Ted Field’s Old Masters Go on Block : Art: Thirty-one Italian works from the entertainment mogul’s collection are expected to bring more than $10 million in a July auction at Christie’s London.

Thirty-one Italian Old Master paintings from the collection of entertainment mogul Ted Field will leave Los Angeles and go on the auction block July 5 at Christie’s London. The auction house expects sales to total more than $10 million.

Field, an heir to the Marshall Field department store fortune in Chicago, is chairman of Interscope Communications, the Los Angeles film and TV production company that has produced such box-office hits as “Three Men and a Baby.” He bought the paintings to adorn his lavish Westside home, known as Greenacres. But now the property is on the market, at $55 million. Field is selling his Old Master art collection because it does not fit his new house in Beverly Hills and “it is not consistent with his present lifestyle,” according to a statement released by the auction house.

Silent-screen star Harold Lloyd built Greenacres in 1928 and based it on the 17th-Century Villa Gamberaia near Florence. The 15.7-acre property was subdivided in 1976, but the 36,000-square-foot mansion was retained on a five-acre lot that is partly in Beverly Hills and partly in Los Angeles. Field bought the house in 1986 for what was considered the bargain price of $6.5 million. He renovated it extensively and installed Italian Renaissance and Baroque artworks to complement the architecture.

Among the paintings to be offered in the upcoming sale are two early works by Venetian masters: “Sacra Conversazione” by Tintoretto and “Portrait of a Venetian Soldier” by Veronese. Each is valued at $1 million to $1.5 million. Another Venetian painting, “Rape of Proserpine” by Paris Bordone, is expected to bring between $500,000 and $700,000.

Works by Florentine artists in the Field collection include Pontormo’s “St. Paul” ($700,000 to $900,000) and a portrait of Giovanni Martelli by Bronzino ($500,000 to $700,000). Two paintings by Bolognese artists, Guido Reni’s “Fame” and Guercino’s “Amnon and Tamar,” are each valued at $700,000 to $900,000. “Holy Family” by Lorenzo Costa of Ferrara is estimated at $500,000 to $700,000.

Other artists represented in the sale include Tiepolo, Amigoni and Bassano. Six Old Master drawings from Field’s collection will be sold separately at Christie’s London on July 2.

The collection is a “cohesive” group of Italian Renaissance and Baroque works that “have a dignity and nobility about them. They are grand-style pictures,” said Ian Kennedy, head of Christie’s Old Master paintings department.

The quality of the artworks is “mixed,” according to a scholar who is familiar with the Field collection but requested anonymity. In general, the collection consists of secondary pictures by big names and better examples by lesser-known figures, the source said.

Field collected Italian Old Masters over a period of about 10 years, consulting advisers but buying according to his preference, Kennedy said. His choices reflect an “old-fashioned taste. It’s very much a J.P. Morgan kind of taste--in the American tradition of collecting, but as it was in the early 20th Century,” he said.

“American collectors of that time were attracted to the art of the Italian Renaissance and especially the Florentine Renaissance because the Medici dynasty was seen as the historical forerunner of the robber barons of the Gilded Age in America. Wealthy American businessmen of that time identified with the Medici and so collected Florentine art,” Kennedy said.

“This turn-of-the-century taste has now come back into fashion, especially in Italy,” Kennedy said. Christie’s expects strong bidding from Italians, “some of whom may have suitable homes to display the pictures,” Kennedy said. West Coast collectors also may be active participants in the sale, partly because the collection was assembled in California and displayed at a historic estate, he said.

The high end of the art market has experienced a sharp decline during the past year as a result of the recession, the disappearance of speculators and a rash of art-based scandals in Japan. But Kennedy expects these problems to have little, if any, effect on the Field sale. “Old Masters is one area of the picture market that is still strong, and, within that, Italian pictures are the strongest,” he said.

The collection is being sold in London instead of New York because the July 5 sale is the first Old Masters auction upcoming at Christie’s, Kennedy said. The next major Old Masters sale at Christie’s New York is scheduled for January, and Field didn’t want to wait that long, he added.