The auction’s guest of honour was Edgar Degas and one of his iconic sculptures, while a work attributed to Giampietrino represented the Italian Renaissance.
The bronze statuette with a brown patina and shades of red shows a dancer preparing to perform, her right foot forward. It sold for €330,400. In 1921, founder A. Hébrard cast this version of the original wax model, made by Degas in ca. 1882-1895. Twenty proofs were made, each bearing a letter from A to T. Two other models, marked “HER.D” and “HER”, respectively, were made and reserved for the heirs of Degas and Hébrard. At a 1924 show in Glasgow, the statuette was bought by collector D. W. Cargill, who left it to his wife. The panel of Adam and Eve, attributed to the Milan artist Giovanni Pietro Rizzoli, known as Giampietrino, dates from the first half of the 16th century. It once graced the Bartholoni Villa’s walls in Geneva and changed hands for €87,320.
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