A large Maiolica plate showing Theseus rescuing Hippodamia was the top lot in Sotheby’s “Of Royal and Noble Descent” auction which raised a total of $3.5 million.The footed dish, attributed to the “Painter of the Apollo Basin,” dated about 1533 and from a European private collection, sold to a British trade buyer for £257,000 (€336,079) with fees, well exceeding the hammer-price estimate of £30,000 to £40,000. In Greek mythology, Hippodamia is almost abducted by Centaurs at her wedding feast and saved by her husband Pirithous and his best friend Theseus.The January 19 auction included royal and aristocratic heirlooms such as Old Master paintings, sculpture, furniture, decorative arts and vertu. These were sourced from European dynasties, such as the Bismarck family, which offered personal gifts given to the former German Chancellor. There were also military decorations from the collection of Count Robin de La Lanne Mirrlees, a friend of writer Ian Fleming’s who inspired him as Sir Hilary Bray.The second best lot in terms of value was a set of twelve Chinese plates for the Qing dynasty, Kangxi period, which was bought by a European museum for £70,000. Other items in the Top 10 included Dutch items such as a globe from about 1607 (£62,500) and a 17-century portrait of a man (£41,250).More than 160 of the lots formerly adorned the Palazzo Sacchetti - the Renaissance palace in central Rome that featured in Paolo Sorrentino’s movie “La Grande Bellezza” (“The Great Beauty”). These items raised a total of £799,818, to benefit the Giulio and Giovanna Sacchetti Foundation, which supports the preservation of the Italian capital’s heritage and also funds medical research. The top lot of that collection was an Italian Verde di Corsica center table, which achieved £43,750.The sale’s final total was £2.5 million, exceeding pre-sale expectations of £1.4 million to £2 million, with 90 percent of the 460 lots sold. About 60 percent of these exceeded the upper estimates, said Sotheby’s, which started the “Of Royal and Noble Descent” sale series two years ago.
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