Tiny 16th century prayer book from Rothschild banking dynasty fetches $13.6 MILLION after bidding frenzy
Source: dailymail.co.uk
This 500-year-old prayer book has fetched more than £8 million at auction, making it the most valuable of its kind in the world.The 10in high, 7in wide manuscript sparked a bidding frenzy at Christie’s in New York.
Called the Rothschild Prayerbook, it was made in the Netherlands in about 1505 and contains ornate paintings of scenes from the Bible.
The 67-page book – once owned by the Rothschild banking dynasty but stolen by the Nazis – was bought by a European collector bidding by phone.
Christie’s called it ‘one of the most prestigious and exquisite examples of Flemish manuscript illumination’
Known as the Book of Hours, the ornate manuscript depicts scenes from the Bible with a collection of texts, prayers and psalms and was the work of a number of master illustrators in Ghent or Bruges.
But it was confiscated from Baron Louis Nathaniel von Rothschild after the Nazis annexed Austria in 1938.
The Rothschild collections were earmarked for Hitler’s personal art reserve, the Fuhrervorbehalt.
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Drawings in the book include scenes of peasant life and and shepherds dancing in a Nativity sequence.
Ahead of the auction, the book went on a world tour that took in branches of the auction house in London, Moscow and Hong Kong.
Read the full article at: dailymail.co.uk
