Europe

It is not usually understood that the prophet Mohammed did not actually ban images. This came about some 60 years after his death. In very late AH77 (696AD) the then caliph instituted an epigraphic gold coinage: the dinar (cf. Latin: denarius).

ITALY: Back on November 4, Semenzato (19 per cent buyer’s premium, including VAT) held a sale of furniture and works of art in Venice in which an 18th century Venetian painted chest of drawers, pictured right, produced the highest price of the day at Li160m (£52,460).

Less than a week after Sotheby’s became the first foreign auctioneers to sell in France, Christie’s brought down the hammer on their inaugural French sale – the first session of the Charles-Otto Zieseniss collection.

Radical changes are planned for next year’s 13th staging of one of the world’s top fairs, the Biennale des Antiquaires at the Carrousel du Louvre in Paris.

LAPADA, the UK’s largest association of professional art and antiques dealers, is pioneering a new scheme that could see it merge with a leading European association.

Basic buyer’s premium almost doubles: On the rainswept evening of November 29 in Paris, as the tricolor fluttered proudly over the Elysée Palace and Christmas lights twinkled on the Champs-Elysées, history was made as Sotheby’s became the first foreign auctioneers ever to sell in France – exploding a monopoly dating back to 1556.

SALES IN ITALY: The first auctions to take place in Italy this autumn in the midst of these days of gloom have been encouraging. In Rome on October 30, Christie’s (22.5/18.5% buyer’s premium) sold the contents of the residences of a collector, Michele Falzone del Barbarò. All 362 lots sold for around £400,000, far exceeding the auctioneers’ expectations.

Dublin auctioneer John de Vere White is to sell 25 paintings on behalf of Aer Lingus, the national airline of the Republic of Ireland, on November 20.

Trade gap in art also mushrooms: Fine art exports from the UK to non-EU countries have increased by 50 per cent in the year ending December 2000. Equivalent imports for the same period also rose by a substantial amount – 26 per cent.

The German-based Oetke Group are currently in negotiations to sell the Bond Street galleries of Colnaghi, one of the oldest names in the London art trade, to the London and Munich Old Master dealer Konrad Bernheimer.

The comprehensive collection of French royal issues formed by Michel Bonhomme was dispersed in Paris at Christian Delorme et Vincent Fraysse (expert: Alain Weil) on October 9-10. The period covered was from Charles V (1364-80) until the fall of the French monarchy in 1792.

FRANCE: There were some prestigious names among the 24 exhibitors at the first Salon International d’Art Asiatique, held at the Hôtel Dassault on the Champs-Elysées from October 5-8.

FRANCE: After a long and frustrating delay, Sotheby’s and Christie’s finally got the official go-ahead late last week to conduct auctions in France. They were among the first four auction houses to receive a licence from the French Conseil des Ventes on October 25 and both houses swiftly announced details of their inaugural sales to be held later this year.

A new design fair made its debut last month in Paris at the Carrousel du Louvre on September 29. Focusing on pieces, from the 1950s to the present SM’ART (le salon du mobilier et de l’objet design) mixed post-war design classics from Italy, France and Scandinavia with works by contemporary designers.

The rediscovery of a significant work by a major Old Master painter is always an event for the art trade, even if the work not obviously commercial. When Anthony Blunt wrote his monograph on Nicholas Poussin (1594-1665) this painting, right, of The Holy Family with St. John the Baptist, executed c.1627-28 when the young Poussin first worked in Rome, was only known from engravings.

FRANCE: With Art Deco becoming increasingly rare and costly, collectors and auctioneers are starting to take a serious interest in Post-Deco: furniture and furnishings from the 1940s and later.

FRANCE: Francis Briest, France’s leading auctioneer of modern and contemporary art, is to join up with the modern art dealers and booksellers Artcurial (acquired by Nicolas Orlowski from Oréal in 1999).

France’s Syndicat National des Antiquaires (National Dealers' Association) has called on the French government to reject the Unidroit convention, which enforces strict rules on the restitution of stolen art.

FRANCE: The 2nd part of the J. Lemarchand Collection of trains and toys came under the hammer in Chartres (Lelièvre-Maiche-Paris) in a 680-lot sale on September 15 & 16.

COPENHAGEN: Combining the current commercial attractions of Denmark’s so-called Golden Age painters of the early 19th century with plein air oil sketches by artists made in Italy during the same period, an intriguing group of small canvases by three, albeit relatively minor Danish Golden Age artists sketching in Italy proved to be a predictably desirable target on the second day of Bruun Rasmussen’s (25% buyer’s premium) September 3-5 sale in Copenhagen.