Feigen also played a significant role in the competition for the cover lot, Hendrick Ter Brugghen’s Bagpipe Player in Profile (est. $4-6 million), which was restituted to the heirs of Herbert von Klemperer in July 2008. Four bidders followed the 1624 painting past $8 million, but in the end it was Feigen and the London dealer Johnny Van Haeften duking it out, with the latter landing the knockout punch of $10,162,500. The following week, the National Gallery of Art, in Washington, D.C., announced that it had acquired the masterpiece.

Any doubts that there’s a spark left in this market evaporated in the intense heat generated by two other pictures that incinerated their estimates: The Muse Erato, which François Boucher painted for Madame de Pompadour, brought $1,314,500 against a high estimate of $500,000; and Pierre Subleyras’s 1746 oil Portrait of Pope Benedict XIV (est. $100-150,000) went to the New York dealer Adam Williams for $986,500. George Wachter, the head of the Old Masters department at Sotheby’s, believes such results should boost confidence in the sector. "We sold 11 works for over $1 million," he says. "People believe in the value of these objects." "New York: Old Master Paintings" originally appeared in the April 2009 issue of Art+Auction. For a complete list of articles from this issue available on ARTINFO, see Art+Auction's April 2009 Table of Contents.