T his month, the Breuer in New York will host Magnum Opus: A Private Collection of Exceptional Art and Objects Through the Ages. The Magnum Opus sale series has been conceived as four distinct but interconnected chapters, each organized around a unifying theme rather than a traditional category framework, reflecting the deeply cross-disciplinary nature of the collection itself.

Magnum Opus | A Private Collection of Exceptional Art and Objects Through the Ages

Assembled over decades, the collection encompasses hundreds of works spanning millennia and continents—from Roman imperial marble, Old Master paintings, ancient Near Eastern ceramics, courtly Safavid and Mughal carpets, and royal French furniture to Impressionist masterworks and exceptional 20th century design. Yet what distinguishes it is not its sheer breadth, remarkable as it is, but the intelligence that binds it.

Ahead of Act I, The Magnum Opus Evening Auction on 21 October, we’ve selected eleven lots from the series, highlights across medium and era that present an expansive yet coherent vision.

This exquisite head achieves something quiet yet powerful: a portrait of dignity, restraint and idealized beauty. The softly modeled face, wide contemplative eyes and precisely articulated coiffure is thought to depict Livia, wife and empress consort of Emperor Augustus and the defining model of Roman female virtue and dynastic power. It has been a part of the prestigious von Schwarzenberg Collection and, prior to that, the collection of Sir D'Arcy Osborne, the 12th Duke of Leeds. It is among the finest female portrait heads to appear on the antiquities market in decades.

Painted circa 1740 during the height of Canaletto's Venetian period, the work offers a majestic bird's eye view of the landing stage before the Salute, the great votive church consecrated by the Venetian Senate in thanksgiving for the city's deliverance from the plague of 1630. The warm sunlight and clear shadows evoke a peaceful afternoon on the Grand Canal, populated with gondolas, merchant ships and figures moving in and out of Longhena's magnificent church. The painting was previously in the collection of The Metropolitan Museum of Art, and stands among the most accomplished treatments of this celebrated subject in Canaletto's work.

This painting represents the height of achievement by one of the great still life painters of the European tradition, who would later inspire Picasso in his own still lifes. Meléndez's path to this mastery was shaped by circumstance: early ambitions as a history painter were derailed by his expulsion from the Academy, leading to independent study in Naples and an exposure to the tenebrist tradition that would come to define his work. The result is a painting of extraordinary technical precision, its everyday objects transformed through meticulous observation into a composition of remarkable luminosity and depth. This work held the world auction record for the artist from its 2012 sale until just last year at Sotheby’s where Meléndez's Still Life with a Cauliflower, A Basket with Eggs, Leeks, and Fish, and Assorted Kitchen Utensils achieved $6.2 million.

This painting captures the city on a breezy summer afternoon seen from the dunes to the northwest across the expansive bleaching fields. One of the celebrated series of painted panoramas the artist produced throughout the 1660s and early 1670s, the work is distinguished by its dynamic interplay of warm and cool tones, towering cumulus clouds casting shifting patterns of light and shadow across the city and its surroundings.

This is among the defining portraits of both photographer and subject. Made at the close of an extended sitting during which Monroe performed her public persona with characteristic brilliance, the image captures the moment her guard drops: eyes lowered, shoulders slightly slumped, the famous face suddenly distant and stripped of its usual radiance.

Among the most celebrated works in the group, the beauty and rarity of this carpet fragment is well documented since it was first exhibited in 1926. Woven with exuberant split-arabesques above a plane of flowering shrubs, the fragment retains jewel-like colors that enhance the wonderfully fluid drawing that epitomizes Safavid Kirman weaving. Mounted as an artwork, it is a painting in dyed wool.

Originally supplied to the Comte de Vaudreuil, a courtier and favorite of Marie-Antoinette, the pair was subsequently acquired by the French Royal Household and used by Marie-Antoinette herself in her private apartments at the Tuileries Palace from 1791 to 1792, her last royal residence before her imprisonment and execution during the French Revolution. Works of sculpture in their own right, the Marquises serve as an emotionally charged witness to the waning days of the monarchy.

A compelling demonstration of Klint’s disciplined approach, grounded in proportion, ergonomics, and a scholarly understanding of historical precedents that laid the foundation for Danish modernism.

These pieces exemplify the restraint and rigor of French modernism. Frank’s glass and bronze table lamp (estimate: $50,000– 70,000) and pair of oak side tables (estimate: $40,000–60,000) highlight his nuanced use of materials and pared-back forms. Together, these works articulate a sophisticated dialogue between material, form, and craftsmanship.

This 10 inch by 11.5 inch tile is a perfect bridge between the collection's carpet and ceramic holdings. The cintamani motif, arguably the most distinct and striking device in Iznik pottery, is rendered here in only three colors outlined in black, each iteration sitting freely upon the white ground with a slight tilt implying movement. The tile was formerly owned by Heinrich Jacoby (1889- 1964), the prominent collector and founder of the carpet firm PETAG, whose own use of the cintamani motif as his firm's logo speaks to the enduring power of this ancient design. It is a small object of considerable presence, and a fitting emblem of the collection's broader ambition: to honor the objects of the past with the seriousness they deserve.

Magnum Opus | A Private Collection of Exceptional Art and Objects Through the Ages