Old Masters art sale defies the downturn

Old Masters including Breughel the Younger and Goya have sold for millions of pounds at the latest London summer art sale, as fine art continued to defy recession.

After taking last night's auction at Sotheby's, chairman Henry Wyndham said: "I do not believe that prices were much different from a year or two years ago."

Auction totals at Sotheby's were down on a similar sale last summer, at £36million, but prices were buoyant and sale rates high.

Statistics from Art Market Research show Old Masters are matching the prices of January last year and preserve most of the gains of the 2005-08 art boom.

At Sotheby's, Pieter Breughel the Younger's Massacre of the Innocents sold for £4.63million - nearly double the estimate. Seven bidders battled for Jusepe de Ribera's The Torture of Prometheus, driving the price to £3.85 million, way beyond the £1.2million estimate.

"Some people believe the art market is no longer the same," said George Gordon, Sotheby's Old Master expert. "We can reassure them that it pretty much is."