Dealer Paid $325 for a Dirty Raphael that Sold for $37.3 Million

Art dealer Ira Spanierman in his gallery in New York.
Dealer paid $325 for a Raphael artwork. from Bloomberg

... ``There aren't that many buyers for old masters at these prices,'' New York dealer Richard Feigen said in an interview last week. ``The hedge funds pay a lot more for contemporary pictures, but they aren't buying old masters.''

The week's most-expensive picture was New York art dealer Ira Spanierman's Raphael painting of the Florentine ruler Lorenzo de' Medici, sold for 18.5 million pounds at Christie's, or more than 100,000 times the price he paid for it. Unsold lots included a Fragonard oil study with a top estimate of 8 million pounds and two Turner watercolors valued at as much as 3 million pounds each, all at Sotheby's. from Bloomberg