Pick of the week

The Paris Biennale des Antiquaires will be at the Grand Palais from September 11 to 17. The Florentine Neri di Bicci (1419–91) was the last in a line of painters going back at least to his great-grandfather in the first half of the 14th century. His grandfather, Lorenzo di Bicci, produced frescoes and panel paintings as well as coloured sculptures and his clientele is said to have been among the country clergy and second-rank Florentine guilds. Neri di Bicci’s preferred medium was tempera, in which the pigments are mixed with egg yolk or a similar size, and his Ricordanze, journals that include his charges for work, are in the Uffizi Library. At the Biennale, Giovanni Sarti of Paris will show a 373∕8in by 22½in arch-topped tempera-and-gold panel of the Ascension of Christ (left) dating from the later 1470s. The gallery notes such characteristics as ‘rosy, almost feverish, cheeks’, deep furrows and eyes, and ‘brightly-coloured and weighty fabrics, with crisp, deep folds… or quivering little folds steeped in light, lending a changing and almost metallic aspect to the drapery’. The 50th anniversary of Magritte’s death fell on August 27 and the Boon Art Gallery from Knokke-le-zoute will show two works, Celestial Perfections and the four-piece The Oracle. Another fine offering, with the Paris dealer Perrin, is a pair of Kangxi celadon porcelain bowls (right) with French Régence chiselled and gilded bronze mounts dating from about 1730. This is a cultural marriage of supreme elegance.