From April 29 to May 7, Sotheby's held an online auction of artworks by Old Masters and miniatures from the collection of Erika Pohl-Ströher, a German cosmetics heiress and art collector. The sale comprised 193 lots and achieved a total of $4.12 million.
One of the big surprise sales of the auction was a painting by the Renaissance painter and nun Orsola Maddalena Caccia, titled Still life of birds, including a marsh tit, chiffchaff, chaffinch, blue tits, goldrest, lapwing and a great tit. The detailed oil painting, depicting said birds and their favorite foods (snails and insects) against a brown background, started at an estimate of $12,000-18,000. After 49 bids were placed, it finally changed hands for $260,000.
Besides it's selling price being 500% above estimate, the sale also beats her last record significantly. Her still life Vases of flowers on a table was auctioned at Vienna's Dorotheum for $35,000 in 2016.
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Orsola Maddalena Caccia (1596 - 1676) was a representative of Mannerism, the complex and graceful style of the late Renaissance. She was born Theodora Caccia, the daughter of the painter Guglielmo Caccia and lived in Moncalvo in the Piedmont region of Italy. After entering the Ursuline Convent of Bianzè in 1620, she was given the name Orsola Maddalena. Her five sisters had also made their vows in the monastery. After Guglielmo Caccia founded a new Ursuline convent in Moncalvo, all of his daughters returned to their place of birth. Orsola Maddalena later became an abbess there.
Orsola Maddalena Caccia's artistic career had already started in her father's studio. When he died a few months after the Moncalvo convent was founded, he left his painting supplies to his daughters living there, but only Orsola Maddalena became a successful artist.
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She mainly painted religious pictures, as well as still lifes. In fact, these two genres were the most common for a woman working as a painter at the time.
Works by Orsola Maddalena Caccia are rarely found on the auction market, and the motif of birds in her work is even rarer. This fact, as well as the revived interest in the old masters and spotlight on female artists in recent years, explain the record sale of this unique painting.
