100 Top Treasures
November 2007
54 Adele, Too
Gustav Klimt painted Adele Bloch-Bauer three times. First, he cast her as the subject of the biblically inspired "Judith" (1901), then six years later he completed the elaborately gilded, mosaic-caparisoned "Adele Bloch-Bauer I." The latter made headlines in June 2006 when it was sold in a private transaction for $135 million to cosmetics-company executive Ronald Lauder. In November 2006, a third painting, "Adele Bloch-Bauer II" (1912) brought $87.9 million in a sale to an anonymous buyer at Christie’s New York. That figure, however, set a world auction record for the artist and, in some quarters, it was murmured that this painting was the more felicitous of the two Adeles in its multi-hued presentation of Bloch-Bauer as a self-assured woman of means. Like Adele I, the second portrait was one of several paintings that had been confiscated by the Nazis and were restituted to the subject’s heirs after a long international legal struggle. The work is the largest of the three Klimt paintings for which Bloch-Bauer posed. "This full-length standing portrait of Adele is also the painting that marks the beginning of a completely new phase in Klimt’s art," says Guy Bennett, Christie’s head of Impressionist and Modern art in New York, during which the artist "embraced color, painterly texture and abstract pattern with renewed vigor." —D.K.
55 Light Welcome
You don’t have to enter the new three-story building to enjoy one of the new site-specific commissions unveiled last January at the Museum of Contemporary Art San Diego. A 30-foot-tall sign by Jenny Holzer, valued in the low to mid-six figures, rises over the entrance of the structure, one of three comprising the museum’s expanded campus. "Holzer’s textual light-emitting-diode installation, titled "For San Diego," houses thousands of LEDs in clear plastic tubes. "The light has a floating quality," notes Stephanie Hanor, MCASD’s senior curator. —D.K.
56 Papal Prize
In his day, Giorgio Vasari was the one critic from whom an artist sought praise. Of Giulio Clovio (1498–1578), Vasari wrote in his Lives of the Most Excellent Italian Architects, Painters and Sculptors: "For many centuries, and perhaps for yet other centuries, there has been no more excellent illuminator or painter of small things than Giulio Clovio, who has far surpassed all others in this exercise." Vasari might well have been referring to Clovio’s "The Lamentation" (c. 1550), a gouache heightened with gold on vellum that he likely made for Cardinal Alessandro Farnese, who presented it to Pope Paul IV. In September, the National Gallery of Art acquired the work from Salamander Gallery for an undisclosed sum (though previous auction records reveal that works by Clovio easily command sums in the low seven figures). Andrew Robison, senior curator of prints and drawings at the National Gallery of Art, urging the museum to acquire the work, wrote, "With its intense spirituality and meditative pathos, its elegant figures in rich colors with subtle gold highlights, its exceedingly refined and delicate techniques, this is one of the most exquisite and perfect drawings of the High Renaissance in Papal Rome." —D.M.
57 Fairest of All
The image one sees in the mirror is fairest of all. It certainly holds true in this instance, no matter who gazes into it. Measuring 35 inches high, the Neoclassical carved and gilded frame holds a mirror engraved with a seascape of a ship in full sail against a cloud-studded sky. Made in the Netherlands, the circa-1780 mirror was sold last January, when it was included in "Reflections of Splendor," an exhibition of rare European mirrors at L’Antiquaire & The Connoisseur Inc., in New York. The price listed was $40,000. "The curator of ceramics and glass at the Rijksmuseum in Amsterdam told us that engraving of this quality was usually done on much smaller pieces, often on boxes," says Helen Costantino Fioratti, the firm’s president. "It’s a unique piece that probably couldn’t be replaced now at double the price." —D.K.
58 A Holy Pose
Here is an example of form following function, for the gently twisting figure of Christ rendered in flawless ivory is the result of the natural curvature of the tusk from which it was fashioned by François Duquesnoy in the 1620s. Soon after the National Gallery of Art in Washington, D.C., acquired this work in May from London dealer Daniel Katz, the museum’s director, Earl A. Powell III, commented, "From a technical perspective, this carving is breathtaking. The artist has truly breathed life into this piece of ivory, providing a tremendously sympathetic portrayal of Jesus before the Crucifixion." The museum considers the sculpture to be one of the best examples of European ivory carvings of the Roman Baroque. The Flemish-born Duquesnoy (1597–1643) settled in Italy, where he earned a reputation as one of the most accomplished practitioners of ivory carving. Ironically, none of these ivories have been identified definitively, thus the National Gallery’s careful qualification that the sculpture is "attributed" to the artist, though Nicholas Penny, senior curator of sculpture and decorative arts, and other museum authorities insist that this is a "Duquesnoy invention and is consistent with his work." While the purchase price is unknown, another Baroque sculpture acquired by the National Gallery last year (Giovanni Francesco Susini’s "The Young Saint John the Baptist," featured as a 2006 Top Treasure) was valued in excess of $3 million. —D.M.
59 Moon Glow
The 1969 Apollo 11 moon landing was one of the most joyous occasions in American history. A superb commemoration of this great event in the form of a group of Apollo 11 documents and memorabilia was sold to a private collector by The 19th Century Shop of Stevenson, Maryland, at Palm Beach! America’s International Fine Art & Antique Fair last February for $900,000. Stephan Loewentheil, owner of the shop, who personally assembled the collection, which included an official NASA photograph signed by the three crew members, notes, "I don’t think material of this quality could ever be put together again. The event was one of mankind’s greatest moments." —D.K.
60 A Sterling Acquisition
Crumpets, biscuits, petits fours, sweetmeats, virtually anything put into this silver basket by Paul Storr would have looked tempting. The work (c. 1813–14), which bears the arms of George Wyndham, third Earl of Egremont—the patron of J.M.W. Turner and John Constable among others—was given to the Virginia Museum of Fine Arts in November 2006 by Rita Gans. The gift now takes its place among the 103-piece Jerome and Rita Gans Collection of English Silver, of which 36 pieces are by Storr—and any single piece of which is worth in the five figures. "There is no better example of the muscular classicism of Paul Storr’s silver than the basket," says Ellenor Alcorn, VMFA’s consulting curator for the Gans Collection. —D.M.
61 All Wrapped Up
On a trip to Egypt in 1900, Liberty Holden, publisher of the Cleveland Plain Dealer, learned that a dealer had discovered a group of four mummies. He purchased the sarcophagus and mummy of the priest Neskhons, had it cleared for export by the Egyptian Museum in Cairo and shipped to Cleveland, where it was donated to the Western Reserve Historical Society. Last December Christie’s New York sold the painted-wood sarcophagus and mummy, which date from the XXI Dynasty (c. 990–940 B.C.), to an American collector for $1.1 million. "The painting was extraordinary, and the mummy, wrapped in linen, was still intact," says Max Bernheimer, international head of Christie’s antiquities department. "It’s as good as any ancient Egyptian sarcophagus and mummy gets." —D.G.
62 Down on the Farm
George Henry Durrie was one of the best-known of the artists who created the views published by Currier & Ives. In 1858 he painted the bucolic country scene "Ketcham Farm in Winter, New Haven," which sold at Doyle New York last November for $772,000. The painting was a gift to the Ketchams, a New Haven, Connecticut family who were personal friends of the artist, and from them it descended to the present consignor. "The painting is an absolute classic image by Durrie," says Elaine Banks Stainton, executive director of Doyle’s paintings and drawings department. —D.G.
Gustav Klimt painted Adele Bloch-Bauer three times. First, he cast her as the subject of the biblically inspired "Judith" (1901), then six years later he completed the elaborately gilded, mosaic-caparisoned "Adele Bloch-Bauer I." The latter made headlines in June 2006 when it was sold in a private transaction for $135 million to cosmetics-company executive Ronald Lauder. In November 2006, a third painting, "Adele Bloch-Bauer II" (1912) brought $87.9 million in a sale to an anonymous buyer at Christie’s New York. That figure, however, set a world auction record for the artist and, in some quarters, it was murmured that this painting was the more felicitous of the two Adeles in its multi-hued presentation of Bloch-Bauer as a self-assured woman of means. Like Adele I, the second portrait was one of several paintings that had been confiscated by the Nazis and were restituted to the subject’s heirs after a long international legal struggle. The work is the largest of the three Klimt paintings for which Bloch-Bauer posed. "This full-length standing portrait of Adele is also the painting that marks the beginning of a completely new phase in Klimt’s art," says Guy Bennett, Christie’s head of Impressionist and Modern art in New York, during which the artist "embraced color, painterly texture and abstract pattern with renewed vigor." —D.K.
55 Light Welcome
You don’t have to enter the new three-story building to enjoy one of the new site-specific commissions unveiled last January at the Museum of Contemporary Art San Diego. A 30-foot-tall sign by Jenny Holzer, valued in the low to mid-six figures, rises over the entrance of the structure, one of three comprising the museum’s expanded campus. "Holzer’s textual light-emitting-diode installation, titled "For San Diego," houses thousands of LEDs in clear plastic tubes. "The light has a floating quality," notes Stephanie Hanor, MCASD’s senior curator. —D.K.
56 Papal Prize
In his day, Giorgio Vasari was the one critic from whom an artist sought praise. Of Giulio Clovio (1498–1578), Vasari wrote in his Lives of the Most Excellent Italian Architects, Painters and Sculptors: "For many centuries, and perhaps for yet other centuries, there has been no more excellent illuminator or painter of small things than Giulio Clovio, who has far surpassed all others in this exercise." Vasari might well have been referring to Clovio’s "The Lamentation" (c. 1550), a gouache heightened with gold on vellum that he likely made for Cardinal Alessandro Farnese, who presented it to Pope Paul IV. In September, the National Gallery of Art acquired the work from Salamander Gallery for an undisclosed sum (though previous auction records reveal that works by Clovio easily command sums in the low seven figures). Andrew Robison, senior curator of prints and drawings at the National Gallery of Art, urging the museum to acquire the work, wrote, "With its intense spirituality and meditative pathos, its elegant figures in rich colors with subtle gold highlights, its exceedingly refined and delicate techniques, this is one of the most exquisite and perfect drawings of the High Renaissance in Papal Rome." —D.M.
57 Fairest of All
The image one sees in the mirror is fairest of all. It certainly holds true in this instance, no matter who gazes into it. Measuring 35 inches high, the Neoclassical carved and gilded frame holds a mirror engraved with a seascape of a ship in full sail against a cloud-studded sky. Made in the Netherlands, the circa-1780 mirror was sold last January, when it was included in "Reflections of Splendor," an exhibition of rare European mirrors at L’Antiquaire & The Connoisseur Inc., in New York. The price listed was $40,000. "The curator of ceramics and glass at the Rijksmuseum in Amsterdam told us that engraving of this quality was usually done on much smaller pieces, often on boxes," says Helen Costantino Fioratti, the firm’s president. "It’s a unique piece that probably couldn’t be replaced now at double the price." —D.K.
58 A Holy Pose
Here is an example of form following function, for the gently twisting figure of Christ rendered in flawless ivory is the result of the natural curvature of the tusk from which it was fashioned by François Duquesnoy in the 1620s. Soon after the National Gallery of Art in Washington, D.C., acquired this work in May from London dealer Daniel Katz, the museum’s director, Earl A. Powell III, commented, "From a technical perspective, this carving is breathtaking. The artist has truly breathed life into this piece of ivory, providing a tremendously sympathetic portrayal of Jesus before the Crucifixion." The museum considers the sculpture to be one of the best examples of European ivory carvings of the Roman Baroque. The Flemish-born Duquesnoy (1597–1643) settled in Italy, where he earned a reputation as one of the most accomplished practitioners of ivory carving. Ironically, none of these ivories have been identified definitively, thus the National Gallery’s careful qualification that the sculpture is "attributed" to the artist, though Nicholas Penny, senior curator of sculpture and decorative arts, and other museum authorities insist that this is a "Duquesnoy invention and is consistent with his work." While the purchase price is unknown, another Baroque sculpture acquired by the National Gallery last year (Giovanni Francesco Susini’s "The Young Saint John the Baptist," featured as a 2006 Top Treasure) was valued in excess of $3 million. —D.M.
59 Moon Glow
The 1969 Apollo 11 moon landing was one of the most joyous occasions in American history. A superb commemoration of this great event in the form of a group of Apollo 11 documents and memorabilia was sold to a private collector by The 19th Century Shop of Stevenson, Maryland, at Palm Beach! America’s International Fine Art & Antique Fair last February for $900,000. Stephan Loewentheil, owner of the shop, who personally assembled the collection, which included an official NASA photograph signed by the three crew members, notes, "I don’t think material of this quality could ever be put together again. The event was one of mankind’s greatest moments." —D.K.
60 A Sterling Acquisition
Crumpets, biscuits, petits fours, sweetmeats, virtually anything put into this silver basket by Paul Storr would have looked tempting. The work (c. 1813–14), which bears the arms of George Wyndham, third Earl of Egremont—the patron of J.M.W. Turner and John Constable among others—was given to the Virginia Museum of Fine Arts in November 2006 by Rita Gans. The gift now takes its place among the 103-piece Jerome and Rita Gans Collection of English Silver, of which 36 pieces are by Storr—and any single piece of which is worth in the five figures. "There is no better example of the muscular classicism of Paul Storr’s silver than the basket," says Ellenor Alcorn, VMFA’s consulting curator for the Gans Collection. —D.M.
61 All Wrapped Up
On a trip to Egypt in 1900, Liberty Holden, publisher of the Cleveland Plain Dealer, learned that a dealer had discovered a group of four mummies. He purchased the sarcophagus and mummy of the priest Neskhons, had it cleared for export by the Egyptian Museum in Cairo and shipped to Cleveland, where it was donated to the Western Reserve Historical Society. Last December Christie’s New York sold the painted-wood sarcophagus and mummy, which date from the XXI Dynasty (c. 990–940 B.C.), to an American collector for $1.1 million. "The painting was extraordinary, and the mummy, wrapped in linen, was still intact," says Max Bernheimer, international head of Christie’s antiquities department. "It’s as good as any ancient Egyptian sarcophagus and mummy gets." —D.G.
62 Down on the Farm
George Henry Durrie was one of the best-known of the artists who created the views published by Currier & Ives. In 1858 he painted the bucolic country scene "Ketcham Farm in Winter, New Haven," which sold at Doyle New York last November for $772,000. The painting was a gift to the Ketchams, a New Haven, Connecticut family who were personal friends of the artist, and from them it descended to the present consignor. "The painting is an absolute classic image by Durrie," says Elaine Banks Stainton, executive director of Doyle’s paintings and drawings department. —D.G.
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