From Wuthering Heights to Wunderkammer objects: seven highlights from the Exceptional Sale

A scale model of HMS Coronation, circa 1685

HMS Coronation was a 90-gun warship launched by the British Royal Navy in 1685. The final vessel of the ‘30 great ships’ programme proposed in 1677 by the diarist Samuel Pepys in his role as secretary to the Admiralty, it took part in the Battle of Beachy Head against the French in the English Channel in 1690. The following year, the ship sprang a leak and capsized: 22 men survived; some 600 were lost. The wreck was discovered off the coast of Cornwall in 1967.

This 1:48 scale model of the ship was built at roughly the same time as its archetype, in the same naval dockyard in Portsmouth. One of the few model ships from the era to survive, it is fully rigged and gunned, displaying a distinctive unplanked hull (to show the interior craftsmanship below the gunwale) and spherical lanterns, and illustrating the sumptuousness of its Baroque carvings. The model is also notable for including the ship’s rare gilded lion-mask gargoyles, which held long poles to keep incendiary vessels at a safe distance, as well as its whipstaff — a type of steering column that predates the use of a wheel.

Pepys himself was a collector of such model ships, but this example is first recorded in the collection of his successor as president of the Royal Society, John Vaughan. Vaughan also served as Lord of the Admiralty, but Pepys was no admirer, describing him as ‘the lewdest fellow of the age’.

After passing through several more private collections, the model crossed the Atlantic and was acquired by Junius S. Morgan III, the grandson of financier J.P. Morgan. It remained at his Long Island home, Salutation, until his death in 1960. Fourteen years later, his widow offered the contents of the property at auction, which set a new record for any estate sale in America.

An Egyptian limestone statue of a couple, circa 2400-2300 B.C.

Carved out of a single block of limestone around 4,400 years ago — some 200 years after work on the Great Pyramid of Giza was completed — this statue depicts an ancient Egyptian couple in a tender embrace.

It belongs to a small group of similar artefacts dating from the Old Kingdom period, which mostly came from the area around Memphis, the first capital city of unified Egypt. Other examples are now housed in Vienna’s Kunsthistorisches Museum and the MFA Boston.

Depicted on the right is a man striding forward, alongside a woman who lovingly places her arms around him. An extensive inscription on the base names them as husband and wife Nebefwy and Mes-sat, adding that they are both acquaintances of the king. The text also identifies their son, Meh-er-nefer, who dedicated the object to his father with the text: ‘It is his eldest son, whom he loves, who made this for him.’ The son’s name survives in two other places: on a papyrus from Gebelein in Upper Egypt, and a statue of Meh-er-nefer with his own son, also named Meh-er-nefer, which sold at Christie’s in 2022 for £6 million.

Archaeological evidence suggests that these statues were placed inside tomb chapels to ensure that a family’s identity, status and lineage were perpetuated throughout the afterlife. The figures were hidden from view within a chamber, but a small hole set high in the front wall was sometimes added to allow the fragrance of incense or uttering of ritual spells to pass between realms.

This particular statue was presented as a gift from James Porter, the British ambassador to the Ottoman Empire in Constantinople, to King George III, probably between 1760 and 1762. The king then gave it to his close friend Thomas Worsley, who proudly displayed it — alongside the statue sold at Christie’s in 2022 — in a specially created interior at his new home, Hovingham Hall, sometime before 1778. This makes it one of the first ancient Egyptian works of art to enter a British collection, some two decades before Napoleon’s expedition to the region catalysed European interest in its ancient civilisation during the following century. Completing this fascinating chain of provenance, the work was only rediscovered by scholars in 1955, and it has remained in the Worsley family at Hovingham Hall until now.

Nine Wunderkammer objects, 16th and 17th centuries

As humanist philosophy spread across Europe during the 16th century, a new breed of collector emerged. Originating from German treasuries built to safeguard jewels and regalia, Wunderkammern — cabinets of curiosity — evolved to project not just their owner’s wealth, but also their worldly virtues.

Writing around 1565, the Flemish physician Samuel Quiccheberg said that, in order to provide a complete understanding of the entire universe, the ideal Wunderkammer should include a combination of natural specimens, ethnographic art, scientific instruments, historical artefacts and, importantly, artistic wonders made by man.

These nine objects belong to the last-named category. The result of transforming rare and exotic materials — including lapis lazuli, nautilus shells, ostrich eggs and rock crystal — into dazzling vessels mounted in gold or silver and shaped like mythical beasts, grand ships or ironically utilitarian objects, they exemplify the pinnacle of artisanal imagination and skill.

As some of the rarest, most precious and expensive items available from across the known world, these works of art also demonstrated their owner’s education, successful career, global trade links and even ancestral credentials as rulers. Accordingly, princely collectors competed fiercely on the open market for the most spectacular objects that could — as the philosopher Francis Bacon put it — add ‘depth of knowledge to the fineness of your spirits and greatness of your power’.

The skull of a sabre-toothed tiger, Pleistocene epoch

The Smilodon — better known by the name ‘sabre-toothed tiger’ — was the most powerful big cat of all time, making it an icon among prehistoric predators. Members of the genus roamed North America until around 10,000 years ago. Capable of running at top speeds of around 50 kilometres per hour, they could measure up to a metre in height and almost double that in length, weighing as much as 200 kilograms. With their huge, finely serrated and elegantly curved upper canines, and jaws that had evolved to open into an exceptionally wide gape — perhaps up to 120 degrees — these beasts could deliver a devastatingly precise and powerful blow unlike anything today’s carnivores are capable of.

This exquisite specimen, with a pair of teeth that extend more than 15 centimetres from root to tip, was discovered in a sinkhole on private land in Florida in 2008. It comes from the Pleistocene period — around 70,000 to 11,000 years ago — and represents Smilodon fatalis, one of three species of Smilodon. At once both formidable and elegant, it stands as testament to the extremes of evolutionary adaptation that occurred at the end of the last Ice Age, and is a captivating symbol of a long-vanished world.

A first edition of Emily Brontë’s Wuthering Heights, 1847

Emily Brontë’s only novel, Wuthering Heights, has become a cultural phenomenon, spawning dozens of adaptations across screen, stage and song. Born in Yorkshire in 1818, Emily began writing in collaboration with her sisters Charlotte and Anne from a young age. Anne’s first novel, Agnes Grey, and Emily’s Wuthering Heights were both written before Charlotte had finished Jane Eyre, but the latter work was published first, in October 1847. Its immediate and enormous success prompted the hasty release of the other two texts within weeks, capitalising on the wave of public excitement. Tragically, just a year later, Emily died of tuberculosis.

It’s thought that only around 250 copies of the first edition of Wuthering Heights were ever printed. Of these, examples in their original full-cloth binding are exceedingly scarce: just five other examples are known. Three are in the libraries of Leeds, Oxford and Princeton universities. The fourth is in the British Library in London. And the fifth — Charlotte’s annotated copy, which has pages missing — was sold at Christie’s in 2009.

This example is bound in diagonally ribbed green-grey cloth. Floral patterns and arabesques are stamped on the cover, while the book’s title is lettered in gilt on the spine. Missing is the author’s name — all three sisters published under male pseudonyms to bypass gender prejudices. Shortly after production, this copy entered the library of a historic English house, where it has remained ever since. As a result, it has survived in exceptionally good condition, making it arguably the finest example of Brontë’s masterpiece in private hands.

A Japanese Buddha sculpture, 14th century

Crafted in cypress wood and coated with shimmering lacquer, this statue depicts Siddhartha Gautama — the Buddha — at the point of achieving supreme enlightenment.

This moment of divine intervention occurred in Bodh Gaya, in north-east India, in 589 B.C., after the 35-year-old former prince had rejected worldly life to meditate beneath a fig tree for 49 days. Today, the site is home to the Mahabodhi Temple Complex, a UNESCO World Heritage Site and place of pilgrimage for millions every year.

The sculpture shows him in the lotus position, legs crossed, hands together, and palms raised skywards; his delicately carved features suggest a moment of both deep concentration and total serenity.

The statue is a rare survival: carbon dating confirms that it was made in medieval Japan during the late Kamakura-Nanboku-chō period, which spans 1185-1392. During this time, power was shifting from the imperial court in Kyoto to a military class in the provinces, giving rise to the samurai and the first shogunate. These new warlords preferred artists who treated their subjects with honesty and virile energy, inspiring a new age of realism. This development was mirrored in Japan’s religion: as Zen Buddhism spread from the courts to the masses, its aesthetics embraced intense physicality, naturalistic proportions and individual expressions in order to emphasise spiritual power.

Painted text running down the reverse and across the underside of this statue gives a clue to its origins: in 1691, a high-ranking priest named Gogaku acquired it from a temple in Nishiosuka, a village in modern-day Chiba Prefecture, where it was likely worshipped as the site’s principal deity.

A bust of Voltaire by Jean-Antoine Houdon, 1778

In early 1778, the greatest philosopher of the French Enlightenment sat down with one of the most celebrated sculptors of the century to pose for a series of portraits.

François-Marie Arouet, better known by his pen name Voltaire, was in his eighties, and a celebrity across Europe for his advocacy of civil liberties. Upon returning to Paris for the first time in more than 25 years, he had been welcomed as a hero — but the journey had taken a toll on his ailing body, and on 30 May 1778 he would die.

The artist Jean-Antoine Houdon, though 47 years Voltaire’s junior, was already highly acclaimed, after winning the Prix de Rome in 1761. He modelled three different likenesses of the great thinker in marble, bronze and plaster. The first, which is now in the National Gallery of Art, Washington, D.C., shows him wearing a jacket, waistcoat and wig. The second depicts him in a robe and tainia — a type of headband worn by philosophers in antiquity. This became the model for one of Houdon’s most celebrated works, Seated Voltaire, a version of which was commissioned by Catherine the Great and is now in the Hermitage in St Petersburg.

For the third version, created just days before Voltaire’s death, Houdon fashioned a simple, short bust that depicted him without his trademark locks, appearing physically fragile but with a glimmer of a knowing smile. Versions in marble are held by the Metropolitan Museum of Art in New York, the National Gallery of Art in Washington, D.C., and the Musée d’Angers. Another, in bronze, is in the Louvre.

Of all Houdon’s portraits, this third style was Voltaire’s favourite. This rare example in terracotta was a given as a gift by the philosopher to Charles Juste de Beauvau, 2nd Prince of Craon, a cherished friend who accompanied him on a farewell tour of Parisian institutions during his final days.

The Exceptional Sale: Masterworks Across Cultures in on view at Christie’s in London, 26-30 June 2026

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