As the art market approaches the summer break the best auction houses have prepared something special for their collectors to close the first half of 2019 season on a high.

This is a short story with several unsolicited auction highlights that come to sale this week. To check out my previous auction reviews — please, visit my website or check out my Instagram and Facebook pages. More interesting art market notes will now appear in this Hidden Gem publication on Medium, so, please, consider subscription not to miss the new articles. To learn more about art collecting and how to navigate on this market — make sure to check up the Essential Guide on Art Collecting here.

Tomorrow is another day for the great day for Old Master art market. Evening sales at major auctions are always a celebration for this art segment and the one to take place at Christie’s London HQ has it all to become a no exception.

As always, I’ve selected some paintings to review as my personal highlights.

This work by Venetian Early Renaissance oil on panel immediately caught my attention when I first opened the auction catalogue. And this three word attribution— Venetian, Early Renaissance (the things a connoisseur eye defines in seconds even judging by a tiny thumbnail image) — is surprisingly almost everything we can say for sure about this artwork with a $1 mln as a high estimate.

Workshop of Gentile Bellini (Venice c. 1429–1507), Portrait of Sultan Mehmed II (1432–1481), with a young dignitary. Attribution according to Christie’s catalogue entry

This quite an intimate sized [13 1/8 x 17 7/8 in; 33.4 x 45.4 cm] double portrait with vague attribution was also selected as a sale highlight by Christie’s own curators. Why so?

Well, the case that makes it worth the asking price is the unusual and an extremely rare subject. This depiction of an Ottoman Sultan Mehmed II (he was the one that proclaimed the famous Hagia Sofia cathedral in Constantinople, now Istanbul, as an Imperial mosque) with a local dignitary states the historically important fact of close relationship between former Byzantine empire and Venice.

Moreover, it is one of the very rare contemporary oil portraits of the Sultan in the European tradition (and the only one still in private collection). All this makes the subject of the painting drive the potential prices up. And it’s previous sale at Sotheby’s in 2015 for £965,000 kind of justifies the estimate.

And, of course, Early Renaissance Italian artwork in a quite a good condition is always a remarkable event on the market.

However, if not the subject, would it really worth it?

The painting is attributed as a workshop of Gentile Bellini (c. 1429–1507), a renowned painter of his epoch descending from a praised painter family of his father Jacopo and a younger brother Giovanni. The former is now considered as a much more prolific master (just remember his stunning portrait of Doge from the National Gallery in London), though it was all the opposite in the 15th century.