List of most expensive paintings

painting - List of most expensive paintings
Photograph by Benjamin Rabeon Flickr.

for the highest price sold. No. It was assessed at US$100 million on December 14, 1962, before the painting toured the List of most expensive paintings United States for several months.

Paintings are only listed once, i.e. Paul Getty Museum for Mantegna s Adoration painting of the Magi at Christie s in London on April List of most expensive paintings 18, 1985.

In constant dollars, the highest price paid before 1987 was by the National Gallery of Art when in February 1967 Olympia Manet they acquired Leonardo da Vinci s Ginevra de Benci for around $5 million ($33 million in 2010 dollars) from the Princely Family of Liechtenstein. This list List of most expensive paintings is ordered by consumer price index inflation-adjusted value (in bold) in millions of January 2010 United States dollars. The inflation adjustment may change as recent inflation rates are often revised.

Guinness World Records lists the Mona Lisa as having the highest insurance value for a painting in history. List of most expensive paintings A list in another currency may be in a slightly different order due to exchange rate fluctuations.

However, the Louvre chose to spend the money that would have been spent on the insurance premium on security instead. This is a list of the highest known prices paid for List of most expensive paintings paintings.

5, 1948 by Jackson Pollock sold at US$140 million in 2006, (approx. The current record price was paid for a work from No.

Before the March 1987 sale of Van Gogh s Vase with Fifteen Sunflowers for $39.7 million ($76.6 million in 2010 dollars), the highest absolute price paid for a painting was $10.45 million ($21.2 million in 2010 dollars) paid by the J. The earliest sale on the list (Vase with Fifteen Sunflowers by Vincent van Gogh) is from 1987, and more than trebled the previous record price, set only two years before, introducing a new era in top picture prices.

Gachet (Van Gogh) Bal au moulin de la Galette, Montmartre, (Renoir) Portrait of Joseph Roulin (Van Gogh) Irises (Van Gogh) Portrait de l artiste sans barbe (Van Gogh) Adele Bloch-Bauer II (Klimt) Massacre of the Innocents (Rubens) A Wheatfield with Cypresses (Van Gogh) (may not be the version sold in 1993) Rideau, Cruchon et Compotier (Cézanne) Vase with Fifteen Sunflowers (Van Gogh) Diana and Actaeon (Titian) Portrait of a Halberdier (Pontormo) . 5, 1948 (Pollock) Portrait of Adele Bloch-Bauer I (Klimt) Portrait of Dr.

$150.6 million in CPI-adjusted 2010 US dollars). The world s most famous paintings, especially old master works done before 1800, are generally owned by museums, which very rarely sell them, and as such, they are quite literally priceless. Currently there are only three old master paintings on the list below: namely Portrait of a Halberdier by Pontormo sold at US$35.2 million in 1989, Diana and Actaeon by Titian privately sold at £50 million (US$70.6 million) in 2009 and Massacre of the Innocents by Peter Paul Rubens sold at £49.5 million (US$76.7 million) in 2002.

Since that time sales of the most valuable paintings have usually been made at auctions, though that had by no means always been the case before, and the list below still shows some private sales , including the three most expensive. Taking inflation into account, the 1962 value would be approximately US$713 million in 2010.

Where necessary, the price is first converted to dollars using the exchange rate at the time the painting was sold. The sale was also significant in that for the first time a modern painting (in this case from 1888) became the record holder, as opposed to the old master paintings which had always previously held it.