On December 13, Bonhams’s Greek sale in London took in £6.1 million ($12.5 million), the highest total ever for the biannual auction, and set world records for 14 Greek and Italian painters. The top lot was Greek Mother, pictured, by Italian artist Cesare dell’Acqua (1821–1904), a fiery depiction of a mother cradling her child. The work fetched an artist’s record of £938,400 ($1.9 million), far surpassing its estimate of £100,000 to £150,000 ($195–292,000). Given the significant number of copies on the market, it’s not surprising that this signed and dated original was quite coveted.

Among the other artists who saw record prices were Alecos Fassianos (b.1935), whose Messenger fetched £490,400 ($1 million), and Constantinos Maleas (1879–1928), whose Landscape went for £367,200 ($749,500).

The heated bidding at Bonhams follows Sotheby’s record-breaking November sale in this category, which netted £8.2 million ($17 million)—almost twice the total of its fall 2006 sale, which earned £4.9 million ($9.3 million), and four times that of its fall 2005 auction, which raked in £2.1 million ($3.7 million).

“Since 2001, when we first started the Greek sales in London, the market has risen steadily,” says Constantine Frangos, Sotheby’s specialist in the field. “The majority of buyers are Greeks from all over the world—the Greek shipping market is very strong right now, and a lot of shippers are collecting art.”

Terpsichore Angelopoulou, of Art Expertise, Bonhams’s Greek agent, agrees that maritime money is boosting prices, but even for a buoyant market, she adds, “our sale achieved an amazing number of world-record prices.”

"Stuff of Myth" originally appeared in the March 2008 issue of Art+Auction. For a complete list of articles from this issue available on ARTINFO, see Art+Auction's March 2008 Table of Contents.