Overpriced, misattributed, misdescribed, but interesting anyway!

Marques dos Santos, from Portugal, sells on 13 December an "Attributed to Maerten de Vos" Coronation of the Virgin, estimated at 15,000 to 20,000 Euro.

The description goes on to state "in the center the Virgin, the Holy Trinity and Pope Sixtus VI, view of Antwerp in the background". The figure they claim to be Sixtus VI is God the Father, and the city one can view at the bottom is unidentified, but definitely not Antwerp.

The painting also has little to do with Maerten de Vos, his style is quite different, and better. Which brings me to the valuation, which seems very high for an iconographically very interesting work, but with little artistic value.

It is an extremely unusual version of the Coronation of the Virgin, which usually comes in two flavours; either Christ and God the Father are each to a side, and Mary is inbetween them, and they both are crowning her together. Or else you only get Mary and Christ side by side (the former seems to have been used more since the time of the Reformation, giving even more "credibility" to the status of Mary; the latter was mainly used in older depictions of the scene). But I have never seen one with a triple (though asymmetrical) throne with Mary on the side. It seems to be an effort, probably at the time of the Reformation and the Contrareformation, to get things doctrinally exactly right; getting such things wrong in those years could have very bad results for you...

Almost bought an unknown Rubens' drawing

Marquis-Olivier, from France, sells on 16 December 2017 a "Flemish School, 17th century" drawing (sanguine) of "Angels adoring the Virgin", estimated at 200€ (they first offered it a month ago with a 400€ estimate, but I guess it didn't sell then).

At first, I was very excited about this drawing, as it looked like a work by Rubens, a sketch for his Vallicella Madonna (of which different versions exist).

The drawing is similar enough to be clearly about the same work, but different enough not to be a copy after it but some design for it.

The quality of the drawing was good (though not superb), and the style was typical for Rubens' in his Italian period.

Luckily I contacted someone who knows a lot more about Rubens. At first they were enthusiastic (but realistic), and agreed that this could well be an unknown and unrecognised drawing by Rubens.

But just days before the sale, they came back with bad news: it is almost certainly a copy after all, not after a painting, but after an authentic drawing by Rubens kept in the Albertina in Vienna. That drawing is nearly identical to the one for sale, but better in its execution. They may still be two versions of the same design, with perhaps the one for sale slightly earlier, but the more likely explanation is that the one for sale is a copy after the one in the Albertina (perhaps at best a workshop copy from Rubens' time). So in the end we decided, with some regrets, not to go for it.

And that's how I almost bought an unknown Rubens' drawing!