A 500-year-old work of art — believed to be by Leonardo da Vinci and depicting Jesus Christ — sold in New York on Wednesday for $450.3 million, smashing a new art auction record, Christie’s said. The whopping price dwarfed the previous record for the most expensive piece of art sold at auction, set at $179.4 million for Pablo Picasso’s “The Women of Algiers (Version O)” by Christie’s in 2015. The auction house says “Salvator Mundi” or “Savior of the World” is one of fewer than 20 Da Vinci paintings in existence that are generally accepted as from the Renaissance master’s own hand. All other known paintings by Da Vinci are held in museum or institutional collections. Dated back by the auction house to around 1500, the oil on panel sold after 18 minutes of frenzied bidding in a historic sale, the star lot of the November art season in the US financial capital.

A Chagall oil painting shining with love for his first wife and adopted home Paris sold for $28.5 million in New York on Tuesday, almost doubling the artist’s previous auction record, Sotheby’s said. Considered one of the greatest works by Marc Chagall to come onto the open market, “Les Amoureux” had previously remained in the same family for nearly 90 years since 1928, the year it was painted. Sotheby’s said the painting unites the French-Russian artist’s two greatest loves — Bella, his childhood sweetheart, muse and first wife, and the French capital, his adopted home. The painting was chased by three determined bidders, with interest from Asia and Russia, in a more than 10-minute bidding war that soared well above its pre-sale estimate of $12 to 18 million. “That was, as you all know, a record for Marc Chagall,” said Sotheby’s auctioneer Helena Newman after bringing down the hammer to applause.

Christie’s kicked off the fall auction season in New York on Monday a Vincent Van Gogh leading the way at $81.3 million with robust sales of impressionist and modern art. “Laboureur dans un champ,” painted by the tortured Dutch genius from the window of a French asylum where he had committed himself sold to a buyer on the telephone after a frenzied four-minute bidding war having been valued at $50 million. Van Gogh began the painting of a ploughman tilling the soil in late August 1889 and completed it on September 2, the first time he picked up his brushes for a month and a half after an epileptic fit. He died the following year. Christie’s said it sold for $81.3 million, including the buyer’s premium, well over its pre-sale estimate of $50 million. It was just a hair’s breath from the auction record for a Van Gogh, set in 1990 at $82.5 million in New York for “Portrait of Dr Gachet,” although that price would be much higher if adjusted for today’s inflation.

It’s one of the most exciting episodes in art history, and one that still delights today. In the 17th century Dutch Republic – a newly wealthy and independent nation – the art of painting flourished like never before. Dutch artists sensitively observed the beauty of the world around them, transforming it with great skill into vivid and compelling paintings, from intense portraits and dramatic seascapes, to tranquil scenes of domestic life and careful studies of fruit and flowers. The first major exhibition of Dutch masters in Sydney, Rembrandt and the Dutch Golden Age: Masterpieces from the Rijksmuseum, comprises 78 exceptional works of art from the renowned Rijksmuseum in Amsterdam, as part of the Sydney International Art Series 2017-2018. Art Gallery of New South Wales director Dr Michael Brand said the close collaboration with the