A big day for masters of art

A Rembrandt oil painting of an elderly woman, which was forgotten by scholars for decades, sold for $4.3 million Thursday at Sotheby’s Holdings Inc. in New York.

The price exceeded the presale high estimate of $4 million. “Portrait of an Elderly Woman in a White Bonnet,” created around 1640, had not been published or exhibited since the 1930s.

Sotheby’s didn’t disclose the buyer, who bid by phone.

Dutch dealer Robert Noortman bought the most expensive painting in the sale, paying $7.3 million for a floral still life by Jan van Huysum titled “Flowers in a Terracotta Vase on a Marble Ledge.” The painting, circa 1720, depicts more than 30 types of flowers.

A 15th century Donatello sculpture of a Madonna and Child sold for $4.4 million to the Kimball Art Museum in Fort Worth, Texas. The terra-cotta work will be the second confirmed Donatello in a U.S. museum; one of his marble statues is at the Museum of Fine Arts in Boston.