by Jonathan Franks and Alex Capon
Spectators at an auction in Zürich were left flabbergasted when a Quattrocento panel painting with a SFr5000-7000 estimate catalogued as ‘in the style of Sandro Botticelli (c.1445-1510)’ was knocked down at SFr6.4m (£5.16m) after an intense 10-minute bidding battle. Schuler catalogue also quoted its conclusion that the “reworking was possibly not intended to restore the painting, but rather to manipulate the subject, to achieve an attribution”.