Priced Out of Contemporary Art? Try Old Masters for $200 Million

That $3 million Caravaggio is looking like a bargain compared to an $81.9 million Andy Warhol.

This week at the Old Masters sales in New York, when as much as $200 million of 15th-to-19th-century paintings, drawings and sculptures are on offer, the auction houses will try to slightly narrow the disconnect between the record prices commanded by postwar, modern and contemporary art and the much lower estimates for the older works.