Bacon Reaches £14 million

The final night of a week of spectacular art sales in London saw a record of £14 million set for a Francis Bacon painting at Christie's, The Telegraph reports. The seller was thought to be Sophia Loren. Study for Portrait II, from Bacon's series of "Pope" paintings inspired by Velazquez, made as big an impact as the Loren did on the screen. Bids for the brooding picture shot up in £500,000 segments and it was sold in less than two minutes. Christie's had called it the most important picture from the series to appear on the market and it almost doubled the auction record for a Bacon - £7.8 million set last year. The bidding fever continued furiously last night in the post-war and contemporary art sale as picture after picture went for twice and sometimes three times the estimates. With several Warhols, Lucian Freuds, a Hockney and a Roy Lichtenstein on sale, it attracted a wealthy young City crowd. There was a round of applause and a cry of "Bravo" after a fierce battle for a Warhol portrait of Brigitte Bardot which he painted when she was 39 in 1974. A three-way fight between telephone bidders hushed the room as the picture, one of eight Warhol painted from a photograph he took of his actress friend, sold quickly for £5.4 million. Its top estimate was £2 million. The week's sales saw £350 million worth of Impressionist, modern and contemporary art change hands at Sotheby's and Christie's - the biggest art sales ever held outside America. Irish Art