London Classic Week has concluded the 2023 sales calendar, totalling £43,091,506 over seven live and online sales celebrating the transformative power of creativity and invention.

Newly unveiled masterpieces led the sale season, with a pair of evocative views of Venice by Canaletto — unseen on the market since 1777 — taking top billing at £9,740,000, followed by Michael Sweert’s A portrait of the artist (?) presenting the Virgin in Prayer which had been unknown to scholars far exceeding its £400,000–600,000 estimate at £1,734,000. Old Masters Part I achieved the highest December total in London since 2019.

Rembrandt’s legacy as one of the greatest painter-printmakers in the history of European art was celebrated on 7 December. Seventy-four works from the Sam Josefowitz collection, the greatest private collector of prints by the Old Master in the 20th century, were offered across two sales, achieving a remarkable success. Two of his most important prints, The Three Trees and Christ crucified between two Thieves: ‘The Three Crosses’, sold for £869,400 and £1,225,800 respectively. The dedicated sale of Graphic Masterpieces by Rembrandt van Rijn achieved the highest total for an Old Master prints sale since 1985, with 100% of lots sold and an aggregate hammer price of 201% against low estimate. After ten minutes of competitive bidding, Saint Jerome reading in an Italian Landscape sold for a record-breaking £1,552,500 and his only etched still-life, The Shell (Conus Marmoreus) concluded the sale, far exceeding its £80,000–120,000 estimate to reach £730,800. Over 50 subjects achieved world record prices at auction, attracting bids from 22 countries. More rarities from the collection will be offered at Christie’s in 2024.