Antonello da Messina’s Rare Double-Sided Masterpiece Will Lead Sotheby’s Old Masters Sales

January 15, 2026 / Rolling Stone British /

Antonello da Messina’s Ecce Homo; Saint Jerome in Penitence (c. 1460-1465) has a high estimate of $15 million. Courtesy of Sotheby’s

It’s not every day that a work by Antonello da Messina comes to auction—especially one whose value and authenticity are bolstered by an extensive exhibition history, scholarly literature and clean provenance. Sotheby’s has secured a rare, jewel-like panel (c. 1460-1465) by the Sicilian Renaissance master, estimated at $10-15 million, which will lead its upcoming Old Masters week at its landmark Breuer headquarters in February.

The double-sided panel unites two evocative compositions that exemplify Antonello’s innovative use of light—marked by soft modulation—and his groundbreaking naturalism in rendering human emotion and psychological presence. The front presents an emotionally charged and profoundly human Ecce Homo, portraying Christ as a youthful figure, bound, crowned with thorns and flinching in pain. The motif would go on to influence generations of painters, particularly within the Venetian school. Antonello himself revisited the subject repeatedly, with other examples now held in major museum collections including the Metropolitan Museum of Art in New York, the Musei Civici di Palazzo Farnese and Collegio Alberoni in Piacenza and the Galleria Regionale della Sicilia at Palazzo Abatellis in Palermo.

The reverse offers a more lyrical image: Saint Jerome in the Desert, in which the saint is immersed in a luminous, atmospheric landscape that acts as an echo chamber, amplifying the work’s spiritual resonance and meditative calm. This approach was later adopted and refined by painters such as Giovanni Bellini, as seen in St. Francis in the Desert (ca. 1475-1480), now at the Frick Collection.

Likely used as a portable devotional object, the small-scale panel appears to have been carried by its owners during prayer, as suggested by the surface erosion around the saint—probably caused by repeated kissing and touching during acts of devotion. The Metropolitan Museum’s example is among its closest known comparables.

Only about 40 works by Antonello are known to survive, with most held in museum collections. This painting is widely believed to be one of the few still in private hands, and it will only be the second work of this caliber to appear at auction in a generation. The last was Portrait of a Man (known as Il Condottiere), now in the Musée du Louvre in Paris, acquired in 1865 from the collection of the Comte de Pourtalès-Gorgier at the insistence of Napoleon III. That acquisition marked one of the first major Renaissance works to enter the Louvre through the art market rather than via royal or ecclesiastical donation. Other, less significant examples that surfaced at auction have typically carried weaker attributions—often catalogued as “after” Antonello or attributed to followers or workshop members, rather than being confidently attributed to the master himself. Another devotional panel, The Madonna and Child with a Franciscan Monk in Adoration (recto) with Ecce Homo (verso), sold at Christie’s London in 2003 for $251,650, landing at the midpoint of its estimate. However, it lacked the exceptional exhibition history and documented provenance of the panel now offered by Sotheby’s, reinforcing the latter’s standing as a historical and commercial landmark.

The earliest recorded mention of the panel dates to the early 20th Century, when it was part of a Spanish private collection. It was acquired by Wildenstein & Co. in 1967 and subsequently sold via private sale at Sotheby’s to dealer Fabrizio Moretti, who in turn sold it to its current owner. The first scholarly reference came from Federico Zeri, one of the 20th Century’s most influential art historians. In recent decades, the panel has been featured in major exhibitions at the Museo Thyssen-Bornemisza in Madrid, the Museu de Belles Arts de València and the Metropolitan Museum of Art’s landmark Antonello da Messina retrospective in 2005-2006. It later traveled to Italy for a comprehensive survey of the artist’s oeuvre at the Scuderie del Quirinale in Rome in spring 2006 and was most recently shown at Palazzo Reale in 2019.

“This work by Antonello da Messina is both extremely rare and extremely important, and opportunities like this simply don’t come along very often,” Christopher Apostle, Sotheby’s International Head of the Old Masters, told Observer. “For this particular work, we have documentation dating back to the beginning of the 20th Century, though not earlier, and it has never previously been publicly available on the open market,” confirming that the panel comes from a private collection in the United States. Apostle also emphasized Antonello’s pivotal role in the evolution of painting as a bridge between Flemish innovations—particularly oil technique and minute surface realism—and the spatial clarity and humanist rigor of Italian painting. His brief but influential career, especially his time in Venice, left a lasting imprint on Venetian art, shaping artists from Giovanni Bellini onward. By synthesizing Northern realism with Italian spatial and humanist concerns, Antonello helped establish oil painting as a dominant medium in Italy and redefined the expressive potential of portraiture and sacred imagery, infusing them with heightened psychological immediacy and interior presence.

At a time when painters in southern Italy had not yet fully embraced naturalism or optical effects, Antonello achieved remarkable subtlety, Apostle noted. In this work, light enters from the left, shaping Christ’s body through delicate transitions, reflected shadows and gradual tonal shifts across the chest and shoulders. “These minute modulations reveal Antonello as a true master of light, capable of creating an effect that is both restrained and profoundly moving.”

A small Renaissance panel shows Saint Jerome kneeling in a rocky desert landscape, his thin body bent in penitence amid cliffs, sparse trees, books and devotional objects. — Antonello da Messina was born in Sicily, where he received training in Naples and later worked in Venice, and his creative legacy was continued by Giovanni Bellini and Giorgione. Courtesy of Sotheby’s

Over his 38 years at Sotheby’s, Apostle has spent countless weeks and months with paintings, yet this work distinguished itself by revealing its beauty slowly. “This is one of those pictures that becomes more and more beautiful the longer you live with it,” he said, noting that while some works make an immediate impact, this one unfolds differently. “The longer I live with it, the more beautiful it becomes. And when you hold it in your hands—which is really how it’s meant to be experienced—it’s such an intimate encounter.” The fact that it was actively venerated, he added, infused the panel with spiritual and emotional energy accumulated over time, making it even more affecting.

Given the extreme rarity of Antonello da Messina on the market, Apostle acknowledged that there are no true comparables by the artist himself. The $10-15 million estimate was therefore calibrated against works by artists of comparable historical stature, including an Andrea Mantegna that sold for $28 million at Sotheby’s New York in January 2003.

Other highlights of upcoming Old Master sales

The painting will be offered as part of Sotheby’s live sale Master Paintings & Works of Art Part I on February 5. Other highlights include Allegory of Music, Jacopo Tintoretto’s only surviving illusionistic ceiling painting, notable for its trompe-l’œil execution and produced with his workshop around 1550. First recorded in the early 20th Century as part of the collection of Count Alessandro Contini Bonacossi in Florence, the work remained with the family for generations before being acquired in 2002 by the consignor, the estate of Stanley Moss, the American poet, publisher and cultural figure best known as the longtime head of Ulysses Press. It comes to auction with an estimate of $500,000-700,000.

Also from the Moss estate—and acquired alongside the Tintoretto from the Contini Bonacossi family—is an exquisite painting of a woman at her toilette by Giovanni Bellini and his workshop, estimated at $600,000-800,000. With extensive scholarly literature, the work has featured in major museum exhibitions over the past decade at Palazzo delle Esposizioni in Rome, the Museo Thyssen-Bornemisza and the Kunsthistorisches Museum in Vienna.

Another six-figure lot is Jean-Baptiste Carpeaux’s pair of marble sculptures, Jeune Fille à la Coquille and Pêcheur à la Coquille, dated 1827-1875 and estimated at $1,500,000-2,500,000. The works have been on long-term loan to the Art Gallery of Ontario in Toronto since May 2023.

Also making a rare auction appearance is Jean-Honoré Fragonard’s Head of a Bearded Man, offered with an estimate of $600,000-800,000. This freely executed study captures the liveliness and softness of the Rococo master’s hand, with feathery brushwork and delicate pastel tones. It belongs to a celebrated group of bust-length têtes de vieillards produced from the mid-1760s to early 1770s—not as a formal series but as painterly experiments—of which at least eight examples, mostly in museum collections, are known today. Its well-documented provenance and extensive literature not only support the attribution but also help justify the estimate.

Leading the Masters Week at Sotheby’s will be the prestigious Diane A. Nixon Collection—one of the finest drawing collections in the U.S. and the most significant single-owner drawings sale in over a decade. Beginning in the 1990s, Nixon, who is arguably one of the few women to build a collection of this caliber, quietly assembled a museum-quality group spanning four centuries, from Correggio to Redon. Although works from her collection have been exhibited at institutions including the National Gallery of Art and the Morgan Library & Museum, they were always shown anonymously, making this sale the first time her name will be publicly attached to the collection. Highlights range from Fra Bartolommeo’s rare early landscape and an exceptional group of 17th-century Italian drawings by Guercino, Preti, Salvator Rosa and Pietro da Cortona, alongside luminous works by Tiepolo and Watteau, and a rare sheet attributed to Carel Fabritius. Later works by Greuze, Constable, Delacroix, Degas and Redon round out the collection.

Also on offer this February is the remarkable collection of Lester Weindling—a small but precisely curated group of just twelve works, representing the best of the Dutch Golden Age. Its top lot, Pieter Claesz’s Still Life with Assorted Fruit, Including Wild Strawberries and Cherries in Two Porcelain Bowls, carries an estimate of $800,000-1,200,000. The full collection is expected to achieve $12-18 million.

White gloved hands holding a drawing of a resting lion. — Rembrandt Harmensz. van Rijn, *Young Lion Resting*, ca. 1638-42. Black chalk with white chalk heightening and grey wash on brown laid paper, 11.5 × 15 cm. Courtesy of Sotheby’s

But the undisputed highlight of the season, appearing in the Master Works on Paper from Five Centuries sale, is Rembrandt’s drawing Young Lion Resting—the only known depiction of an animal by the artist still in private hands, and a work of extraordinary evocative power, capturing the poise and restless vitality of a majestic creature. The jewel-piece was held for two decades in the acclaimed Leiden Collection, owned by American investor Thomas S. Kaplan and his wife, and widely considered one of the foremost private holdings of 17th-century Dutch and Flemish art—including 17 paintings by Rembrandt, the largest known private collection of his work. Kaplan is Chairman of The Electrum Group, a precious-metals focused asset management firm, and Founder of Panthera, the world’s leading charity dedicated to big cat conservation.

This was not Kaplan’s first acquisition of a Rembrandt, but it was one of his most personally meaningful, owing to the subject. Most of Rembrandt’s surviving drawings are landscapes or figure studies; only six lion drawings by his hand are known. The other five reside in major museums—the British Museum (two believed to depict the same lion), the Louvre in Paris, the Rijksmuseum in Amsterdam and the Museum Boijmans Van Beuningen in Rotterdam. Young Lion Resting has already traveled to major institutions, including the Louvre (in both Paris and Abu Dhabi), the J. Paul Getty Museum in L.A. and the Pushkin Museum in Moscow. Estimated at $15-20 million, proceeds from the sale will benefit Panthera, the nonprofit Kaplan founded in 2006.

The Old Masters market saw a marked resurgence in 2025, with sales rising 68.8 percent to $282.5 million, supported by a 7.8 percent increase in lots sold, according to ArtTactic’s year-end report. While a new wave of cross-category buyers is increasingly driving the segment, the Old Masters market remains highly selective, with top-line results fueled by extraordinary works rather than routine offerings. In that context, the rarity, condition, documentation and presentation of the material coming to market this season appear primed to sustain the category’s renewed ascent.