Two rare Rembrandt paintings fetched $14 million at auction

Rembrandt yielded another surprise at auction at Christie's. The auction house managed to raise $14.3 million for a pair of Rembrandt portraits on July 6, 2023, during "Classic Week" in London, which were announced as the last artist's portraits in private hands. The final price with premium was well above the estimate of US$ 10.3 million (about R$ 50 million).

It's been nearly 200 years since these works were previously sold at Christie's, and the auction house has called them a "historic rediscovery".
About the portraits

The characters have been identified as Jan Willemsz van der Pluym (c. 1565–1644), a wealthy plumber from Leiden, and his wife, Jaapgen Carels (1565–1640), and are signed and dated 1635. The intimate paintings depict two relatives by Rembrandt and have a virtually unbroken line of provenance. The authenticity was supported by the Rijksmuseum in Amsterdam, which carried out extensive academic investigation and scientific analysis of the works.
The eight-inch-tall portraits were rediscovered earlier this year by Henry Pettifer, Christie's international vice president of Old Master Paintings, in a routine appraisal. In a statement, Pettifer called the discovery "one of the most exciting discoveries we've made in the field of Old Masters in recent years."

In the year the portraits were painted, the couple bought a garden adjacent to that of Rembrandt's mother. Later, their son married the artist's uncle's daughter.

Ahead of last week's sale, the paintings toured internationally and were shown at Christie's Rockefeller Center headquarters in New York, followed by showings in Amsterdam and then London.
Rembrandt's Records at Christie's

Christie's holds the record for the most expensive Rembrandt ever sold at auction - Portrait of a Man with Arms akimbo (1658), which sold for £20.2 million ($33.3 million) in London in December 2009, according to with the Artnet Price Database.

Portrait of a Man with Akimbo Arms (1658). Credit: Wikipedia.

The second highest price was also set at Christie's London nine years earlier, in 2000, when Portrait of a Lady in Black Dress and Cap and Collar (1632), sold for £19.8 million ($28.8 million).