When it comes to major acquisitions of drop-dead gorgeous women, no museum can compete with the deep-pocketed Getty. It has just abducted “Danaë” from the Metropolitan Museum, where she had been on loan from dealer/collector Richard Feigen, until he sent her to auction at Sotheby’s.
Photo by Lee Rosenbaum
“Danaë” sold to the Getty tonight for $30.5 million with buyers premium, fetching a “reasonable” $27-million hammer price against its $25- to 35-million presale estimate.
CultureGrrl readers may remember that the Getty carried off a pricier looker (that one–fully clothed) in November 2014, when she sold for $65.125 million at Christie’s:
Photo by Lee Rosenbaum
As it happened, Timothy Potts, the Getty’s director, has just spoken at a Sotheby’s dinner on Tuesday, discussing his “institution’s vision for the future.” Presumably that “vision” included an Orazio Gentileschi masterpiece.
Also at the Sotheby’s dinner was Scott Schaefer, who retired from the Getty in January 2014 from his position as senior curator of paintings and is now Sotheby’s senior vice president for international fine arts—another museum-to-market defector.
Sorry to see “Danaë” leave New York, I tweeted an abject plea:
Just got confirmation from @GettyMuseum that it was purchaser of $30.5m “Danaë” @Sothebys. Can they please lend it to @MetMuseum sometime?
— Lee Rosenbaum (@CultureGrrl) January 29, 2016
The Getty promptly “liked” my tweet, so I must assume that the answer is yes!
UPDATE: According to the Getty’s press release, which just came online, this purchase will reunite “Danaë” with Lot and His Daughters by the same artist, “with which it was intended to hang as part of a spectacular triad of paintings commissioned by a Genoese nobleman.”
The acquisition, according to the Getty, “not only makes art-historical sense but multiplies greatly the visual impact of both works”:
