A painting by Flemish grand master Peter Paul Rubens was sold yesterday in London for a record £49.5 million (€79.2 million), the Sotheby's auction house said.
The Massacre of the Innocents (above), painted between 1609 and 1611, becomes the most expensive painting ever sold at auction in Britain. It had been expected to fetch between €6 million and €10 million. A private collector present in the auction room bought the work, considered one of the most prestigious paintings to have been sold at auction in the past 20 years, Sotheby's said.
The most expensive painting ever sold at auction was Vincent van Gogh's The Portrait of Dr Gachet, bought in New York by a Japanese businessman in 1990 for $82.5 million.
The Rubens painting, which depicts the moment when King Herod ordered the slaughter of all newborn boys to get rid of the Messiah, is in near perfect condition.
A Sotheby's spokeswoman said: "The bidding started at £3 million, jumped to £3.2 million, then £3.8 million. Then somebody shouted out £6 million and it went up in millions from then on."