Germany

Bavaria is the most popular tourist destination in Germany and for more than 20 years the historic city of Bamberg has hosted a summer event in which a dozen prestigious dealers and galleries take part in a joint sales exhibition, held in their own premises.

The island of St Helena featured in a folding plate from a 1598, first English edition of Jan Huygen van Linschoten’s famous Itinerario – published as Discours of Voyages into ye Easte & West Indies – offered by Ketterer Kunst (20% buyer’s premium) on May 22.

This rather unsettling woodcut illustration shown above, an almost surreal depiction of an amputation, is taken from from a 1515, Grüninger of Strasbourg edition of Hieronymous Brunschwig’s Das buch der wund Artzeny. Handwirkung der Cirurgia.

Art books in a Ketterer Kunst (20% buyer’s premium) sale of May 22 included one of 15 deluxe copies of a 1950 edition of Harry Roskolenko’s Paris Poems, containing an original watercolour by Zau Wou-Ki and an extra suite of his lithographed illustrations. It sold at €42,000 (£36,240).

Featuring more than 70 decorative or historiated initials in full contemporary colour, a fine copy of a Biblia germanica printed by Gunther Zainer of Augsburg in 1475-76 sold for a record €120,000 (£103,450) in a Ketterer Kunst (20% buyer’s premium) sale.

Cleaned, restored and recently rebound in brown buckskin, together with a 1966 reprint, a rare 1495 Venetian first of Avicenna’s Metaphysica made €26,000 (£22,260) in a Reiss & Sohn (18% buyer’s premium) sale. The price was slightly under estimate but a record nonetheless.

German salerooms move series to Austria and Belgium in the wake of cultural goods law...

Recent Old Master paintings in Vienna and Cologne have yielded some predicted but also unexpected results including a high price for a work by a German better known for his poems and plays than his paintings.

The Malayan artist Cheong Soo Pieng (1917-83) is hardly a household name in Europe. Virtually all of his paintings that have sold at auction in recent decades came under the hammer in Hong Kong or Singapore.

“A masterpiece of Flemish book illumination,” said Reiss & Sohn (18% buyer’s premium) of a rare manuscript compendium of texts on chivalry, heraldry, nobility and the rules of war offered in its May 16-18 sales series.

Bid to a double-estimate €42,000 (£36,290) in a Ketterer Kunst (20% buyer’s premium) sale of May 22 was a very rare, 1566-67 Lisbon first of 'Chronica da felicissimo rei dom Emanuel…'

On May 19, not for the first time, Van Ham in Cologne is selling a painting by Raden Saleh Ben Jaggia (1811-80), a Javanese prince who made a career for himself during the 22 years he spent in Europe, mainly in The Netherlands and Germany.

Karl & Faber in Munich is offering 'Portrait of a Man, Holding a Carnation', a 16 x 11in (41 x 29cm) panel, attributed to Dirck Jacobsz (before 1497-1567) at its auction on May 19.

Gustave Vichy was probably the most accomplished manufacturer of automata in fin de siècle France. A prime example of his art is putting in an appearance at the May 20 sale of Auction Team Breker in Cologne.

A rare English humpback carriage clock is coming up for sale at Dr Crott in Frankfurt on May 6. The 6in (16cm) high calendar timepiece with phases of the moon and an English lever escapement was manufactured in the 1890s by Jump of London.