A long-lost painting by Rubens could fetch upwards of £30 million at Sotheby’s Baroque Auction on 26 January 2023. The painting is being sold as part of the Fisch Davidson Collection, described as one of the most important collections of Baroque art to ever appear on the market.
The sale will feature 10 works from the 17th and 18th centuries, including masterpieces by Sir Peter Paul Rubens, Orazio Gentileschi, Giovanni Francesco Barbieri (nicknamed Il Guercino), Valentin de Boulogne, and Bernardo Cavallino, among others. The works are due on a viewing tour at Sotheby’s headquarters in New York, Los Angeles, Hong Kong, and London, before being auctioned during New York’s Masters Week.
Headlining the sale will be Ruben’s painting The head of Saint John the Baptist presented to Salome, believed to have been painted around 1609 after Rubens' return from Italy to his native Flanders. The piece revolves around a famous biblical scene where Saint John the Baptist was thrown in jail for his public disapproval of King Herod of Galilee's marriage to Herodias. During a supper, Herod asked his stepdaughter (and niece) Salome to dance for him, and pleased with her performance, he granted her a wish. Her mother Herodias urged her to ask for John the Baptist's head, to which Salome agreed. Rubens' painting depicts the moment when John the Baptist’s severed head was presented to Salome. Many artists have had a go at portraying this scene, and this one by Rubens is one of its most famous iterations.
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According to Sotheby’s, the painting is recorded in the inventories of the Spanish royal house from 1666 to 1700. The piece was then thought to be lost until it reappeared in the collection of a French family. In 1998, it sold for $5.5 million at Sotheby’s to art dealer Otto Naumann. After a restoration by an art conservationist of the Met, it was sold to a hotel billionaire in a private sale. Its whereabouts have since been unknown until it came up in this collection.
See also: Peter Paul Rubens: Court Painter and Diplomat
The entire collection is estimated to be worth between $40 to $60 million and it is the property of Mark Fisch, real estate developer and trustee of the Metropolitan Museum of Art, and Rachel Davidson, former New Jersey judge.
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The sale is the result Fisch and Davidson’s ongoing divorce battle, which has seen them part ways with other important pieces from their private art collection (acquired over the course of 30 years and thought to be worth around $177 million). The contentious divorce proceedings began earlier this year, and the couple has already made headlines with the private sale of Rembrandt’s Abraham and the Angels at Sotheby’s (valued at $20 million, and sold for an undisclosed amount).
See also: An Art Collection Worth $600 Million at Auction
There is a famous saying in the auction industry that major consignments are usually motivated by the 3 D's: death, divorce, and debt. It is in fact not uncommon for divorces to drive sales of major collections. Most famously, in November 2021 and May 2022, the collection of divorcees Harry Macklowe and Linda Macklowe was sold in two separate auctions at Sotheby’s, fetching a total of $922 million and becoming the most valuable collection to be ever sold at auction.
