View upcoming auction estimates and receive personalized email alerts for the artists you follow.

Filter by media, style, movement, nationality and activity period

Search artists by name or category

Notable sales happening this month

Browse all types of artworks for sale

Overall performance of recent notable sales

Detailed results for millions of lots

Gregory's Auction House Est. $12,260 Sep 01, 2022

ART+OBJECT Total Sold Value $2,648,948 Aug 09, 2022

Golden State Auction Gallery Total Sold Value $1,322,250 Aug 07, 2022

Sotheby's Hong Kong Total Sold Value $986,901 Aug 01, 2022 - Aug 09, 2022

Upcoming exhibitions at your preferred locations

Almine Rech, Shanghai Huangpu | Shanghai | China Aug 12,2022 - Sep 17,2022

Experimenter, Ballygunge Place Kolkata | India Aug 12,2022 - Oct 15,2022

National Gallery of Australia Canberra | Australia Aug 13,2022 - Feb 05,2023

Global snapshot, top performers and top lots

Charts on artist trends and performance over time, ready to export

Get your artworks appraised online in 72 hours or less by experienced IFAA accredited professionals

Get the best price for your artwork or collection.

We notify you each time your favorite artists feature in an exhibition, auction or the press

Access detailed sales records for over 500,000 artists, and more than two decades of past auction results

At the Florence Academy of Art, students study the techniques of the old masters, keeping them alive in the 21st century

Visitors to the mannered marvels of the Palazzo Vecchio, or the Uffizi, or the sibilant churches of renaissance Florence may suspect that the secrets of the artists who shaped the sensual splendors of that spectacular age are sealed forever in the stony shadows of history, and that the artisanal skills that produced them are frozen in the forgotten past, doomed to fade like frescos under the hard sun of the present. But a short taxi ride past the solitary stack of the Porta Alla Croce along the Arno leads to the welcoming courtyard of the Florence Academy of Art. It is a strong and solid sanctuary, securely tucked among the unadorned streets of the suburban city. Here, the evolved practices of this vigorous academic studio provide a solid link between the past and the continuing tradition of representation in the future.

The Gate of the Florence Academy of Art

Once, the building was the customs house, then it became a factory for furniture production and restoration, and now the rich scents of linseed oil and modeling clay hang in the air, and academic paintings and sculptures line the spacious entrance hall of the airy school: dramatic paintings of male and female nudes; a series of life-sized classical casts in bright white plaster; a human skeleton; and some finely worked bronzes. A portrait of the founder of the academy, Daniel Graves, with the quiet outline of a halo around his head is ranked with them.

To have your art shown here is a badge of honor and an advertisement of the quality which Florence Academy graduates must achieve to gain the approval of the school.

Building an écorché in the sculpture studio

In the studios behind these inspiring and intimidating walls, dedicated students work hard to achieve the standards of their predecessors. There is a mood of intense focus and dedication to craftsmanship. The hallway walls are filled with more examples of the inspirational work. Here, carefully framed drawings and paintings are chosen as examples of the studio practice – a series of drawings showing the process of constructing an exquisitely detailed graphite rendering of a classical nude; a gorgeous series of oils, showing the step-by-step process of traditional painting, beginning with preliminary drawings through to the grisaille underpainting and the rich finish of color and re-establishment of the darks. They are examples of human skill, but also useful tools for teaching. Utility doesn’t have to be dull when beauty finds its function.

The canonical figure of Graves is central to the origin of the Florence Academy of Art. Building the school was an extraordinary struggle. Graves came to Florence as an American conscientious objector in the 1970s, bringing his wife and infant child. He soon met Pietro Annigoni, and studied under “La Signorina” Nerina Simi. “I couldn’t believe the quality of the work, that living people could paint that way,” Graves says. He met other like-minded painters who were in awe of the living traditions they found persisting in Florence – in the wake of the great flood of 1966, dozens of restorers were at work repairing the ruined frescos and paintings and books – and they banded together to teach the techniques of the old masters. “Italy’s society changes so slowly that the remnants of the 19th century were still felt here when we showed up in the 1970s,” Graves explains. “It was real. it was alive. It was part of the culture. We would walk into an art supply store and they had bags of pigment, they had artisans coming in making violins, making furniture, creating their own oils and varnishes, it was a real craft center. Annigoni was doing amazing frescos for Montecasino, painting the Queen, it was a huge range. Many of the painters tried Amsterdam, Paris, but there was nothing there. The whole city embraced that craft tradition, you felt really connected to making art.”

Daniel Graves, Surviving Modern Art, Oil on Linen, 31.5 x 23

When Graves started the school, he was its teacher, its janitor, its bill-payer. To scratch a living, he sold his prints outside the Uffizi, but with the help of Susan Tintori, and an enthusiastic ad hoc board, he slowly built the school from a first group of five or six students. Donna Giorgiana Corsini allowed him to set up a studio in the Lemon House of the Corsini family’s gardens, and gradually, with the help of many, the Florence Academy evolved into being a thriving center for artistic training.

Now, the Florence Academy offers a three-year BA, training painters and sculptors to work and teach in the figurative tradition. It offers a NASAD-accredited MA based in New Jersey in partnership with Mandy Theis’ School of Atelier Arts, specifically designed for American art teachers. There is a thriving branch of the school in Sweden.

Graves is stepping down from directing the Academy at the end of the year to lead the etching program, and the torch of leadership is being passed to Englishman Tom Richards, who will become the new Academic Director on January 1, 2023. “He’s delightful, talented, knowledgeable,” says Graves, “he’s the ideal person to take over.”

Tall and aristocratic, Richards gazed at the working students in the sculpture studios with warm affection. He is an open and friendly fellow, who paints vigorous life-sized portraits, recently creating the image of a splendid and kilted Scottish Lord who seems ready to step out of the frame. Richards is enthusiastic about the future. Soon, the academy will begin offering a Masters in Fine Art degree. He says, “I’m excited about the MFA. It will give people who already have the skills, the time and space to produce significant works of art in an environment that will challenge them and inspire them. It’s really intense just getting people to draw, but in the MFA…I’m hoping it can turn into a hadron collider…”

In the life painting studio

Why is there such a passion for learning the techniques of the old masters? Richards described seeing a woman looking at the terracotta relief of Donatello’s Madonna and Child, the heads pressed tightly together, the mother all tenderness and classical features, and the roughly sculpted Christ-child beautifully arranged with a hint of light catching the baby’s lower eye-lid, looking at her with deep humanity. The woman’s response caught Richards’ attention because in the moment of the emergent experience, her face was transformed by a beatific smile. “It was an amazing thing to see. She looked as beautiful as she ever could in that moment,” Richards recalls. “I don’t think we have the power to stop wars with all these different courses we’re doing – but if the art that can come out of the new course and the school can begin to touch people in that way, I think that’s something very special…I think that’s very possible.”

In the studios, rapt and busy students from around the world gazed past sturdy wooden easels at a nude model, carefully judging proportion and value, and making bold marks with sharp charcoal pencils. Others pulled pieces of clay from blocks, pushing it into the forms of faces and strong muscles – building careful layers of correct musculature over skeletal armatures, and learning the human anatomy by deep study. Some of the artists who graduate from this kind of training have the structure of the body so ingrained into their hands and minds that they have the power to make superb drawings, and paintings, and sculptures directly from imagination. Here, everything seems possible.

For more on auctions, exhibitions, and current trends, visit our Magazine Page