December 2022 sales.

Sotheby’s exceeded its December 2023 total only because of the Botticelli. Otherwise, it would have been down, too, as was Christie’s from its December 2023 haul. Collectors, curators, and dealers probably felt that the pickings were slim. High-performer art was either idiosyncratic like The Spanish Pointer or fresh meat like the Botticelli, and there wasn’t much of that. Unless forced to sell by death, divorce, or debt, owners seem to be waiting for a better market. Sotheby’s just furloughed 100 employees. It’s not that they are having an abysmal year. Rather, sales at both auction houses are tepid at best.

Some cities do Christmas better than others. Snow is not a requirement. Neapolitan Nativity scenes are enchanting, for instance. Vienna excels for its Christmas markets, but its art, music, and architecture — all sumptuous — as well as its Arctic cold and comforting, nostalgic food make it Scrooge-proof. We don’t even need art with a Christmas theme to evoke a ’tis-the-season spirit.

Hanswurst Delivering an Impromptu Performance in Rothenburg is a small — at 64 by 74 inches not that small — version of a massive ceiling painting in the Burgtheater in Vienna. Built in 1888, it’s one of the gems of the Ringstrasse. Hanswurst, meaning Johnny Sausage, depicts an actor playing the stock coarse comic figure in Rothenburg in Bavaria. The stock character Gilles would be his French counterpart, and in Italy, it would be Pedrolino or Punchinello — crafty braggarts and buffoons and, overall, likable losers. The picture’s set in the 18th century in an ancient German town, so it’s very old-timey.

And it’s by Klimt, or a pair of Klimts. Ernst Klimt, a talented young Viennese artist, started it but died in 1892. His older brother, Gustav, finished it, painting part of the background architecture and about a dozen figures, giving them the faces of the Klimt family and friends. It’s Gustav before he was Gustav the Secessionist, before The Beethoven Frieze, before his pointillist landscapes, before Woman in Gold. Before he was Gustav the avant-garde humdinger, he was Gustav the historicist, painting costume pieces in a frilly realist style.

Sotheby’s estimate was £300,000 to £500,000 ($379,000 to $632,000), but, and I do not jest, it shot to £2.2 million ($2.8 million). Holy Hanswurst! Sotheby’s, I’m sure, was delighted and forgot how far off they were even before they popped the Champagne cork. More likely, the movers and shakers there were still in ecstasy over Botticelli.

On the subject of Punchinello, with the Three Stooges tossed in the mix, Christie’s scored big bucks for Guilty Punchinello, by Giambattista Tiepolo (1696–1770), the greatest among the large number of superb Venetian Rococo artists that would include Marieschi, Canaletto, and Guardi. The painting, which sold for £2.5 million ($3.2 million) on an estimate of £1 million to £1.5 million ($1.3 million to $1.9 million), also has an attribution issue. For years, it was thought to be by Giambattista’s son, Dominico, a good painter but fussier than his father and partial to brighter color. Guilty Punchinello came to Christie’s from a French aristocratic collection and, like the Botticelli, hadn’t been seen in public in decades. Like the Botticelli, opinions differed. As late as the 1930s, it was thought to be by Papa T. In any event, the French don’t like showing their art to scholars. They don’t want anyone to know what they have.

Dominico’s prices are lower than Giambattista’s, so when Punchinello was to be sold, the picture was compared with Giambattista’s Punchinello’s Kitchen at Leeds Castle in Britain. One of Punchinello’s storylines can be called the case of the missing gnocchi. In Punchinello’s Kitchen, a group of the hook-nosed hunchbacks with funny hats prepare a big batch of gnocchi for themselves. In Guilty Punchinello, we learn that one of them has stealthily eaten all the gnocchi himself. He sits on a tree stump looking queasy from a gnocchi overdose while his colleagues rebuke him.

What can I say? It’s Italian. Italians have gnocchi festivals. Oddball folk tales like Punchinello as chef and glutton aren’t rare.

Guilty Punchinello isn’t for everyone, either. Punchinello is, as humans go, ugly enough to scare children and pets, and this picture has seven of them. It’s also, at 60 by 47 inches big. That’s a lot of Punchinello. Punchinello’s Kitchen has always been accepted as Giambattista’s work. The palette and paint handling of the two are so similar. Case closed, no tech needed. I learned the day after the sale that the Louvre bought it. It’s strange enough to be a museum picture. It’s too weird for a home.

Which takes me from a gnocchi thief to Oz, as in “We’re off to see the Wizard” and Dorothy’s ruby slippers from the 1939 movie. Heritage Auctions in Dallas sold the pair on December 7 for $32.5 million. And the rubies are glass! Four pairs were made for Judy Garland, but a connoisseurship look at the movie tells us that she wore this pair while singing and dancing among the Munchkins and, later, pining that “there’s no place like home.” Another pair is at the Smithsonian. These shoes have had a convoluted history, but as symbols of American willpower, imagination, and nostalgia, it’s hard to beat them. Someone must have been mighty good to get those in a Christmas stocking.

In Frank Baum’s books, Dorothy’s magic slippers weren’t made from rubies but from silver, likely a reference to silver money’s power to cure every woe known to farm life, since silver meant inflation, which shrank the value of farm debt. Also in the auction were the Wicked Witch’s hat, which sold for $2.9 million, and the Best Picture Oscar won for Gentleman’s Agreement, which went for a mere $250,000. I hear the trophy, awarded for a movie about antisemitism, will shuttle among Ivy League universities as a teachable moment, starting at Harvard.

Adam West’s Bat Gloves, worn in Batman, sold for $42,000. I wanted those, but even after checking under the sofa cushions for quarters, I would have been outbid in a Gotham City second. The auction also sold Barbara Eden’s harem costume from I Dream of Jeannie — $25,000 — and George Sanders’s “Freeze” costume from Batman, bought, I hear, by a climate kook worried that bird-killing wind turbines, solar panels made by Chinese slave labor, anti-flatulence drugs for cows, and electric buses that blow up aren’t doing enough. It went for $3,000. “We have to try everything,” he said. “Even the Wicked Witch is melting.” Blame everything on climate hysteria.

It was a very fun auction. We Americans didn’t produce van Dyke, Giambattista, or Botticelli, but when it comes to popular entertainment, we have our own cadre of Old Masters. I hope the good people at Heritage get a fat Christmas bonus.