Unseen Van Dyck Pendant Portraits Fetch Over $8 Million At Auction
Image via Sotheby’s
After remaining hidden for four decades, two portraits by Anthony van Dyck of a married couple sold for £6.2 million (US$8.2 million) at Sotheby’s—the second-highest price ever paid for the artist at auction.
The two paintings, which were sold together as a single lot at the auction house’s Old Masters sale in London, had belonged to private collectors since 1976, when they were purchased for just £38,000 (US$50 million).
While it didn’t break the record for the most expensive Van Dyck painting, a 1640 self-portrait that went for £8.3 million ($13.5 million), the lot still exceeded its estimated price of £4 million ($5.3 million) by nearly two times.
According to ARTnews, the portraits were painted in 1628, when the famed artist was 29 years old, and four years before he became the chief court painter to Charles I. It took till 1958 for art historians to confirm the identities of the sitters, who were only known by the last name De Witte.
German art historian Ludwig Burchard then found that the sitters’ names matched a monument in Antwerp Cathedral, with a high chance that the couple in the portraits were Jacobus Anthonius De Witte, alongside his wife, Maria Nutius.
[via ARTnews, cover image via Sotheby’s]
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