Auction prices, fair reports, a museum opening and one restitution, 4–11 October 2026. Figures are those published by the source. Sales that have not yet taken place are marked as forthcoming.
Florence antiques biennale closes
The 34th Biennale Internazionale dell’Antiquariato di Firenze closed on Sunday 4 October at Palazzo Corsini. Artribune reported about 30,000 visitors, of whom 7,000 were counted across the two preview days reserved for collectors, museum directors, advisers and curators. The magazine quoted secretary general Bruno Botticelli on a younger average age of visitors, which he linked to talk on social media, and on strong high-end sales in the opening days followed by more sales aimed at newer collectors. The fair’s place in a Florence visit is set out in the Italy destinations guide.
Among decorative-arts sales, Artribune reported that Alessandra Di Castro sold a new collector a black-marble micromosaic depicting Glorie del mattino, jasmine, butterflies, a dragonfly and a lizard, signed by Michelangelo Barberi and dated 1840, and a monumental wall mirror in brass and two-tone submerged glass canes designed by Paolo Venini for Murano in 1951. Galleria Raffaello Pernici sold a 1929 ceramic group of Don Quixote and Sancho Panza by Giovanni Grande for Manifattura Lenci, and a pair of 1927 decorative urns by Gio Ponti for Richard-Ginori. Factory context for that porcelain is in the porcelain and ceramics guide. The scientific committee’s prize for decorative arts and design went to the Roman gallery Verdini, for a monumental white-marble chimneypiece with micromosaic panels by Giacomo Raffaelli, early 19th century.
The same report gives an asking price, not a hammer, for one painting: Galleria Goldfinch, at its first BIAF, sold Annibale Carracci’s Ritratto di pittore (del fratello Agostino?) to a new client against a requested price of €100,000. Galleria Botticelli found a buyer for a Head of a Prophet or Jupiter (about 1460–1465) attributed to Paolo Taccone da Sezze, and showed two previously unpublished objects from Florentine private collections: a 17th-century polychrome marble coat of arms with the symbols of Saint Lucy, described as Roman, and an early 18th-century inlaid-wood altar frontal of Apulian workmanship. Artribune does not say those two sold.
Inlaid cassone sells in London
Bonhams’ online sale of vernacular furniture, naïve art and textiles, held from 28 September to 6 October 2026, has ended. Lot 33 was catalogued as an Italian late 16th-century walnut and fruitwood cassone with ivory and bone inlay, alla certosina or alla Veneziana, possibly Venetian, the central heraldic panel probably later. It sold for £10,880 including the buyer’s premium. The chest measures 159 cm wide, 60.5 cm deep and 61 cm high. Construction and later alterations of this kind of case are discussed in the furniture guide.
Bonhams states that the lot contains ivory and cannot be imported into the United States or any country in the European Union. The catalogue note says the vendor bought the cassone at Woolley & Wallis, Salisbury, on 20 January 2026 (Fine Furniture, lot 34) and was then unable to export it to Europe under UK ivory legislation. The ivory is registered under the Ivory Act, section 10, reference SXVA1W28.
A Centuripe pyxis returns to Sicily
On 7 October 2026 the Allard Pierson, the museum of the University of Amsterdam, announced the return of the Centuripe pyxis to Sicily. The lidded vase is local clay with polychrome decoration, made in the third century BCE near present-day Centuripe, and painted with a wedding watched by Apollo and erotes. The museum acquired it in 1997 from a Swiss dealer at TEFAF Maastricht. The seller said it had been in Swiss private hands since before 1970. The museum says no further provenance documents, and no export licence, were provided at the purchase.
Sicilian authorities requested the vase in 2017 after an investigation by the Carabinieri unit for the protection of cultural heritage in Palermo, with the unit’s department for international cooperation, under the public prosecutor in Enna. Photographs of the pyxis were found on a roll of negatives held by SiciliAntica in Centuripe (Archivio Pino Catania). A wedding photograph on the same roll dates from 1976. From that, the museum infers that the vase did not come from an old Swiss collection and most likely left Italy through the illicit trade. There was no Dutch legal duty to return it: the Netherlands ratified the 1970 UNESCO convention only in 2009, and the implementing law is not retroactive. The museum agreed to a voluntary restitution. The handover was arranged for a ceremony at the Allard Pierson on 7 October. The museum says the pyxis will be on permanent display at the Regional Museum of Centuripe.
Mantua shows a year’s acquisitions
Mantovauno reported on 10 October that the Diocesan Museum Francesco Gonzaga in Mantua is opening Colligite Fragmenta – Nuove acquisizioni 2026 from 11 October 2026 to 3 January 2027, in the picture-gallery hall and other rooms. The paper credits the Diocese, Regione Lombardia and Fondazione Comunità Mantovana. The display is of gifts from private collectors and deposits from church bodies over the past year.
In the picture gallery, a newly arrived terracotta Deposition of Christ by Gian Marco Cavalli is shown with sculpted busts by Jacopo Alari Bonacolsi, called l’Antico, and roundels by Correggio, plus 15th-century terracottas by Michele da Firenze and Elia della Marra. In the Sala Rossa, three sections cut away in the mid-20th century have been put back onto Karl Santner’s early 17th-century Assumption, whose main canvas has been in the museum since 2008. The same room includes a terracotta Head of a Peasant Woman by Vindizio Nodari Pesenti, a reliquary of Saint Apollonia in silver and rock crystal, and 18th-century writing sets. A study day on 15th-century terracotta, organised with the University of Trento, is announced for 7 November 2026, when scientific analyses of the works on view are to be presented.
Mercanteinfiera closes in Parma
The autumn edition of Mercanteinfiera is at Fiere di Parma through Sunday 11 October. The organiser’s site gives public days as 3–11 October, with 1–2 October reserved for the trade, and about a thousand exhibitors. On 11 October the public hours are 10:00–17:00 and the ticket office closes at 15:00; on other public days the hours are 10:00–19:00. The site lists online tickets at €12 + d.p. and a box-office price of €16. Children up to 12, accompanied by an adult, are free. The site’s attendance figure of 56,000 visitors, 1,000 exhibitors and more than 6,500 buyers refers to the previous autumn, not to a result for this edition. Sections listed for this week include Vintage Photo Parma on 3–4 October.
Righetti candelabra on view in Vienna
Dorotheum’s sale of furniture, works of art, glass and porcelain is scheduled for 20 October 2026 at 14:00 at Palais Dorotheum in Vienna, with the public exhibition running 10–20 October. The sale page counts 268 lots. It has not yet been held, so there is no price. The printed catalogue estimates at €40,000–60,000 a pair of three-light Egyptian-revival candelabra in gilt bronze, from the workshop of Francesco Righetti the Elder (Rome, 1749–1819): an Egyptian figure in a nemes headdress, reeds, drip pans, a porphyry base with bull heads and laurel, and four sphinxes, height 80 cm, base 21 × 21 cm, Rome, early 19th century. The catalogue describes Righetti as a pupil of Luigi Valadier who worked for the papacy, the court in Naples and the Russian court in St Petersburg, and points to a comparable pair at Sotheby’s, London, 9 July 2014, lot 50. Die Presse on 11 October named the pair among the antiques in that session. The same catalogue’s lot 1007 is an Italian gilt-copper pax of about 1560, 15 × 11 cm, estimate €1,000–2,000, with a small loss to the finial and a provenance to the Kende auction of 17 April 1947.
Murano glass catalogued in Munich
Quittenbaum in Munich is offering more than 140 lots of Murano glass on 14 October 2026 at 15:00 CEST. Viewing hours published for 11 October are 13:00–17:00. The sale has not taken place. The house describes a rare cube-shaped vase with raised shoulders by Fratelli Toso — red glass with dark violet flecks fused in, white underlay, the rim picked out in dark violet and scattered gold leaf — estimated at €7,000–9,000. It also lists a smoky-grey Battuto vase designed by Tobia Scarpa in 1959–62, height 45.5 cm, estimate €4,000–5,000; Ercole Barovier’s Athena Cattedrale piece of about 1964, catalogued as a case (lot 783), estimate €3,000–4,000; and a Carlo Scarpa handle-vase in green a bollicine glass, a 1930s design for Cappellin and Venini, with a starting price of €3,000. Makers and techniques in that catalogue overlap the Murano glass guide.
Genoa silver from a charitable bequest
Cambi’s auction 1250, jewellery, silver, furnishings and works of art from a bequest for charity, is at Castello Mackenzie in Genoa on Wednesday 14 October 2026. Session one is at 9:30 (lots 1–297) and session two at 14:30 (lots 401–805). Viewing on 11 October is listed as 10:00–18:00, and again on 12 and 13 October. An online time sale of lots 810–1108 runs 5–15 October. The live sale has not yet produced results. The catalogue includes a neoclassical soup tureen by Achille Proserpio, Milan artistic silver with the fasces mark used from 1935 to 1945, 1,455 g, 29 × 20.5 × 23 cm, square base on four swan feet, estimate €900–1,100, and a pair of large five-light candelabra in a neo-baroque taste by Gianni Prosperini, the same mark period, 6,340 g, height 50 cm, estimate €4,200–4,800. Reading those Milan marks sits next to the silver hallmarks guide.