Europe

A drawing offered at a Paris auction with an attribution to Italian Renaissance painter Giovanni Francesco Penni (1488-1528) was hammered down at €1.13m (£980,000).

Drawings Week in the French capital included a wide variety of styles, eras and value. Pictured here is a selection of highlights and some more affordable items from the vast array of works on paper of all types offered during Drawings Week in Paris in late March.

The ‘Toulouse Caravaggio’ is currently on show at Paris Contemporary art dealership Galerie Kamel Mennour opposite a work more than 400 years its junior.

Not everything in the spring drawings sales required a six-figure bank balance to purchase. Plenty of more affordable works appeared across all the Paris rooms – both Drouot and the independents (and, of course, in the various dealers shows and fairs). Pictured here are some works within the reach of less elevated budgets.

British and Irish book auctions: April 16-27, 2019

In the 1980s, the 3ft 7in x 2ft 9in (1.1m x 85cm) canvas of Saint Bartholomew being offered by Dorotheum in Vienna on April 30 was tentatively ascribed to Caravaggio. The treatment of light and shadow and the extreme naturalism in the portrayal certainly indicate a proximity to the revolutionary artist.

This gouache is one of around 10 drawings, watercolours and gouaches by René Gruau, the Italian-born fashion illustrator who was renowned for his Paris haute couture and promotional illustrations, which will feature in Tajan’s Paris auction of modern drawings on May 15.

ATG’s calendar of book auctions taking place in the UK and Ireland from April 16-27, 2019.

The May 11-12 Geneva sale conducted by Phillips in association with watch consultancy Bacs & Russo includes one of the most complicated wristwatches of the pre-war era: the Vacheron Constantin minute repeater with retrograde calendar from 1940.

A label to this 21 x 16½in (53 x 42cm) print reads 'Photograph of the Moon, taken by Prof Henry Draper, MD, with a silvered glass Telescope, Fifteen and a Half Inches Aperture, Hastings NY September 3rd 1863'.

Philippe Fortuné Durand is regarded as the first professional photographer in France.

A double helping of vintage cameras and photographic equipment was recently staged at Chartres by the Ivoire group Lelièvre, Pascal, Maiche, Paris (20% buyer’s premium).

The boom in all things Chinese does occasionally make one marvel as to how and why some material finished up in the West.