The art world is no stranger to the audacious and outrageous: three bananas taped to a wall, aptly named Comedian, sold in 2019 for £300,000 total at the Art Basel fair in Miami. While the current art market has most often focused on the new and eye-catching, the genre of Old Masters (generally considered to be the work by artists born between 1250 and 1821) has been widely overlooked, until now.
In fact, the sales of Old Masters artwork contribute only 8% to the market share, according to a joint Art Market report prepared by Art Basel and UBS in 2018, while Post-War and Contemporary Art sales dominate, taking up 46%. These figures are not completely surprising: artworks created within the past 75 years would seem to be more relevant than works by an artist born 750 years ago.
Old Masters’ art at auction may still have been shrouded in obscurity if not for the rediscovery of Leonardo da Vinci’s Salvator Mundi and its appearance at Christie’s in 2017. Although the work was mired in controversy over authorship, authenticity and state of restoration, the hype surrounding it was undeniable. Christie’s ran a successful marketing campaign with a video that portrayed the masterpiece as 'the last Da Vinci' in private hands, drawing 27,000 visitors to see the painting in Hong Kong, London, San Francisco and New York.
See also: Leonardo da Vinci: Universal Genius
When the painting sold for $450.3 million (£343.26 mil) in November 2017, and consequently hasn’t been seen publicly since, the mystique surrounding these artworks, once considered dusty and antiquated, led to a spike in the Old Masters market. Thanks in part to the record-breaking sale, sales of European Old Masters were up 64% for that year.
“The Old Masters category has historically been a highly undervalued sector in the auction market, but over the past two years we can see that interest has steadily increased,” says Pontus Silfverstolpe, co-founder of Barnebys. “Old Masters seem to be the market's new gold mine."
See also: The Top Ten Rediscovered Masterpieces
Last year, a 13th-century panel by Cimabue depicting Christ mocked sold for a staggering $27 million (£20.8 mil), above an estimate of $6-8 million (£4.6-6.2 mil), and Artemisia Gentileschi’s rediscovered Lucretia (c. 1640) was auctioned for a record-breaking $6.1 million (£4.7 mil), six times its high estimate.
See also: Artemisia Gentileschi: Passionate Feminist Artist
At the end of this January, Sotheby’s closed out another Masters Week of Old Master paintings and drawing sales that amounted to nearly $95 million (£73.2 mil). There a new record was set for the Venetian artist Giovanni Battista Tiepolo with the $17-million-sale (£13.1 mil) of The Madonna with Child, a large-scale altarpiece from 1735. Other highlights of the sale included two paintings by Peter Paul Rubens that fetched a combined $9.4 million (£7.2 mil) and a Venetian landscape by Canaletto that the Metropolitan Museum of Art deaccessioned for $5 million (£3.9 mil).
Although paintings are usually the focus of Old Masters work, the Old Masters Drawings sale of 2020 set a record for total results. A preparatory sketch for Andrea Mantegna’s Triumph of Alexandria, a 15th-century painting in the British Royal Collection, sold for a staggering $11.7 million (£9.01 million), making it the fifth most expensive Old Masters drawing ever sold.
"[This is] the second consecutive year that we set a new benchmark during Masters Week in New York," said Gregory Rubinstein, head of Sotheby's Old Master Drawings department. "As the market continues to grow and increase, today we have seen a strong demand for works of the highest quality and rarity."
See also: The Enduring Appeal of Old Masters
The auction house has been spearheading a large effort to make Old Masters relevant to a contemporary audience. “I think Renaissance [artworks] are becoming more of an interest because of their value relative to contemporary art and the new and interesting ways we are marketing them,” said David Pollack, a specialist in Sotheby’s Old Master painting department. “Whether it is through working with Victoria Beckham, or partnering with contemporary art galleries on special exhibitions, we’re always looking for opportunities to bring the Old Masters into the present.”
At the end of 2019, Sotheby’s partnered with Fabrizio Moretti, an artist and drummer of The Strokes and Fabrizio Moretti, a renowned Old Masters dealer to curate a sale of twenty Old Masters paintings. “Works from the collection of Fabrizio were showcased in a series of immersive and interactive installations designed by Fab Moretti, each playing on the concept of perspective and based on corresponding themes represented in the works,” said Pollack. “The sale was 100% sold and proved to engage a younger audience: 25% of the clients were under the age of 40, and the youngest bidder was 21 years old.”
The marketing tactics appear to have paid off: the 2020 auctions achieved the highest total for an Old Master paintings sale at the auction house since 2012 and sales in this genre are up 16% year over year. “There is a strong effort to market Old Masters to millennials and to create a new generation of Old Master enthusiasts,” said Christina Eberli, a former Old Masters expert at Sotheby’s and founder of the art lecture series On The Flip Side. “Sotheby’s has done so with partnerships: they launched a successful streetwear collection with Highsnobiety that featured paintings from the recent January sale.”
The interest in the Old Masters continued through to 2021: already in January, Sotheby's set a new record for a work by Sandro Botticelli, selling the Portrait of a Young Man with a Tondo for $92.2 million. This was also the highest result ever achieved by Sotheby's for the sale of a painting by the Old Master. Botticelli's work was part of Old Masters Week, which included seven auctions. Of a total of 882 lots offered, 83% were sold, 63% at prices above the maximum estimate. 41% of buyers attended an Old Masters auction at Sotheby's for the first time, while 20% were completely new to the auction house. With a total of $182.5 million, Sotheby's also set a new record for its Old Master Weeks.
In light of these new records and innovative marketing initiatives, what used to be a small niche in the art market is turning into something quite different and, while the very definition of art continues to evolve, traditional crafts and artistry gain scope and interest.
“We live in a world, I believe, where art of so many types is so readily available,” said Pollack. “What makes Old Masters so fascinating is their rarity, beauty, and quality. In a culture where mass availability is the norm, to be able to tap into something that is so unbelievably special, rare, and unique, is a powerful offering.”
