Roanoke Times
Copyright (c) 1995, Landmark Communications, Inc.
DATE: THURSDAY, July 7, 1994 TAG: 9407070152
SECTION: NATIONAL/INTERNATIONAL PAGE: A2 EDITION: METRO
SOURCE: Associated Press
DATELINE: LENGTH: Medium
Some experts had questioned whether the painting was by Velazquez, who died in 1660.
Auctioneer George Bailey of Sotheby's drew no takers when he started the bidding at $5.2 million and raised it in three stages to $6.1 million, which was believed to be the minimum price set by the seller.
The attribution to Velazquez had been questioned by a Spanish authority, Alfonso Perez Sanchez, former director of the Prado museum in Madrid.
He said the painting probably was by Alonso Cano. Both artists were from Seville and apprenticed together under the painter Francisco Pacheco, Velazquez's father-in-law.
Hugh Brigstocke, head of Sotheby's Old Masters department, said afterward that the lack of bidders was ``understandable in view of the wide publicity the dispute has had.''
Brigstocke said he thought the owner, art dealer Charles Bailly of Paris, would try to sell the painting privately.
The unsigned painting shows the Virgin with her hands clasped and with a halo of 12 stars, a transparent full moon under her feet, a radiant sky behind her and a landscape with a ship below.
There is a similar but more richly painted image by Velazquez in London's National Gallery. Sotheby's says the two paintings and one in the Prado probably were painted about the same time, 1618 to 1620.
Bailly bought the painting at auction in Paris for $3.4 million in 1990.
by CNB