Raphael portrait to be auctioned for $30M

A rare work by Renaissance painter Raphael will be put on the block and is expected to fetch up to $30 million US, according to auction house Christie's.

Christie's officials say the portrait of Lorenzo de' Medici, duke of Urbino and ruler of Florence from 1513 to 1519, will be sold in London July 5 and could set a record price for a work by Raphael. The current record stands at $10.4 million US for a black crayon drawing sold in 1996.

The portrait has not been seen in public for almost 40 years after New York art dealer Ira Spanierman bought it at auction for an unknown amount in 1968.

"We are excited to offer this remarkable work by Raphael, one of the most renowned and accomplished of European artists," said Richard Knight, international director of Christie's Old Master Department.

"The importance of the artist and the sitter, together with the provenance and the historical context behind this painting's creation, make it one of the most significant old master pictures to be offered at auction for a generation."

Painting was an introduction to future wife

The work, measuring 97 by 79 centimetres, dates to 1518 and shows Medici posing slightly to the left against a forest background. The duke is clothed in a gold-embroidered costume with red puffy sleeves. In his right hand, he holds a miniature portrait of a woman — likely his future wife.

Pope Leo X commissioned the painting after he arranged a marriage between his nephew, Medici, and Madeleine de la Tour d'Auvergne, a cousin of Francois I, king of France.

The couple had never met, so the painting is a kind of introduction.

"It's designed to impress … to show the power, the importance and good looks of the sitter," said Paul Raison, an Old Master expert at Christie's.

They married in 1518 and had a daughter, Catherine de' Medici, who went on to marry King Henry II of France.

Raphael, born Raphael Sanzio in 1483, became a celebrated architect and painter known for his delicate and graceful style.

He began working for the Vatican at the age of 25, painting rooms and designing buildings for each successive pope as well as portraits of high-ranking officials and people.

The artist, who never married, died at age 37.

Thieves snatch Rembrandt from Chicago gallery

Chicago police are searching for a couple who walked into a private gallery and stole a 17th-century Rembrandt etching from the wall.

The etching, called Adam and Eve, shows Adam holding out an apple to Eve in the Garden of Eden while a serpent looks on.

The couple, described as middle-aged, spent about five minutes in the Hilligoss Gallery Sunday afternoon before disappearing. After they had left the gallery, the etching by Rembrandt van Rijn was discovered to be missing.

Gallery owner Tom Hilligoss estimates the value of the etching at $60,000 US.

He was selling the etching on consignment as part of an estate sale.

The thieves, who had been seen before in the gallery, may have targeted the etching after finding a buyer, he said.

"They went straight for it," Hilligoss said of the thieves, who were not caught on security cameras.

Japan to honour manga artists abroad

The Japanese government has announced a new award some consider the "Nobel Prize" of manga.

The International Manga Award is the brainchild of Japan's Foreign Minister Tara Aso, who is an avid fan of manga, the term used to describe Japanese comics and print cartoons.

"Manga and anime [Japanese animated films and TV series] have been spreading overseas and are selling quite well," Aso said.

"I want to further boost the communicative power of these so-called pieces of pop culture."

Presented to an artist working abroad, the new award will honour the winner's contribution to the spread of manga around the world, the Foreign Ministry said in a statement Tuesday.

While the award will carry no cash prize, organizers are in the process of creating a trophy and will host the winner and three runners-up at an awards ceremony in Japan.

Both the winner and the three other finalists will also be invited to spend 10 days in Japan meeting with local comic book artists and publishers.

The inaugural winner will be announced July 2.

Aso began proposing the establishment of a manga award last year, calling for the honour to be the equivalent of the prestigious Nobel Prize.

He has often promoted manga — which encompasses topics from cute stories for children to science fiction and fantasy to complex, realistic tales with adult themes and artwork — as a valuable Japanese cultural export.

Touted Riopelle fails to sell at auction

A large Jean-Paul Riopelle canvas from the Quebec artist's most celebrated period — one of the highlights of Sotheby's spring sale of Canadian art — failed to sell at auction in Toronto Monday.

The 1955 painting La Forêt Ardente, which features Riopelle's distinctive palette-knife style, drew spirited bidding, but only reached $1.7 million — short of the reserve price set for the masterwork, which Sotheby's had expected would sell for between $2 million and $2.5 million.

The auction house had forecast strong international interest in the work because of the popularity of Riopelle's pieces abroad.

Other major works that have failed to sell at auction have often sold soon afterward, and Sotheby's Canada president David Silcox said he expects to receive offers for La Forêt Ardente from private collectors in the next few days.

Overall, the sale moved $11.3 million worth of art by perennial favourites, such as members of the Group of Seven, as well as works by Quebec's Automatistes and post-war Canadian artists such as Jack Shadbolt, Christopher Pratt and Attila Richard Lukacs.

Some of the artworks sold include:

• The Paul-Émile Borduas works Pierres Angulaires and Composition, which sold for $402,500 and $520,000, respectively (all prices include buyer's premium). The sales set a new record high price for the artist.
• An untitled Riopelle that sold for $750,000.
• The Lawren Harris canvas Abstract Painting, which sold for $548,750 (and is the sister painting to Figure with Rays of Light that Sotheby's sold a year ago for $1.095 million).
• Jean Paul Lemieux's Rencontre, which sold for $462,500 and is a new record price for the Quebec artist.

Vancouver-based auction house Heffel kicked off the spring auction season in Canada last week, ultimately selling a record-setting $22.8 million worth of art, including a Harris work entitled Pine Tree and Red House, Winter, City Painting II for $2.875 million (including the 15 per cent buyer's premium).

The season continues Tuesday, with the first half of a two-day Joyner-Waddington's sale in Toronto.

German artist Jorg Immendorff dies

Contemporary German artist Jorg Immendorff, best known for his Café Deutschland series of paintings, has died at the age of 61.

Immendorff, who suffered from the neurodegenerative disease ALS (also known as Lou Gehrig's disease), died Monday after he went into cardiac arrest at home in Duesseldorf.

Immendorff won fame in the late 1970s and through the 1980s for his Café Deutschland series. The vibrant, busy paintings depicted scenes from an imaginary nightclub on the border between the former East and West Germany and dealt with the partition of Germany and its post-Second World War problems.

The northern Germany-born artist was a student of Joseph Beuys at the Duesseldorf Art Academy during the 1960s.

During his years as a student activist, he rejected traditional paintings and was kicked out of the school for staging a series of political and neo-dadaist performance-art "happenings."

During the 1970s, he and other students formed a neo-expressionist artists group called the Neue Wilde. Later, Immendorff spent about a dozen years teaching art to high school students.

In 1996, the artist returned to his Duesseldorf alma mater as a professor.

More recently, Immendorff's eye turned inward, with his paintings reflecting more personal issues and demonstrating more of a surrealist style.

Later in his life, Immendorff became a friend and supporter of former German chancellor Gerhard Schroeder. He unveiled a portrait of Schroeder, destined for display at the German Federal Chancellery, earlier this year.

Elizabeth Taylor gets to keep Vincent Van Gogh painting

An US appeals court has decided in favour of actress Dame Elizabeth Taylor, who was entangled in a legal battle with a Jewish family over the possession of a Vincent Van Gogh painting.

The three-judge panel ruled on Friday that the Orkin family, which claimed that the Nazis had stolen the original painting from them, waited too long to move the court for its return.

While suing Taylor in 2004, the family contended that Nazi soldiers had illegally seized the painter's 1889 piece View of the Asylum Chapel at Saint-Remy from their aunt's home, during the holocaust.

They demanded that the valuable artwork be returned to them under the 1998 U.S. Holocaust Victims Redress Act.

Earlier, a lower court had also ruled that the Orkins waited too long to claim the painting, which Taylor bought at a London auction in 1963.

Upholding the lower court's ruling, the appeals court said that the family must have come to know about the whereabouts of the painting through its high-profile purchase, and a subsequent international auction in 1990, and they should have acted quicker.

"It is apparent that Ms Taylor's acquisition of the painting was certainly discoverable at least by 1990," Contactmusic quoted Judge Sidney Thomas, one of the three judges on the court panel, as saying.