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Colnaghi Founded in 1760, Colnaghi is the oldest and most important art dealership in the world.

Follow us for expert voices and behind-the-scenes access into Old Masters, Antiquities and Modern Art at our galleries in London and New York.

In Goya’s The Apostle James and His Disciples Worshipping Our Lady of the Pillar, beauty becomes a means through which d...
09/10/2026

In Goya’s The Apostle James and His Disciples Worshipping Our Lady of the Pillar, beauty becomes a means through which divine presence is made visible. According to tradition, the Virgin appeared to Saint James on the banks of the Ebro in AD 40, urging him to continue preaching in Spain and to establish a church in her honour.

Painted around 1775–80, the work belongs to a decisive period in Goya’s emergence as an independent artist following his return from Italy. The sacred image appears within a radiant nimbus, whose light illuminates the surrounding witnesses and transforms an object of devotion into the source of the painting’s dramatic and spiritual authority. This early use of illumination anticipates effects that Goya would later employ for increasingly psychological and dramatic purposes.

Presented in The Danger of Beauty, the painting demonstrates how sacred art used physical splendour to express divine perfection, direct attention and inspire belief.

Francisco de Goya y Lucientes (1746–1828), The Apostle James and His Disciples Worshipping Our Lady of the Pillar, c. 1775–80, oil on canvas, 107 × 80 cm.

The Danger of Beauty is on view at Colnaghi Madrid until 29 October 2026.

Colnaghi is pleased to announce its participation in Frieze Masters 2026 with a presentation inspired by the associative...
06/10/2026

Colnaghi is pleased to announce its participation in Frieze Masters 2026 with a presentation inspired by the associative character of a collector’s interior.

Bringing together European painting, classical antiquities, modern works and African art across more than two millennia, the display considers how objects acquire new meanings through proximity, and how a collection may be shaped by the exercise of an eye rather than the limits of a category.

Detail: Anthony van Dyck (1599–1641), Portrait of a Nobleman, traditionally identified as Paolo Giordano Orsini, Duke of Bracciano, c. 1627–32, oil on canvas, 188.5 × 135 cm.

Visit Colnaghi at Frieze Masters, Stand C04, from 14 to 18 October 2026.

A detail from a Roman Torso of a Young Satyr, followed by a view of the sculpture in full.Dating from the first or secon...
03/10/2026

A detail from a Roman Torso of a Young Satyr, followed by a view of the sculpture in full.

Dating from the first or second century AD, the marble was formerly identified as Hercules, yet its slender, youthful proportions and the animal skin draped across its shoulders complicate this attribution. Rather than the lion skin conventionally associated with Hercules, the pelt appears to be that of a panther, an animal sacred to Dionysus and frequently represented alongside the god and his followers, the satyrs.

The figure’s precise identity remains unresolved. Its relaxed stance recalls the celebrated ancient sculptural type known as the Resting Satyr, while the surviving trace of long hair or a fillet above the left shoulder provides another possible connection with the Dionysian world. Preserved as a fragment, the torso demonstrates how material, gesture and surviving attributes continue to shape the interpretation of an ancient object long after its original context has disappeared.

The Order of Things is on view at Colnaghi Brussels from 10 September to 10 October 2026.

Explore the exhibition on our website via the link in bio.

30/09/2026

Coming soon: The Danger of Beauty, an exhibition exploring how beauty has shaped desire, value and the impulse to possess across historic and contemporary art.

On view at Colnaghi Madrid from 1 to 29 October 2026.

During the nineteenth century, photography became central to the recording and circulation of Egypt’s monuments. Studios...
27/09/2026

During the nineteenth century, photography became central to the recording and circulation of Egypt’s monuments. Studios including those of Gabriel Lekegian, Jean Pascal Sébah, Félix Bonfils and Antonio Beato supplied an expanding international audience with images of temples, archaeological sites, landscapes and contemporary life along the Nile.

Produced for travellers, scholars and collectors, these photographs occupied a space between historical document and commercial image. Portable and reproducible, they allowed sites encountered on the increasingly established Egyptian itinerary to be assembled into albums and carried far beyond their original setting. The photographers nevertheless made deliberate choices of viewpoint, scale and subject, helping to shape how Egypt was studied, remembered and imagined during the period.

Read more about these photographs in this week’s edition of Colnaghi Stories, our weekly newsletter, available on our website.

Explore all works online or visit Out of the Sand: Ancient Egypt Rediscovered at Colnaghi London, on view until 17 November 2026.

On 23 February 1865, Carl Werner sat before the Temple of Amun at Karnak and recorded the site in pencil, watercolour an...
25/09/2026

On 23 February 1865, Carl Werner sat before the Temple of Amun at Karnak and recorded the site in pencil, watercolour and gouache. The inscription on the sheet fixes it to a single day during his second and longest Egyptian journey, undertaken between 1864 and 1865. Rather than presenting the temple as a monumental whole, Werner concentrated upon its ancient approach, where sphinxes rested before the first pylon.

The avenue leading into Karnak formed part of a ritual landscape closely associated with the cult of Amun. During the annual Opet Festival, images of Amun, Mut and Khonsu travelled from Karnak to Luxor Temple in ceremonial barques, while the king’s authority was publicly renewed through his association with the god. The ram-headed sphinxes lining the route therefore served a ceremonial purpose, marking a path once traversed by gods, priests and royal processions.

Werner’s combination of transparent watercolour and opaque gouache was particularly suited to work undertaken before the subject. The sheet appears to have been completed in a single sitting and belongs to a quieter tradition of nineteenth-century engagement with Karnak: neither a scene of archaeological discovery nor an elaborate studio reconstruction, but the careful record of an already familiar monument encountered anew.

Explore all works online or visit Out of the Sand: Ancient Egypt Rediscovered at Colnaghi London, on view until 17 November 2026.

Three pen drawings by Leonor Fini bring together figures absorbed in conversation, courtship and observation. Although a...
23/09/2026

Three pen drawings by Leonor Fini bring together figures absorbed in conversation, courtship and observation. Although associated with Surrealism, Fini resisted formal allegiance to the movement, developing an independent visual language informed by theatre, mythology and masquerade.

Across a career that encompassed painting, drawing, illustration, and costume and set design, Fini repeatedly treated identity as something performed rather than fixed. Her figures often resemble actors whose relationships are suggested through gesture, proximity and dress, while their circumstances remain unresolved. Fini’s extensive work for theatre, opera, ballet and cinema sharpened this understanding of the body as both character and spectacle.

The Order of Things is on view at Colnaghi Brussels from 10 September to 10 October 2026.

Explore the exhibition on our website via the link in bio.

Opening on 1 October, The Danger of Beauty, curated by Luis Berenguer, brings together works by Hamish Pearch, Cece Phil...
21/09/2026

Opening on 1 October, The Danger of Beauty, curated by Luis Berenguer, brings together works by Hamish Pearch, Cece Philips and Liu Bin with Old Master paintings from Colnaghi’s collection to examine the shifting meanings and enduring influence of beauty across historic and contemporary art.

Beauty has never constituted a neutral or universal category. Its definition has varied according to religious belief, social convention and political authority, shaping how value is assigned to bodies, objects and images. In European painting, beauty could express divine perfection, social status or material abundance, while still carrying an awareness of its own transience: flowers wilt, food decays, bodies age and possessions change hands.

Placing works by El Greco, Francisco de Zurbarán, Juan van der Hamen and Juan de Arellano in dialogue with contemporary painting and sculpture, the exhibition considers how beauty continues to direct attention, generate desire and encourage the impulse to preserve, collect and possess.

On view at Colnaghi Madrid from 1 to 29 October 2026.

The title by which Frederick Arthur Bridgman’s painting has long been known, The Colossi of Memnon, does not describe th...
16/09/2026

The title by which Frederick Arthur Bridgman’s painting has long been known, The Colossi of Memnon, does not describe the monument depicted. Rather than the celebrated seated statues of Amenhotep III, Bridgman recorded the second court of the Ramesseum, the mortuary temple of Ramesses II at Thebes, where mummiform pillars represented the king in the image of Osiris.

The confusion reflects the curious afterlife of the name ‘Memnon’. Borrowed from the Ethiopian hero of Greek mythology, it was first applied by Greek and Roman travellers to the statues of Amenhotep III, one of which was believed to greet the dawn with a mysterious sound. By the nineteenth century, the name had become a loose European shorthand for the monuments of Thebes, including the Ramesseum itself, which was formerly known as the Memnonium before Champollion correctly identified it.

Painted during Bridgman’s first journey through Egypt, this small canvas belongs to the artist’s most immediate manner of working: a record made before the subject, rather than one of the elaborate compositions later assembled in his Paris studio. Its inherited title may be imprecise, but the painting preserves the accuracy of Bridgman’s encounter with the site.

Explore all works online or visit Out of the Sand: Ancient Egypt Rediscovered at Colnaghi London, on view until 17 November 2026.

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