A $7.5-million find: Overlooked Getty estate sale map turns out to be 14th century treasure

Alex Clausen is a map dealer.

____""

Clausen, 35, peruses auctions, estate sales and other dealers’ websites in search of antique maps, manuscripts and pivotal historical documents that have been forgotten or overlooked — sometimes for decades.

A few years ago, he got his hands on the original drawings for the Statue of Liberty. But nothing, he said, compares to the $7.5-million find he came across last fall

Clausen was deep in a virtual tour of an estate sale for oil heir Gordon Getty and his wife, Ann, an avid collector who died in 2020. Tucked between a George II mahogany breakfront secretaire bookcase and a series of manuscript and watercolor maps showing the waterways of Venice, Clausen found a type of antiquated nautical map known as a portolan chart.

The chart, which the estate sale dated between 1500 and 1525, caught his eye: “It wasn’t like the chairs, lamps and things that surrounded it,” he said. The estimated price, between $100,000 and $150,000, seemed fitting for a portolan chart from the 16th century.


But something didn’t quite fit. The map seemed older.

https://www.latimes.com/california/story/2023-10-25/map-dealer-discovers-14th-century-portolan-chart-getty-estate-sale