Drawing some of the liveliest bidding of the week was Bartholomäus Spranger’s (1546-1611)Mercury carrying Psyche to Mount Olympus – a tour de force of Mannerist painting.
Looted by the Nazis, it had recently been restituted back to the original owner’s descendants.
Christie’s considered the 3ft 1in x 4ft 6in (95 x 1.35m) oil on canvas to be a “seminal work by the most important Northern Mannerist painter of his generation”, and one of the first major paintings the artist produced for the Imperial Court in Vienna where he was summoned in 1575.