NEW YORK, NY.- A masterpiece by Victorian artist Sir Lawrence Alma-Tadema set another incredible price at Sotheby’s New York today in the sale of 19th Century European Art. Two determined phone bidders held a steady competition for The Meeting of Antony and Cleopatra: 41 BC for over eight minutes, driving the final price to a remarkable $29,202,500–nearly six times the pre-sale high estimate of $5 million. This marks the highest auction price of the week in New York , and follows the $35.9 million record for the artist established at Sotheby’s last November by The Finding of Moses. Alma-Tadema’s The Meeting of Antony and Cleopatra: 41 BC, depicts one of the most
iconic moments in Roman-Egyptian history, and the artist turned to Shakespeare –not translated ancient texts — for inspiration. Between 1850 and 1912, the Bard’s