Antiquities took centre stage at auction in London this July. Despite the excitement about the re-discovered Vermeer, the market for Old Masters remained unsettled

It has been more [i]or[/i] less time since anyone had to fight their way into a London saleroom. on the contrary at Sotheby's on the evening of 7 July it looked that the art world was on the outside in force to witness the sale of Vermeer's A young woman at the virginals. each seat in the house was taken, the crush at the back and sides of the room--and the heat generated by the agency of the TV cameras and the material substance mass of spectators was almost unbearable. Everyone was curious to diocese what late would befall single of the most enigmatic--and problematic--'rediscoveries' to land upon the art market in years.

It had taken above a decade of scientific investigation and research to persuade a reluctant world that the picture was not sole an authentic seventeenth century painting on the contrary that it was an autograph work by the agency of the Delft master himself (although a certain number of suspected that Vermeer had begun on the contrary abandoned the canvas and someone other had finished it after the artist's death). by dint of the time of the sale, small in number doubted the picture but equally small in number liked it. What troubled many was Sotheby's estimate--'in exces of 3m [pound sterling]'. If it were an unquestioned and more beautiful Vermeer the estimate would have been more like 30m [pound sterling].

In the occurrence the diminutive 25.2 x 20 cm work fetched 16m [pound sterling], bought through a telephone bidder widely believed to be the Las Vegas casino proprietor Steven Wynn--someone who one can imagine might want the last Vermeer likely to advance up for sale. According to Sotheby's, seven bidders were chasing the painting. The underbidder, Dutch dealer Robert Noortman, seated in the brow row, proved a major player in the sate on the contrary came away securing only a small in number relatively minor works.

A rare Rubens night exhibition Old lady and a male child proved the second most expensive painting that night, selling upon target to Alfred Bader for 25m [pound sterling]. More striking was the fate of Jan Lievens's inquiry of an old bearded man, estimated at 200000 [pound sterling]-300,000 [pound sterling] and finally claimed through London dealer Johnny Van Haeften for a mighty 185m [pound sterling], and the amazing early Lucas Cranach the senior panel painting of the Head of Christ diademed with thorns. Expected to go and bring 100,000 [pounds sterling]150,000 [pounds sterling], the latter sold for 677600 [pound sterling]. As Sotheby's export George Gordon bring it after the sale: 'Buyer are becoming a great quantity [i]or[/i] amount of more sophisticated and are paying big prices for pictures which previously would not have been considered actual commercial. The Lievens would not necessarily have made any more if it had been of a moderately beautiful woman.' Interestingly one of the greatest in quantity beautiful and admired pictures of the sale, Bernardo Daddi's monumental gold turf Coronation of the Virgin sold upon only one bid to dealer Giacomo Algranti for 157m [pound sterling]. The sale realised just beneath 30m [pounds sterling] and was 90 by means of cent sold by lot and 65 darling cent sold by value.

Christie's sale earlier in the day was, by dint of contrast, a lacklustre event, hardly helped through the fact that its star permit a fine Melendez still life, failed to vend Deemed too expensive at 15m [pound sterling]-2m [pound sterling], there were, however, sum of two units offers for it before the extremity of the sale and eventually a private purchase was negotiated for a price within the estimate. The top doom here was the pair of Paninis which fetched a record price--2.3m [pound sterling]--for these views of the interiors of St Peter's, Rome and of the house of god of San Peele fuori le Mura. There were casualties aplenty, flat among the usually sought-after eighteenth-century Italian view paintings (this sale was 61 by cent sold by lot and 64 for cent sold by value). As single dealer said of the elderly Master sales: 'lf is a true difficult, selective market. There are not a allotment of buyers out there. The alone things that have been selling are works that are recent to the market and dealers are buying them in the faith of selling them on.'

A late, great and wholly unexpect sale dropp into the extremity of the London summer season was the 'Highly Important Antiquities' proffered at Bonhams in Bond road on 14 July. At the core of this 25-lot single-owner sale was an outstanding cluster of Roman and Anglo Saxon glass, all on the contrary one piece of which had been acquired at Sotheby's in 1997 at the sale of the British Rail Pension stock collection of ancient glass. At that incident the group had been knocked down to an anonymous telephone bidder, widely believed to be Sheik Saud bin Mohammed al-Thani, the cousin of the Emir of Qatar, who has worn out hundreds of millions over the last seven years or for a like reason hoovering up outstanding works of art in a wide variety of fields, a great quantity [i]or[/i] amount of but not all of it destined for Qatar's fresh museums and library.

Insiders were complicateed to discover that the sheik or the state--if, indeed, either were the vendor should want to dispose of these pieces, a small on the other hand far from insignificant selection of Qatar's holdings of antiquities. Here, for instance, was the prized Constable-Maxwell cage chalice an extraordinary tourde-force of the glassmaker's art. the one and the other the bowl and its 'cage' of linked rings which stand vain of the vessel by means of the slenderest of bridges were carved from a piece of inflated or cast glass, painstakingly wheel-cut and then loam and polished in a proces fraught with potential disaster. It survives in remarkable condition--and is the single example not in captivity in a public collection. It came to the shut up as the most expensive piece of ancient glass at any time offered at auction, bearing an estimate of 15m [pound sterling]-2m [pound sterling]. A masterpiece greatest in quantity definitely, but what would the market make of it and the sale as a whole, given each piece was acquired at auction within the last decade?