LONDON.- A double-sided painting entitled ‘King Solomon’ by Svetoslav Roerich is one of the top lots in the Russian Sale taking place in New Bond Street on 1st December. Estimated to sell for £300,000 – 400,000, this work has never been exhibited or published before and has only previously been known to a small group of specialists. One of only two existing works from the unfinished series of paintings depicting the most important religious figures and spiritual teachers of the past, this magnificent portrait was painted in 1923 in Paris where Roerich stopped on his way to India. Roerich’s interpretation of King Solomon, who built the first Temple of Jerusalem, is instilled with complex symbolism and is depicted as a vehicle for mystical experience: his Solomon has tasted from the chalice of his fate and sacrificed himself for the creation of the Great Temple. This symbolic interpretation was most likely suggested by the Roerich’s father, the legendary N