Pick of the week

How refreshing to hear auctioneer James O’halloran’s reaction to a picture estimated to €800 selling for €144,000 at Adam’s of Dublin: ‘We’ve not had many sleepers here, but when you do you have a sense of joy tinged with embarrassment.’

The painting, in a handsomely painted Renaissance frame, was a 13 ½in by 9½in Ecce Homo, and had been catalogued as Italian School, 19th century, but the consensus of international bidders put it 200 years earlier.