Blog

New record for Spanish painter Francisco Goya: 1805 pair of portraits sold for USD 16.5M at Christie’s NY old masters end of January auction. Dona Maria Vicenta Barruso Valdes and her mother are part of 5 rare Goya pair of portraits of which only 2 of women.
Commissioned by Salvador Barrusode Ybarreta, Dona Maria’s father, they appear on the market for the first time in 70 years last sold at Agnew to their private owner in 1951 after belonging to french couturier Orossen who had lived in Madrid , since 1905.
The Barruso pair of portraits were exhibited at the Prado museum in Madrid in 2008.
Most of other Goya bourgeois portraits are the property of museums: Washington National Gallery of Art, Dublin’s National Gallery of Ireland.
Yet, auctionned back in 2013, the portrait of Mariano Goya painted the same year, 1805 was left unsold….
At Drouot in November 2022 a rare Goya 1797 double faced drawing » Le pide cuentas la mujer al marido » ws acquired by the Louvre for EUR 1.9M.
The Barruso pair of portraits is in a very good condition and the depicting of bourgeoise women including typical Goya messages such as the Dona’s pendants hinting to her eligibility for marriage or the dog on her lap referring to faithfulness makes it a pretty rare piece of Goya’s early 19th century period.
Another portrait hit a record during end January old masters sale, this time at Sotheby’s for a Florence renaissance Bronzino that had been forced out of his German family owner  Franz Hesselberger by the nazis. 1527 « Young man with a quill and a sheet of paper » sold for USD 10.7M, more than doubling its estimate.