Tefaf 2025, an excellent vintage

The 2025 edition of Tefaf in Maastricht has just opened, until 20 March, and as usual the quality is there. In our opinion, this edition is even richer than last year, and undoubtedly the most remarkable since the health crisis. Certainly, the art market is becoming scarcer, if we are to believe some, but if you have money, it is still possible to build up some fine collections. And for those who are unable to buy at this fair, there is still the pleasure of discovering countless objects worthy of the greatest museums, as if at a temporary exhibition. Many of them will find something to their taste: the curators were numerous in the aisles, and several, notably the Americans, made their purchases. We will of course return to these enrichments in the coming months.

1. Limousin or Paris, circa 1275-1300
Double-sided processional cross with the Crucifixion, the Paschal Lamb and the symbols of the Evangelists (recto)
Gilded copper, enamels, rock crystal, oak wood - 86.9 x 45.7 x 8 cm
Sam Fogg
Photo: Sam Fogg

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2. Limousin or Paris, circa 1275-1300
Double-sided processional cross with the Crucifixion, the Paschal Lamb and the symbols of the Evangelists (verso)
Gilded copper, enamels, rock crystal, oak wood - 86.9 x 45.7 x 8 cm
Sam Fogg
Photo: Sam Fogg

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This year, we will take a more or less chronological tour of the fair (with a few exceptions), starting with a processional cross by Sam Fogg (ill. 1 and 2). This cross, which dates from the last years of the 13th century, has characteristics specific to the art of Limousin enamel, but could also have been made in Paris, as has sometimes been the case for certain objects, some of which are kept at the Musée de Cluny.

3. Georg Pencz (1500-1550)
Design for the framing of an altar for the Tomicki chapel in Krakow cathedral
Black chalk, pencil, pen, ink and brown wash - 49.5 x 32 cm
Galerie Benjamin Peronnet
Photo: Galerie Benjamin Peronnet

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We will not hesitate to jump two centuries - which does not mean, of course, that the fair is not also rich in works from the 14th and 15th centuries - to go to the 16th century, in a speciality that is not Maastricht’s strong point, mainly because of the Drawing Salon that follows it very closely. But this year, in addition to Stephen Ongpin, who takes part in every edition, we find Benjamin Peronnet, whose stand is full of very beautiful sheets, among which we will retain a project for an altar of the cathedral of Krakow by the German painter Georg Pencz (ill. 3). The numerous annotations are not in the artist’s hand but in that of the commissioner (or his representative), who is none other than the bishop of Krakow, as Pencz mentions on the back. The altar was replaced by another in the 17th-century.

4. The grotto of Bernard Palissy reconstructed by the Flore
Photo: Rowena House

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If…