Dec. 3 (Bloomberg) -- An 18th-century Italian painting found in an attic more than tripled its estimate to fetch 2.8 million pounds ($4.2 million) with fees at Christie’s International as the market for Old Masters was tested in the financial crisis.

The London-based company’s smaller-than-usual 44-lot auction last night of Old Master and British paintings made 14.7 million pounds with fees against a low estimate of 15.6 million pounds, based on hammer prices. Eighty percent of lots found buyers. Last December, Christie’s equivalent London sale made 18.8 million pounds from 70 lots with just 54 percent of the material sold.

The sale may indicate demand is more robust for older works than their modern and contemporary equivalents, dealers said. Art auctions in London, Hong Kong and New York have missed presale estimates as buyers hesitate to splurge during recession.

“I was surprised how well it did,” said the New York-based dealer Anthony Crichton-Stuart, in an interview after the auction. “There was an expectation that there would be the same fall-out in the Old Master market as there was in modern and contemporary. But it didn’t happen.” Prices hadn’t risen to the “dizzying heights” of more recent works, he said.

In the Old-Master market, where works have been resold many times, freshly discovered pictures generate the most competition. At this sale, an example was the 2.8 million-pound lot, a sumptuously decorative, 2-foot, 10-inch-high canvas of the bare- breasted goddess “Flora.”

French Chateau

The unrestored, unknown painting was recently uncovered in the attic of a French chateau. Christie’s researchers established that was by the mid-18th century Venetian master Giambattista Tiepolo. It was possibly one of a series of pictures commissioned by Empress Elizabeth of Russia (1709-1762) and was estimated to fetch at least 700,000 pounds.

London dealer Jean-Luc Baroni, standing toward the back of the crowded salesroom, had to wait for at least four bidders to drop out before buying the work.

“I’m pleased with the price,” said Baroni, who was bidding on behalf of a collector. “It was the best painting by the best Italian 18th-century artist I’ve seen. Six months ago, it could have made five million pounds. Everyone’s scared at the moment.”

The top price was 3.8 million pounds with fees, paid by a European private buyer on the telephone, for a view by the 18th- century Italian painter Canaletto. The 2-foot, 7-inch wide canvas of the Grand Canal showed the campanile of Santa Maria della Carita in the background. Entered from an old English collection, it had been expected to fetch at least 3 million pounds.

Piazzetta Puppets

Immediately before, an identically sized Canaletto from the same seller, showing the Piazzetta di San Marco with a puppet show in the foreground, didn’t sell against a low estimate of 4 million pounds. Dealers said that though the latter painting was higher in quality and in better condition, it had a less appealing subject matter that made it difficult to sell.

“The estimate was too high and they were offered the wrong way round,” said the London dealer Charles Beddington, a Canaletto specialist.

Christie’s final total was also reduced by the failure of a three-quarter length portrait of the Tahitian princess “Poetua” by the little-known British painter John Webber, dated 1785. While it had not been seen in public for more than 200 years, the work didn’t attract a buyer at its low estimate price of 800,000 pounds.

Madonna Portrait

London dealer Johnny van Haeften, bidding though a commission left with the auctioneer, paid a low estimate 1.2 million pounds with fees for Frans Hals’s 1644 “Portrait of Conradus Vietor,” and an anonymous telephone buyer gave 937,250 pounds with fees for a 5-foot, 5-inch high gold-ground panel portrait of the Madonna and Child by the early 14th-century Sienese painter Segna di Bonaventura.

“A lot of traditional Old Master collectors came up for air for this sale,” said Paul Raison, head of Christie’s Old-Master picture department in London, in an interview. “There was a lot of private European bidding. The weakness of the pound against the Euro played a part.”

Raison said there was less bidding from U.S. and Russian clients than there had been in previous sales, without specifying where the buyers are from.

(Scott Reyburn writes about the art market for Bloomberg News. Opinions expressed are his own.)

To contact the writer on the story: Scott Reyburn in London at sreyburn@hotmail.com.

Last Updated: December 2, 2008 21:28 EST