A painting by Diego Velázquez of Queen Isabel de Borbón, which topped a New York auction in February with a starting price of $35 million (around €32 million), has been withdrawn by Sotheby's without explanation. “Bid closed” is the only thing the auction house has posted on its page about this piece from the early 1630s, Velázquez's most important work to hit the market in half a century, after his portrait of Juan de Pareja. According to some experts who expressed their opinion on social networks, the news could be related to the purchase by a prestigious American museum.
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EFE has attempted to communicate with Sotheby's, but its New York headquarters is closed for the Christmas holidays and will resume operations on January 2nd. The work has been in a private family collection since 1978, Sotheby's reported when it announced an Old Masters auction in February.
The portrait hung for many years in the Buen Retiro Palace in Madrid next to that of Philip IV dressed in black, but was transferred to France after Napoleon Bonaparte's invasion of Spanish territory in 1808 and exhibited in the Spanish gallery of King Louis Philippe . Me in the Louvre Museum.
In 1838 the painting was sold to Henry Huth, a banker and book collector, and remained in his family's hands until it was sold in 1950 in 1978. Private family collection about which Sotheby's did not provide further details.
The painting should boost the market for European old masters, which accounted for just 4% of the $67.8 billion art market turnover in 2022, say the trade magazine Artnews, citing a report from Art Basel and the UBS company.
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