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Art is all about perception. The sales of Old Masters at Christie’s and Sotheby’s New York in January offered a fascinating illustration of how shifts in perception can influence prices. As greater works become rarer, substitutes of lesser quality are being upgraded in status. At the same time another, more insidious process, rarely acknowledged by professionals, keeps down the prices of some admirable masterpieces. Because buyers have fewer and fewer works on which to train their eyes, a dwindling number of connoisseurs can recognize great paintings. Christie’s auction on January 27 provided two striking examples of the substitution phenomenon.

Jan Breughel the Younger made a good living in 17th- century Antwerp by imitating his father’s style and occasionally producing mere copies of his existing compositions. His set of the Four Elements, with characters painted by Frans Francken, fetched $2.2 million, a generous sum given the modesty of the achievement. The provenance of the set, the Belgian royal collection, was its most obvious asset. Beginners saw it as a guarantee of a quality that does not exactly leap to the eye.

Another lot confirmed that the derivative pictures of the younger Breughel are increasingly treated on an equal footing with his father’s work. The Entry of the Animals into Noah’s Ark, signed and dated 16*5 (the third digit can no longer be made out) was probably done in 1625. It is none too well painted. But now that superior versions by Jan Breughel the Elder come up only at very distant intervals, his images have become hazy in the minds of collectors, who are no longer in a position to make comparisons that would be unflattering to the son’s imitations. This change in perception allowed the Biblical scene to sell for a surprising $2.88 million.

A different but equally telling substitution phenomenon boosted a picture in the most conventional style favored in France at the court of Louis XV. Gaetano Gandolfi’s Diana and Callisto, done in the late 1780s, is the retardataire composition of a Bolognese artist trying to emulate the manner of Boucher and others. The picture looks so thoroughly French that it passed for a François Lagrenée when it was ensconced in a Russian collection in the early 20th century.

In the late 1970s Carlo Volpe, an Italian art historian, discovered the first clue to the true authorship of Diana and Callisto when he came across a letter written in 1819 by the artist’s son Mauro. He was asking a friend to trace for him and, if possible, to purchase, two preparatory drawings by his father, one depicting Diana’s bath and the other the birth of Venus. Mauro specified that the red-and-white chalk studies had been used by his father as models for "paintings that he made for a Moscovite."

When two highly finished oil sketches of those same subjects appeared in 1977 at Hazlitt, a London gallery, Volpe immediately recognized them as the work of Gandolfi. In 1979, he published them in the catalogue of 18th-century Emilian painting that accompanied a show held in Bologna.

Time passed. In 1990 it was Pierre Rosenberg, the great French historian of 17th- and 18th-century painting, who made a discovery that took the matter further. Rummaging through the archive of the Louvre, Rosenberg chanced upon a photograph of the two finished works with a note saying that they had been in a Russian collection where they were attributed incorrectly to Lagrenée. The Italian scholar Donatella Biagi Maino published the photographs in a journal, remarking that the whereabouts of the two paintings were unknown.

Suddenly, in 2008, Biagi Maino thought she had struck gold. While putting together an exhibition of Emilian painting in Turin, she came across a Diana and Callisto in the National Museum in Warsaw and proudly included it in her show as the rediscovered original.

The last word is rarely said in art history, especially where Old Masters are concerned. In 2009, Sotheby’s specialists in turn made a discovery that put together all the pieces of the jigsaw puzzle. A previously unrecorded Diana and Callisto had been sleeping in an American collection. The auction house experts contrasted the quality of what they called a "masterfully and fluently [sic] painted" picture with the Warsaw work, which was, "by comparison, mechanical and heavy." Luckily for Sotheby’s — and the American consignor — the Italian scholar accepted their conclusion. Amusingly, the qualifiers "mechanical" and "heavy" apply equally to Christie’s picture. The characters are frozen in artificial gesticulation and stare like porcelain dolls. However, there is nothing like the magic of a "rediscovery" to drive buyers with a keen sense of art history into a frenzy of excitement. The Gandolfi flew to a miraculous $4.11 million, setting a world auction record for the artist in the process.

History also sent the price of another stilted if more skilled painting soaring into the stratosphere. The Entrance to the Turkish Garden Café, signed by Louis-Léopold Boilly in 1812, is painted in a scrupulously precise manner that eerily heralds the advent of the photographer’s art a couple of decades later. The composition suggests that Boilly may have actually used the camera obscura — the edges of the picture cut through figures and architectural details as they might in a photograph. The extraordinarily detailed rendition gives the scene considerable documentary value about fashion in Napoleonic France. The picture also includes rare notations about street life of the period, from the boy trying to trade a pet to the young man churning out music from an instrument slung over his shoulder. While these details make the Boilly worthy of the Musée Carnavalet in Paris, which is dedicated to the history of the city, it hardly turns it into a great work of art. At $4.6 million, the quasi-photographic image set an auction record for a very minor artist. It now hangs in the J. Paul Getty Museum, in Los Angeles.

The financial promotion of the stilted works of Gandolfi and Boilly highlights the decline of artistic perception. When the eye no longer sees, intellectual discourse takes over. It is then that art history is accorded precedence over artistic achievement.

Contrast the sensational successes of those pedestrian pictures with the fate of two rare gems in the sale. It can be argued that the first of these was lost in a session in which it related to little else. A Madonna and Child was catalogued as the work of the "Pseudo-Pier Francesco Fiorentino," an artist supposed to have been active during the second half of the 15th century. In fact, the name, coined in recent decades by art historians, is attached to a group of paintings now thought to have been executed by several artists working in some Florentine workshop.

In the Christie’s picture, Mary has a curious expression of provincial naivete. Such an appearance is unusual in 15th-century Florentine art and suggests a portrait painted from or based upon a study from life, which is also unusual for the period. The catalogue states that it is "derived from Pesselino’s Madonna and Child with a Swallow," now in the Isabella Stewart Gardner Museum in Boston. Actually, it is spectacularly different.

Pesselino’s composition has an architectural background, which in the auction picture is replaced by rosebush branches against a bright blue sky that rise to the top of the frame. There is also the addition of a parapet, and the bird is a goldfinch, not a swallow. In a nutshell, the Christie’s picture is much more than a variant. While it follows the Pseudo-Francesco model in its representation of Mary it stands on its own as an original work.

The entire group of paintings formerly attributed to the Pseudo-Pier Francesco Fiorentino and now to a workshop raises unresolved questions, but within this group, the Madonna and Child sold at Christie’s is a particular mystery. The blossoming branches have a stylized, rhythmical regularity that calls to mind the miniature painting of illuminated manuscripts at the time. So do the delineation of the contours and the light application of color. If a clue to the artist’s identity is ever to be found it might be provided by manuscript painting.

Fascinating as it is, the Madonna was apparently dismissed by many as "anonymous work from a 15th-century workshop" instead of being acknowledged as a remarkable picture. At $290,500, it matched the high estimate, but for a gem in good condition, that is not a lot of money.

Shortly after, the chance arose to make an even greater coup. The monumental Watchful Doe is signed by Jean-Baptiste Oudry, the most famous animalier artist in 18th-century France. Dated 172* (the last digit has been cropped), it matches the description of a composition sent by Oudry to the 1725 Salon held in the Louvre. Not least, the Watchful Doe retains a magnificent frame of the Regence period (1715-25), further supporting a 1725 date, even if the cataloguers, who ignored the frame, suggested the year 1729. At $1 million, the superbly preserved Oudry became one of the great buys of the season. Measured in real buying power, its price does not match the $701,000 that its consignor paid at Christie’s Monaco in 1990. New York was not the best auction location for such a picture. French painting of the 17th and 18th century enjoyed a strong following here into the mid 1970s but now often falls under the radar of collectors whose eyes respond more willingly to works with an instant punch. Again, perception has changed.

Sotheby’s stronger sale bore out this conclusion the following day, when two unforgettable world-class museum masterpieces were drowned in a sea of disparate works that did not relate to them.

Three star lots monopolized attention. One did so with good reason: Anthony Van Dycks admirable study, in oil, of a man’s head sketched twice in different postures with different expressions. Painted when Van Dyck was still strongly influenced by Peter Paul Rubens, it has an explosive power unmatched by the latter. The remarkable picture sold within expectations, for $7.25 million.

The second notable work was Jupiter and Antiope, an overtly erotic picture by Hendrick Goltzius signed and dated 1612. It is more of a curiosity for scholars than a masterpiece for art lovers. Appearing at auction in Munich in 1930 and 1931, it failed to sell on either occasion. This year, the vogue for Mannerism that took off two decades ago, the rarity of the work (only around 50 pictures or so are credited to Goltzius), and, not least, academic discourse, all combined to send it climbing to an astronomical $6.8 million.

The third star painting, a Saint Dorothy by Francisco de Zurbarn, the towering figure of late 16th- century Spanish art, must have been remarkable in its heyday. The removal of some 19th-century over-painting perhaps accounts for a certain flatness. One may also ask whether studio hands participated in the completion of the work. The chances of soon finding a Zurbarán of that size and quality being negligible, this one brought $4.22 million, which was, all things considered, a generous price.

To these obvious highlights in Sotheby’s sale must be added one of the greatest landscapes by Salomon van Ruysdael offered at auction in a long time. Signed and dated 1650, the riverside view with the town of Weesp visible on the horizon under a windswept cloudy sky had not been exhibited publicly since 1874. This explains its mint condition. Curiously underestimated, it tripled the high estimate at $3.3 million, ending up at the hands of the London dealer Richard Green.

With top-tier masterpieces deserving to be fought over (the Van Dyck and the Ruysdael) plus a rarity (the Goltzius), the major dealers of Dutch and Flemish art had too much to worry about to pay much attention to two extremely beautiful pictures by artists whom conventional wisdom does not hold to be particularly important.

Jan Asselijn painted his view of the Ponte Rotto, in Rome, in 1652. One of the most original compositions in 17th-century Dutch painting, it is known through other versions by Asselijn, the earliest dated 1644. This late version is the most beautiful of all. The bridge, built in ancient-Roman times and embellished with some Renaissance additions, is missing two arches, ending abruptly in mid-air. Viewed from below, its dark, half-destroyed mass is set off by the mellow sunset as stormy clouds in the top corner are blown away. In excellent condition, the large canvas, 67 ½ inches long, cost an incredibly low $134,500.

If the wonderful Asselijn was unduly overlooked, the inattention was nothing compared with the neglect suffered by two stunning masterpieces worthy of the greatest museums in the world. Both were the work of artists cast in the mold of French culture. One was a sunset landscape by the great Claude Gelle, also known as Claude Lorrain. The master recorded the picture in his Book of Authenticity, a collection of sketches of all his landscapes painted from 1635 on. The handling of light in this small, compact composition is unsurpassed. Recognized only recently for what it is after a scholar took note of the sketch that reproduces the composition, Claude’s landscape last surfaced on December 6, 2006, at Sotheby’s London and cost its buyer £232,000 (just over $450,000). This year it realized only $482,500 — slightly less than the 2006 price if converted into real buying power. Most professionals barely gave it a passing look, probably deeming it to be too subtle for the majority of their clients. Jean-Luc Baroni, the brilliant London dealer renowned for his sharp eye, bought the picture.

The other gem was Simon Vouets portrait of a young girl as Saint Catherine of Alexandria. The sitter, seen in a Northern chiaroscuro light, smiles lightly with her eyes cast down, a posture much loved by Vouet. This work, too, is a relatively recent discovery. It appeared at Christie’s Rome in May 2001, and was included for the first time in a public exhibition held two years ago in Nantes. This past January, the price was a laughably low $122,500.

What happened? The lack of context, the scant attention now paid to French 17th-century painting outside its home country, and the great subtlety of the likeness all contributed to keeping the masterpiece at a price low enough to be affordable to the most impecunious institutions. Curators around the world were presumably snoozing when Sotheby’s catalogue reached their desk.

Who still has eyes to perceive the subtle nuances of a great Claude Lorrain or a magnificent Simon Vouet these days? Very few, came the answer in January. Visual perception, like a pianist’s aptitude, may be a natural faculty but it takes long hours of daily practice to refine and maintain. When there is too little left and too few occasions to use it, the ability to recognize beauty goes dead.

"Shifting Perceptions" originally appeared in the April 2010 issue of Art+Auction. For a complete list of articles from this issue available on ARTINFO, see Art+Auction's April 2010 Table of Contents.