SHORT TAKES : German Painting Sets Record
<i> From Times Wire Services</i>
LONDON —
A diptych by 16th-Century master Lucas Cranach fetched $8.6 million, a record for a German painting, Christie’s auction house said today.
The painting was purchased by an anonymous bidder who participated in the auction by telephone, Christie’s said.
The two panels bore portraits of two electors of Saxony, 6-year-old John Frederick the Magnanimous and his father, John the Steadfast. The diptych was part of a group of art works from a castle at Wildenstein in Switzerland.
The previous high price for a German painting was $2.7 million for a winter landscape by Caspar David Freidrich, sold at Christie’s Monaco in 1987.
The previous high for a Cranach was $638,000 for a portrait of a girl, sold in New York in 1983, Christie’s said.