18K€ "attributed to Otto van Veen" is copy after engraving by Aegidius Sadeler after Hans Speckaert

Monsantic, from Belgium, sells on 2 September 2018 an "attributed to Otto van Veen" Adoration of the Magi, estimated at 18,000 to 22,000 Euro.

Which would be a considerable amount for a fair Otto Van Veen, but is way too much for a work in rather poor condition. It seems to have lost most of its freshness, as if it has been kept unvarnished for too long. Even so, it looks as if it was made by a competent but not brilliant painter, and the auctioneer (or seller) may have been deceived by the good composition into attributing it to a better painter.

The work is based on en engraving by Aegidius Sadeler (copy from the Rijksmuseum), which copied a painting by Hans Speckaert (1540-1577).

Jaël and Sisera, a typical Speckaert painting (Boijmans - Van Beuningen)

I had never heard of him, but he is one of the Flemish painters who stayed mainly in Italy in the 16th century, and had through their works and the engravings made of them a considerable influence on art in the Netherlands, moving away from the late Gothic (Early Netherlandish) style towards more Italian-style Renaissance images, especially the so-caled Northern Mannerism style with highly exaggerated figures (something which in a different form had already been popular in the circle of Coecke van Aelst some decades earlier). Bartholomeus Spranger is probably the best known of these painters.

The RKD lists one other version of this painting, a very small oval one which they date to the late 16th century (without indication of its origin as an engraving).  Both these paintings are considerably worse in the details compared to the engraving, so they are not the original by Speckaert, in case anyone wondered.

Anyway, all this doesn't prove that it isn't by van Veen, but a copy after an engraving, by a decent painter but in a rather poor condition (and at 75cm wide not particularly large either), is not worth 18,000€ by a wide margin. Some 3,000 Euro perhaps, depending on whether people really like the style this has been painted in and believe that some care could bring the colours back to life a bit, which I doubt.