A Rembrandt masterpiece sold for a record £20million last night.
It is the highest price a painting by the Dutch artist has ever fetched at auction, beating the previous amount by £200,000.
Portrait of a Man, Half-length, With his Arms Akimbo, went under the hammer at Christie's and was bought by an anonymous client over the phone.
Portrait of a man, half-length, with his arms akimbo by Rembrandt which fetched £20,201,250, a world record price for the artist at auction, and the fourth highest price ever for an Old Master painting sold at auction
It was the first time it had been sold at auction since 1930, when it was bought at £18,500, a considerable sum at the time.
The artist, believed to be one of the greatest painters of all time, completed the portrait in 1658.
Bids for the Rembrandt painting reached £20.2million, the highest price ever reached for a Rembrandt painting
Despite the turmoil in his life, paintings dated from this time are now considered to be some of his most creative and inspirational pieces of work.
Until last night, the highest amount paid for a Rembrandt was £19.8 million - for Portrait of a Lady, Aged 62, sold in 2003.
The Raphael drawing, Head of a Muse, not seen in public for 50 years sold for a staggering £29.2million
Raphael's painting The Parnassus - in the fresco Apollo and the muses are surrounded by poets from antiquity and Raphael's own time
It was also the second highest price for an Old Master painting or drawing sold at auction and a world record price for the artist.
Another painting by Domenichino also reached a world record price for the artist at auction, fetching £9.2 million.
Christie's Old Masters and 19th-century art sale fetched a total of £68,380,250 from 28 lots sold.
The auction house said it was the highest total for an auction of Old Masters.
The drawing by Raphael sold for £29,161,250.
Head of a Muse was drawn as a study for a figure in Parnassus, one of the series of four frescoes in the Stanza della Segnatura in the Vatican which was commissioned by Pope Julius II and which was executed between 1508 and 1511.
