A painting by the 17th-century French artist Nicolas Poussin, one of a group of five that has hung in an English country house for more than 200 years, is expected to sell for as much as 20 million pounds ($31 million) at a Christie’s International December auction in London.
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Poussin’s “Ordination” is a scene showing Jesus Christ handing the keys of the Kingdom of Heaven to Saint Peter while watched by the other disciples.
The work is being offered for sale from the collection of Belvoir Castle, Leicestershire, the home of the Duke of Rutland, on Dec. 7, the London-based auction house said today in an e-mailed statement.
“The proceeds released from the sale will enable us to realize our core aims of securing the restoration and long-term preservation of Belvoir Castle and Estate,” the Trustees of the Belvoir Estate said in a statement. “Following the successful sale of ‘Ordination’, it is our hope that the four remaining paintings will go back on public display at the National Gallery in London,” said the Trustees.
The Poussin work is the latest in a series of high-value Old Masters being offered for sale from aristocratic U.K. collections.
In July, two paintings from the collection of the Spencer family raised 14.2 million pounds at Christie’s.
The Poussin painting, with a lower estimate of 15 million pounds, is one of five that survive of the seven “Sacraments” painted by the artist in the 1630s and 1640s in Rome for the collector Cassiano dal Pozzo.
The complete series was acquired by the 4th Duke of Rutland in 1785.
“Penance’’ was destroyed by fire in 1816. “Baptism’’ was acquired by the National Gallery of Art, Washington D.C., in 1946, said Christie’s.
Another set of Poussin “Sacraments,” dating from the 1640s, is on loan from the collection of the Dukes of Sutherland at the National Gallery of Scotland in Edinburgh.
