Roll up, roll up for Maastricht! The year's largest and best-known art fair is offering a Roman Paris, renaissance manuscripts, a Perugino, and, just for good measure, an unpublished Matisse

Apollo, March, 2005 by Susan Moore

In Paris, meanwhile, another pre eminent specialist fair, the Salon du Dessin, opens once again in the Palais de la Bourse (16-21 March). This year, its fourteenth, the fair brings together thirty dealers--fourteen French based, and the rest from Britain, the US, Germany, Belgium and Switzerland--and has established itself as the single most important event in the calendar for scholars, curators and collectors of master drawings. What has made it such a particular success is the collaboration between the Societe du Dessin and the museums and drawings cabinets of Paris--from the Musee d'Orsay to the library of the Musee National d'Histoire Naturelle--which offers not only the best of international fairs but a week of enticing events.

At Sotheby's in New York on 27 January, Ludovico Carracci's splendid three-quarter length Portrait of Carlo Alberti Rati Opizzoni stole the show. The portrait, dated to around 1597-1600, represents the sitter in arresting pose, in full armour with the Order of the Knights of Malta across his chest and with a view of the city of Bologna beyond. Of evident quality, it was also fresh to the market, having remained in the sitter's family since it was painted, and, as an estate sale, came with an alluringly modest estimate of $80,000-$120,000. In the event, he was spirited away by London dealer Luca Baroni for $1.8m (959,660 [pounds sterling])--a good price in light of the Met's purchase of a Ludovico Pieta for $5.5m a few years ago. The sale, which totalled 21.4m [pounds sterling] was 68 per cent sold by lot and 82 per cent sold by value.