The Old Masters Evening Sale totalled an excellent £55,263,680. The auction marked a milestone for Christie’s London, achieving the highest sell-through rate by value (99%) in the history of our Old Master sales. The star of the season was Canaletto’s Venice, the Return of the Bucintoro on Ascension Day, which achieved £31,935,000 and set a new world auction record for the artist. Once part of Britain’s first Prime Minister Sir Robert Walpole’s collection, the painting now embarks on its next chapter.

Additional highlights included Jan Davidsz. de Heem’s richly detailed still life, which sold for £3,670,000, and Titian’s Portrait of a Nobleman, which realised £3,428,000, underscoring the market’s confidence in works of rarity and excellence.

The Exceptional Sale drew spirited bidding across a range of decorative arts and historic objects, totalling £5,580,560. The sale was led by a battle-scarred Union Jack flown from HMS Spartiate at the Battle of Trafalgar, which sailed beyond its high estimate to realise £1,068,500.

Momentum continued with the newly launched Old Masters to Modern Day Sale, which achieved a total of £4,909,464. The only tabletop bronze by Sir Alfred Munnings, Brown Jack, was the top lot and realised £504,000.

In Antiquities, a Roman marble head of Venus headlined the sale alongside an Egyptian anthropoid coffin for Djedhor, both selling for £302,400. The Old Masters, 19th Century Paintings and Drawings from a Private Collection: Selling without Reserve saw strong global interest, selling 100% of lots. A scene after a wreck looking onto Pendennis Castle by J.M.W. Turner sold for £289,800, over four times its pre-sale low estimate.

Classic Week concluded with the Valuable Books and Manuscripts auction, led by Galileo’s Dialogo de Cecco di Ronchitti, a rediscovered and exceptionally rare first edition of his groundbreaking 1605 astronomical text, which achieved £1,129,000, soaring past its high estimate of £700,000 and setting a new world auction record for any printed book by Galileo. Pliny’s Historia naturalis, one of the first books printed in Venice, sold for £882,000, the highest price ever achieved for Pliny at auction. The richly illuminated Gladstone Missal, a 15th-century Paduan manuscript from the library of Prime Minister William Gladstone, made £151,200.