Old master rarity gets snapped up

A rare late work by Rembrandt depicting the Apostle James in prayer was sold Thursday for $25.8 million, the Sotheby’s auction house in New York said.

“Saint James the Greater,” painted by the artist in 1661, was purchased by an anonymous telephone bidder, Sotheby’s said. The price includes the buyer’s premium.

The work, offered as part of a sale of old masters, is from a group of single-figure, half-length portraits of religious figures Rembrandt painted in the late 1650s and early 1660s. The portrait shows the patron saint of pilgrims with his hands clasped in prayer.

“Saint James the Greater” recently was shown at the National Gallery of Art in Washington, D.C., the J. Paul Getty Museum in L.A. and the Staatliche Museum in Berlin.