Europe

After a summer break, the next auction session at Duran Subastas in Madrid on September 21 will feature a special section of 33 lots of Ethiopian art, including intricately decorated wooden crucifixes, bibles, paintings and thrones, all coming to auction from a private collection.

The ancient Tuscan city of Arezzo, with its Roman ruins, medieval walls, Renaissance architecture and murals by Piero della Francesca, has long been a magnet for art lovers.

More than 100 Russian paintings consigned from a single source went under the hammer at Moore Allen & Innocent’s (18% buyer’s premium) July 7 sale in Cirencester.

The sales held by a variety of Monaco auction houses that are a feature of the summer season are traditionally big on jewellery, cars and Hermès handbags and other luxury accessories and modern art.

Isle sur La Sorgue, near Avignon, is one of the most ravishing towns in Provence.

The unexpected highlight of a recent sale at Beurret & Bailly (20% buyer’s premium) in Basel was a work by the Finnish artist Akseli Gallen-Kallela (1865-1931) which had been considered lost for over a century.

The summer season brought a raft of modern art sales to continental Europe and the various salerooms around Germany were no exception.

Austrian artists figured prominently at the June 20-21 sale at Kinsky (26% buyer’s premium) in Vienna.

The biggest sensation at Scheublein (26% buyer’s premium) in Munich on June 30 was caused by an oil painting of American Indians from the mid-19th century. It was an oil study for a famous painting by Carl Ferdinand Wimar (1828-62), who also went by the name of Charles Wimar.

Sold for €62,500 (£54,825) by German auction house Kiefer (20% buyer’s premium) in a June 30-July 1 sale in Pforzheim was an 1867, Hamburg first edition of the first volume of Karl Marx’s 'Das Kapital'.

Milan’s Navigli district dates to the 12th century and nine centuries later it is full of vintage shops, restaurants and bars, with its canals a great backdrop for the city’s biggest antiques and vintage market.

Antoine de Saint-Exupéry’s much-loved tale of The Little Prince was first published in New York in 1943, with Reynal & Hitchcock issuing it in both French and English versions.