[analyse_image type=”featured” src=”https:\/\/www.artnews.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/06\/Follower-of-Hieronymus-Bosch-first-half-of-the-16th-century-Hell.jpg?w=1024″]<\/p>\n
\n\tA small painting of hell by a follower of Hieronymus Bosch led a string of surprise results during this week\u2019s Old Masters sales in New York, selling for $537,600 at Sotheby\u2019s against an estimate of $30,000 to $50,000. (All prices include buyer\u2019s premium unless otherwise noted.)<\/p>\n
\n\tThe result came as Christie\u2019s Old Masters and 19th Century Paintings sale brought in nearly $7 million with a sell-though rate of 89 percent, while the similarly titled sale at Sotheby\u2019s sale totaled\u00a0$6.4 million with a slightly higher sell-through rate of 92 percent. Together, the auctions offered another reminder that collectors will fight for the right picture, especially when it comes with strong scholarship, a fresh attribution, or a good story.<\/p>\n
\n\tThe Bosch follower panel, titled\u00a0Hell<\/em>, was packed with the strange creatures, demons, and punishments that made the artist famous. In the bottom right, a ferociously grotesque \u201chell mouth\u201d holds a platter in one hand and a pitcher in the other, while human figures writhe and suffer on its wicked tongue. Angels appear to be fleeing in the foreground; in the background, armies clash in the shadow of a medieval castle. The work was not painted by Bosch himself, but bidders clearly responded to the connection to one of the most recognizable names in Northern Renaissance painting. The final price landed more than ten times above its high estimate after 10 bidders slugged it out for six full minutes.<\/p>\n \n\tDavid Pollack, Sotheby\u2019s head of Old Master paintings, told ARTnews<\/em>, \u201cThis scene is a perfect example of this image-driven market. The work is technically very proficient, but it is the incredible image of Bosch-like creatures and characters that made the work truly irresistible. It attracted interest from all corners of the market, from collectors\u2014including cross category bidders who typically collect Contemporary and Modern\u2014to dealers to curators who were all drawn to the power of the image.\u201d<\/p>\n \n\tThe \u201cBosch\u201d picture was far from the only lot to outperform expectations. Over at Christie\u2019s,\u00a0Elijah and the Angel<\/em>\u00a0by the little-known 17th-century Neapolitan painter Francesco Glielmo sold for $114,300 against an estimate of $15,000 to $20,000. The work has bounced between several attributions over the years before scholar Giuseppe Porzio identified it as a painting by Glielmo, giving bidders a fresh reason to take notice.<\/p>\n \n\tA moonlit river landscape by the Dutch Golden Age painter Aert van der Neer brought $120,650 against an estimate of $15,000 to $20,000. The painting carried a long provenance that included the collection of the 19th-century French collector Baron \u00c9tienne-Edmond Martin de Beurnonville. Collectors also chased a floral still life by Jean Benner.\u00a0A Profusion of Beauty<\/em>\u00a0sold for $82,550 after carrying an estimate of just $10,000 to $15,000.<\/p>\n \n\tEven works on paper saw fierce bidding. At Sotheby\u2019s, a drawing by the Genoese Baroque artist Giulio Benso sold for $53,760 against an estimate of $3,000 to $4,000. Offered without reserve from the estate of poet, dealer, and collector Stanley Moss, the sheet realized more than thirteen times its high estimate.<\/p>\n \n\tSeveral better-known names also did well. A portrait attributed to El Greco sold for $635,000 at Christie\u2019s, right in line with it\u2019s estimate of $500,000 and $700,000, while works by Guido Reni, Guercino, Francesco Guardi, and Paulus Potter all attracted healthy bidding.<\/p>\n \n\t\u201cThere\u2019s been more interest in Old Masters across the board, both from the the number of bidders and buyers we have in our sale, but also from collectors who are generally interested in other categories,\u201d Jennifer Wright, head of Old Masters at Christie\u2019s, told me. \u201cI think part of the reason is, and this is probably not a word that gets associated with old European art that much, but that there\u2019s a lot of diversity in this field both in terms of subject and in terms of value in terms of aesthetics.\u201d<\/p>\n \n\tNot every lot found a buyer, but the week\u2019s strongest results pointed in the same direction: Collectors appear willing to stretch for pictures that offer something beyond a familiar name: a rediscovery, a scholarly puzzle, or a work that simply does not come to market very often.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n [analyse_source url=”https:\/\/www.artnews.com\/art-news\/news\/hieronymus-bosch-painting-old-masters-sales-sothebys-christies-1234788254\/”]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" [analyse_image type=”featured” src=”https:\/\/www.artnews.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/06\/Follower-of-Hieronymus-Bosch-first-half-of-the-16th-century-Hell.jpg?w=1024″] A small painting of hell by a follower of Hieronymus Bosch led a string of surprise results during this week\u2019s Old Masters sales in New York, selling for $537,600 at Sotheby\u2019s against an estimate of $30,000 to $50,000. (All prices include buyer\u2019s premium unless otherwise noted.) The result came as Christie\u2019s Old […]<\/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-1971545","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\/1971545","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=1971545"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/analyse.optim.biz\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1971545\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/analyse.optim.biz\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=1971545"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/analyse.optim.biz\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=1971545"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/analyse.optim.biz\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=1971545"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}