Cimabue (vers 1250 - vers 1302)

Cimabue, the first artist to break away somewhat from the Byzantine tradition, is deemed the father of Western painting. The appearance of one of his works has stunned the art world.

€24,180,000 very precisely: this was the price paid for Christ Mocked, a little panel by the Tuscan master.   

Cimabue’s medieval panel The Christ Mocked, discovered in an elderly woman’s kitchen, was in October put up for auction by Actéon, achieving €19.5m. It has now been classed as a ‘national treasure’, blocking it from export and giving the state 30 months to purchase it from its current owner.

The Christ Mocked, found in a woman’s kitchen, smashed its estimate of €4/6 M to become the most expensive pre-1500 painting, and produced the first public auction result for the Florentine artist. The 13th century 10-inch panel painting, offered by Actéon in France, is thought to have gone to the Alana collection.

No sign of any Cimabues hiding in any kitchens in 2021—though the year is still young—but instead, two little Late Gothic works never yet seen at auction, attributed to Bartoldo di Fredi and Michele Giambono, in boxes from the beginning of the last century.

Unless a last-minute twist occurs, the most expensive work sold at auction in France this year will have been a Cimabue panel which achieved €24 M by Actéon at Senlis. An impressive result in Dijon too (with Courtot), where the Met purchased a rare panel by the master of Vyssi Brod for €6.2 M.

A totem of French painting, and, according to the Cimabue expert himself Éric Turquin, the most beautiful work ever to pass through his hands, Chardin's Basket of Wild Strawberries has a multimillion estimate.

As the German art historian’s second term running the Florentine museum that houses Michelangelo’s David comes to an end, we look back at her achievements, from a major upgrade to the restoration of works.

After Cimabue, Artemisia and the Master of Vyšší Brod, Paris is continuing the recent spate of discoveries with this new Ribera unearthed by Bertrand de Cotton and Benoît Derouineau in a large house in western France.

To celebrate the opening of his Parisian gallery, which will be managed by Giulia Giustiniani, the world’s foremost Italian Old Masters dealer is featuring a Guercino della prima maniera discovered at an auction.