Last December, the Tajan auction house put up for auction two paintings by the Sienese Pietro Lorenzetti (1280-1348), a major artist of painting on a gold background from the beginning of the 14th century. These two wooden panels representing Saint Sylvester and Saint Helena, estimated at 2.6 million euros, found a buyer for 4.7 million euros. More than the price, what deserves attention is the buyer: he is a major American collector… of contemporary art. The expert of the sale, Eric Turquin, did not fail to emphasize how the style of primitive painters can appeal to lovers of works much closer to us.
This is indeed a market trend. The Italian primitives, that is to say the artists who, at the beginning of the 13th century, gave a more human character to the representations of the Holy Family and the saints, and introduced landscape and architecture into their biblical scenes, are no longer popular only with a literate, rather elderly clientele: these images of an idealized and sacred Middle Ages also fascinate the younger generation.
If the works of the great painters of this period – Cimabue, Duccio, Giotto, Simone Martini, Bernardo Daddo and many others – are unaffordable because they are extremely rare, it is still possible to buy, in galleries and auction rooms, school paintings from the 15th and 16th centuries for prices ranging, depending on the quality of execution and the state of conservation, between 10,000 and 200,000 euros.