1 Kings 4:21, 29â34. The Israelites came to King Solomon when they needed help. One day two women came to him with a baby boy. The women said they lived in the same house. They each had a baby, but one of the babies died. Now both women wanted the baby that was alive. Each mother said he was her baby. They wanted King Solomon to tell them who could keep the baby.
The earliest sale on the list below (Vase with Fifteen Sunflowers by Vincent van Gogh) is from March 1987; with a price of Â£24.75 million (Â£62.8 million in current value) it tripled the previous record and introduced a new era in top art sales.
Thatâs because the eccentric post-Impressionist captured a mysterious mutant sunflower variety that scientists have only just deciphered. In 1888, plagued by despair and hallucinations, Vincent van Gogh left Paris to settle in the ProvenÃ§al city of Arles. There he undertook several paintings featuring bunches of sunflowers, which he hoped would help brighten the studio he planned to share with fellow artist Paul Gaugin.