Diego Velázquez’s full-length portrait of Isabel de Borbón, Queen of Spain is coming to market in February at Sotheby’s in New York and is expected to sell in the region of US$35 million. If achieved, the price would place the monumental painting among the most valuable Old Master works to be sold at auction.
The Spanish master’s royal portraits of the family of King Philip IV of Spain are among his most important contributions to art history, according to Sotheby’s, which will be selling the piece at its annual Old Master Paintings auction on Feb. 1.
The 6-and-a-half foot artwork is of “a caliber and importance rarely, if ever, seen on the open market,” Sotheby’s said in a news release. Portraits of this significance are typically held in royal or museum collections.
The last time a Velázquez portrait of such quality came to auction was in 1970, when Juan de Pareja sold for £2.3 million, a figure that almost tripled the previous world auction record for any painting at the time. The current auction record for a work by Velázquez is US$16.9 million, for Saint Ruffina, which sold at Sotheby’s London in 2007.
“This exceptional painting is remarkable not just for its beauty and quality, but also for its scale and subject matter,” George Wachter, Sotheby’s chairman and co-worldwide head of Old Master Paintings said in the release. “Royal portraiture allowed Velázquez to push forward art in new and revolutionary ways and this grand portrayal of Isabel de Borbón is an exceptional example of the artist at the height of his powers, shaping the direction of portraiture for generations to follow. No other Velázquez paintings of this scale and importance have come to the market in more than half a century.”
The canvas depicts an imposing Queen Isabel of Spain in her twenties, in a black court dress. Velázquez first painted the portrait in the late 1620s, but returned to it from 1631-32 to make a number of revisions, some of which can be spotted by the naked eye—such as the shift of the outline of the queen’s skirt, according to the auction house.
The painting hung for many years at the Buen Retiro palace in Madrid, then after Napoleon’s invasion of Spain in 1808, it was taken to France, where it was displayed in King Louis Philippe’s Galerie espagnole in the Louvre. It was then sold to merchant banker and noted book collector Henry Huth, who hung it at Wykehurst Park in Sussex, England, and in whose family it remained until it was sold in 1950—the last time it was on the public auction market. It has been in the collection of its current owners since 1978, Sotheby’s said.
Ahead of its February sale, Isabel de Borbón, Queen of Spain will be displayed in the U.K. at Sotheby’s New Bond Street Galleries from Dec. 1-6. It will return to New York for a pre-sale exhibition.
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