{"id":1823043,"date":"2026-03-12T18:32:25","date_gmt":"2026-03-12T15:32:25","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/analyse.optim.biz\/?p=1823043"},"modified":"2026-03-12T18:32:25","modified_gmt":"2026-03-12T15:32:25","slug":"tefaf-maastricht-a-superior-salvator-mundi-and-5-other-masterpieces","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/analyse.optim.biz\/?p=1823043","title":{"rendered":"TEFAF Maastricht: A Superior Salvator Mundi, and 5 Other Masterpieces"},"content":{"rendered":"
The little Dutch city of Maastricht (population about 125,000), boasts an incredible masterpiece-to-resident ratio each March, when the TEFAF fair comes to town. This year, 276 dealers from 24 countries have brought many thousands of objects, arranged in sections devoted to paintings, antiques, jewelry, modern and contemporary art, design, ancient art, arts of Africa and Oceania, and more.\u00a0<\/p>\n
\n\tSpeaking to ARTnews <\/em>ahead of the fair, which opened Thursday and runs a full six days, New York Old Master dealer David Tunick likened TEFAF to \u201ca museum for sale\u201d; indeed prices range as high as $9.85 million, for a Pierre Auguste Renoir at New Orleans gallery M.S. Rau. Tunick\u2019s impression was borne out in a day of hobnobbing with dealers at the crowded fair, where groups with financial institutions like Bank of America and museum directors including Max Hollein of New York\u2019s Metropolitan Museum of Art were prowling the aisles, feasting on oysters and sushi at the various bars, and competing for busy dealers\u2019 attention.\u00a0<\/p>\n
\n\tFollowing is a subjective list of just some of the stunning pieces on offer.<\/p>\n
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A Superior Salvator Mundi <\/em>Shines<\/h2>\n\n\t\t\t\t\tImage Credit: Agnews\t\t\t\t<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n
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\n\tIf you missed out on spending $450.3 million at Christie\u2019sin 2017 for the very hyped Leonardo da Vinci Salvator Mundi <\/em>(ca. 1500), well, good, because now you can spend that money at Agnews of London, which is offering what to my eye is a better one. The gallery\u2019s Cliff Shorer is too modest to say his Christ as Salvator Mundi <\/em>(de Ganay version), from ca. 1505\u201315, is better than the one that Christie\u2019s sold to Saudi crown prince Mohammed bin Salman. The gallery hasn\u2019t attached a price to it, he said, not having any comparables (really? Not even one?).<\/p>\n
\n\tAn oil on walnut panel measuring just 27 inches high, the painting shows Christ as characterized in the Gospel of Saint John 4:14, which reads, \u201cAnd we have seen and testify that the Father has sent his Son as the Saviour of the World.\u201d It strongly resembles the $450.3 million one\u2014the priciest artwork ever sold\u2014with Christ raising his right hand in blessing and holding an orb in his left, but it appears in far superior condition (after some recent restoration).<\/p>\n
\n\tInsiders joked when Christie\u2019s sold the Salvator Mundi <\/em>in a contemporary art sale, saying that was only fair since fifty percent of the paint had been added in the last fifty years. On the matter of attribution of Agnews\u2019 example, over the years some experts have called it by \u201cLeonardo and collaborators\u201d or \u201cpartially autograph.\u201d None other than the Louvre exhibited it in 2019\u20132020 as by a \u201cfaithful pupil\u2026with his possible intervention.\u201d It was long with the de Ganay family, and with the current owner since it sold at Sotheby\u2019s in 1999 for a \u201cmodest\u201d price, as Schorer put it. In the course of its life it has passed through the hands of, among others, a French baron and the collector Martine de B\u00e9hague, who sported green hair and hosted Marcel Proust and other writers.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<\/article>\n<\/li>\n
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A Pair of Japanese Birdcage Vases<\/h2>\n\n\t\t\t\t\tImage Credit: Vanderven Oriental Art\t\t\t\t<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n
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\n\t\u201cWhy are people so fascinated with these?\u201d said Nynke van der Ven of Vanderven Oriental Art, from the Dutch city of s-Hertogenbosch and one of the founders of TEFAF in 1988. \u201cWell, it\u2019s partly because they\u2019re slightly weird.\u201d\u00a0<\/p>\n
\n\tVan Der Ven was standing outside her booth, where a pair of delightfully odd Japanese vases (ca. 1700), standing about 20 inches high, are given pride of place. Augustus II the Strong, Elector of Saxony and king of Poland, collected twenty examples of these distinctive pieces for his Japanese-style palace in Dresden. Each is in blue and white with flaring mouths, with gold lacquer added along with porcelain handles in the shapes of elephant heads (recently replaced by the gallery), and a gold lacquered wire cage holding a porcelain pheasant. Others from the group now reside in institutions including the Rijksmuseum in Amsterdam, the Ashmolean Museum at Oxford, and the Peabody Essex Museum, in Massachusetts.<\/p>\n
\n\tThey\u2019re tagged at \u20ac750,000 (about $864,000) for the pair.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<\/article>\n<\/li>\n
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Two Monets from Vernon, Offered As a Pair<\/h2>\n\n\t\t\t\t\tImage Credit: Alon Zakaim Fine Art\t\t\t\t<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n
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\n\tFrench Impressionist Claude Monet famously painted his subjects, like haystacks, water lilies, and the Rouen cathedral, in series, capturing the varying moods and hues of light as the day passed. London\u2019s Alon Zakaim Fine Art is offering two that depict the Gothic church at Vernon nestled in the landscape, in velvety pale blue and purple, showing reflections of the church and the sky in the surface of the River Seine.\u00a0<\/p>\n
\n\t\u201cI discovered the curious silhouette of a church, and I undertook to paint it,\u201d the artist wrote. \u201cIt was the beginning of summer\u2026foggy fresh mornings were followed by sudden outbursts of sunshine whose hot rays could only slowly dissolve the mist surrounding every crevice of the edifice and covering the golden stones with an ideally vaporous envelope.\u201d Two moments from the day are evocatively captured here.\u00a0<\/p>\n
\n\tBoth from 1894, between them the paintings have passed through the hands of famous galleries like Durand-Ruel and Knoedler and have come to auction a handful of times. The gallery, in its thirteenth year in Maastricht, hopes they won\u2019t be separated again, and is offering them as a pair for $20 million.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<\/article>\n<\/li>\n
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A Desk That\u2019s Fit For a Palace\u2014And Looks Like One<\/h2>\n\n\t\t\t\t\tImage Credit: Christian Eduard Franke Antiquities\t\t\t\t<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n
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\n\tThis astonishing cylinder desk, standing nearly four feet high, is attributed to Johann Wolfgang Elias Weinsprach, from Bruchsal, and dates to ca. 1770.\u00a0<\/p>\n
\n\tFranz Christoph von Hutten, the prince-bishop of Speyer, probably commissioned it to decorate his Bruchsal castle, built by German architect Balthasar Neumann. Its shape and details of its form echo the palace, with the top resembling a terrace, with wood inlay mimicking an elaborately tiled floor; the main front panel, with more inlay, shows a view of the castle and its ballroom, with figures standing inside, flanked by vases with floral bouquets; lower panels show seemingly more modest scenes, with people dining. Its luxe materials include walnut, plum, pear, maple, boxwood, and bog oak, with some details in bone.\u00a0<\/p>\n
\n\tThe piece, on offer from Christian Eduard Franke of Bamberg, Germany, is priced at \u20ac265,000 ($305,290).<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<\/article>\n<\/li>\n
\n\tThe eighteenth-century artist Wilhelm Beuoni Knoll created this monumental cabinet, standing over three feet high, featuring a Baroque facade and an incredibly detailed sculptural program showing the Passion and the Resurrection. Bold Solomonic columns adorn the front, which incorporates two doors, behind which are multiple drawers, arranged in symmetrical tiers; St. Peter stands at the center, with book and keys. On the inside of the doors appear archangels Michael and Gabriel.\u00a0<\/p>\n
\n\tUp top is the risen Christ surrounded by apostles and saints, including the Evangelists and a Virgin and Child.\u00a0<\/p>\n
\n\tThe piece came to Amsterdam\u2019s Zebregs & R\u00f6ell gallery only in 2025, and is already going to a Dutch museum, so owner Dickie Zebregs wasn\u2019t talking price, but he did mention that due to his Brazilian boyfriend Pedro, in-house they like to call the saint inside S\u00e3o Pedro.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<\/article>\n<\/li>\n
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A Surprising Cabinet Indeed<\/h2>\n\n\t\t\t\t\tImage Credit: Thomas Colbourn & Sons\t\t\t\t<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n
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\n\tA mysterious maker named Edmund Joy created \u201cMr. Joy\u2019s Surprise\u201d \u2013 Queen Anne Child\u2019s Wardrobe in the form of a House<\/em> in 1709; this five-foot-high treasure, is one of just two known examples, the other one now residing in the Victoria & Albert Museum in London. The central door reveals a space for hanging coats and shirts; a left-hand door opens to show shelves covered in paper printed with a brickwork pattern; the right-hand door opens to reveal hand-painted drawers. While it might seem like a child\u2019s toy, such a finely crafted object, with locks and keys, served only for adults.\u00a0<\/p>\n
\n\tThe architecture of the piece, on offer from Thomas Coulborn & Sons of West Midlands, UK, resembles 17th-century Dutch homes, a style that influenced English builders as well. London\u2019s Kew Palace (1631) is also known as the \u201cDutch house.\u201d Though the maker confidently signed his name, nothing is known about him, say the curators at the V&A, though there is an Edmund Joy buried at Barton Turf church in Norfolk. He died a bachelor in 1744, aged 63.\u00a0<\/p>\n
\n\tThe piece is priced \u20ac75,000 ($86,400).<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<\/article>\n<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n
[analyse_image type=”featured” src=”https:\/\/www.artnews.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/03\/March14-TM25-Intersections-LoraineBodewes-4.jpg?w=1024″] The little Dutch city of Maastricht (population about 125,000), boasts an incredible masterpiece-to-resident ratio each March, when the TEFAF fair comes to town. This year, 276 dealers from 24 countries have brought many thousands of objects, arranged in sections devoted to paintings, antiques, jewelry, modern and contemporary art, design, ancient art, arts […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[2],"tags":[61,226],"class_list":["post-1823043","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-politics","tag-artnews-com","tag-crawlmanager"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/analyse.optim.biz\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1823043","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/analyse.optim.biz\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/analyse.optim.biz\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/analyse.optim.biz\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/analyse.optim.biz\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=1823043"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/analyse.optim.biz\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1823043\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/analyse.optim.biz\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=1823043"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/analyse.optim.biz\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=1823043"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/analyse.optim.biz\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=1823043"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}
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![\"Birdcage](\"https:\/\/www.artnews.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/03\/Vanderven-birdcage-vases.jpg?w=400\")
![](\"https:\/\/www.artnews.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/03\/Monet-Eglise-de-Vernon-Pair-hanging.jpeg?w=400\")
![\"Attributed](\"https:\/\/www.artnews.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/03\/12.-Zylinderbureau-Bruchsal-um-1770-Johann-Elias-Weinsprach.jpg?w=400\")
![\"Wilhelm](\"https:\/\/www.artnews.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/03\/ivory-christ-cabinet-gallery-zebres-roell.jpg?w=400\")
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