Self-portrait of Van Dyck fetches £8.3m at auction

Self portrait: Sir Anthony van Dyck
Godfrey Barker12 April 2012

A self-portrait by Sir Anthony van Dyck has gone for a record £8.3 million.

The picture, described as the most important of its kind to be sold in the past 20 years, was auctioned at Sotheby's in London last night.

It was bought by London-based art dealer Philip Mould and his New York counterpart Alfred Bader.

Mr Mould said: "This is the most important 17th-century British portrait to come on the market in the last two decades."

He added: "It was an opportunity we could not miss."

The picture, painted in the last months of VanDyck's life, had been expected to fetch between £2 million and £3 million.

The sale broke the previous auction record for a work by Van Dyck (1599-1641) of £3 million - and also set an auction record for a British 17th-century portrait.

It had remained in the possession of the Earls of Jersey for almost 300 years and previously belonged to artist Sir Peter Lely. Mr Mould, who works as an art adviser to the Houses of Parliament, has appeared on BBC's Antiques Roadshow.

Meanwhile, a 16th-century gold portrait medal of Queen Mary I has sold for a record £276,000.

London-based Morton & Eden said the lot became the "most expensive historical medal" to go under the hammer.

The sale price topped the previous high of £243,200, set by the same medal when it was last auctioned in 2005.

The medal was made in 1554 - the year of Mary's marriage to the future Philip II of Spain - and was once owned by Baroness Rothschild of the Rothschild banking family.

New York dealer and collector Lawrence R Stack was in the sale room to see his collection of Renaissance medals fetch a total of £1.8 million.

Queen Mary I earned the nickname "Bloody Mary" after ordering hundreds of religious dissenters be burned at the stake.

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