Previously unknown manuscript of Marco Polo’s account. Estimate: £200,000-300,000. Photo: Courtesy of Sotheby’s.
Sotheby’s London announced that it will offer in its sale of Western Manuscripts and Miniatures on Wednesday, 3 December, 2008, a previously unknown manuscript of Marco Polo’s account. Marco Polo, the most famous and popular of all mediaeval western travellers to the East, [...]

Christie’s two-day sales of Latin American Art totaled $14,150,963/ £9,433,975/ €11,230,923, and was 70% sold by lot. Combined with the $33.8 million fetched in the Spring auctions, Christie’s grand total for Latin American Art in 2008 is $48,012,313, representing the second highest annual total for Christie’s.

Paris Bordon (Italian, Treviso, 1500-Venice, 1571), Venus, Mars, and Cupid Crowned by Victory. Ca. 1550. Oil on canvas. 44 x 63 3/4 in.
Key moments in the lives of Italian men and women in the Renaissance were marked by celebrations carried out with the greatest possible degree of magnificence. Of these, betrothal, marriage, and the birth [...]

It was perhaps a bad omen that before the auction of contemporary art even began at Phillips de Pury & Company on Thursday night, five works were withdrawn, including examples by such popular artists as John Currin, Richard Prince and Anselm Kiefer. And as the evening progressed, the results proved dreary, with about 40 percent [...]

Alfred Sisley, Bridge at Hampton Court, 1874. Wallraf Richartz Museum & Fondation Corboud, Cologne. © Rheinisches Bildarchiv, Cologne.
Alfred Sisley (1839–1899) was one of the greatest landscape painters of the 19th century and a leading figure in the Impressionist movement. Yet Sisley, the only ‘Englishman’ among the French Impressionists, remains a relatively unknown figure [...]

In its second Evening Sale of the week, Christie’s Impressionist and Modern Art Evening Sale, achieved $147 million for paintings and sculpture with top lots from Juan Gris, Pablo Picasso, and Wassily Kandinsky commanding the highest prices. The sale follows Wednesday’s Evening Sale of two single-owner collections, The Modern Age: The Hillman Family Collection and [...]

Kazimir Malevich’s Suprematist Composition from 1916 sold for $60,002,500, not only a record for the artist, but a record for any Russian work of art ever sold at auction. Regarded as an icon of Russian art and a paradigmatic example of the 20th century avant-garde, the masterwork was executed in 1916, the same year that [...]