Since 1744, Sotheby’s has set the pace for the world of fine art and luxury. Its auctions and exhibitions have shaped international collecting, established price records and provided a stage for cultural exchange. With a global reach and unquestionable commitment to quality, the auction house continues to define the upper tier of the art market.
A Paris Exhibition of Singular Vision
Closing a year marked by exceptional results, Sotheby’s ends 2025 with a collaboration that celebrates both heritage and imagination. In partnership with Galerie Sismann, the auction house presents a selling exhibition of jewellery by Gabriela Sismann, held in the Le Salon Sotheby’s at 83 rue du Faubourg Saint-Honoré. Open to the public through 23 December, the presentation brings together two authorities in their fields – Galerie Sismann, long regarded as one of Europe’s leading specialists in antique sculpture and Sismann’s artistry, evident across an entire collection of symbolic jewellery.
For this exhibition, Gabriela Sismann has assembled a collection of historical objects and antique works of art, each reinterpreted as contemporary jewellery. Her creations retain the character of their origins while offering a modern sensibility, resulting in works that are both unique and striking. Collectors are invited to discover jewellery that carries its provenance with pride and celebrates an artist’s ability to transform history into something aesthetically wearable.
The Artist and Her Vision
“History and art are everywhere. Why not wear them?” – is a conviction on which Gabriela Sismann has built her career.
Long regarded as a leading authority on European sculpture, she has spent decades immersed in the study of ancient art. That discipline shaped her instinct for proportion, detail and harmony, and enabled her to shift from the gallery to the jeweller’s bench, where she began transforming historic fragments into contemporary works.
Guided by Dostoevsky’s belief that beauty will save the world, Sismann sees art as a refuge in a fast and distracted age. Her jewellery grew from that desire to bring art into daily life. She began with antique goldsmith’s pieces, reworking them into what she calls “Portable Art Works” – objects that retain their origins yet gain a new purpose. Her lifelong habit of collecting fed this evolution. Drawn to devotional fragments, silver plates, brooches and sculptural details in gold, vermeil and patinated metal, she came to view them as elements waiting to be repurposed and reawaken.. In reconceptualising them, she gives these objects a second lease of life. Each jewel becomes a continuation of her dialogue with the past, an expression shaped by scholarship and vision.
Crossing Cultural Boundaries
Sismann’s work has always moved across worlds. For more than twenty-five years, her artistic programme has brought together sacred and pagan motifs, medieval and classical forms and influences from Italy, France and Northern Europe. Through her talent and vision, these threads meet and reveal shared sensibilities that transcend geography and borders. The objects she selects for her gallery carry a depth of presence that joins them more powerfully than any single tradition.
Her own background reflects this diversity. Born to an Argentinian father and Austrian mother, and raised in the United States, Canada and Argentina, she settled in France in the early 1990s to study at the École du Louvre and the Sorbonne, initially drawn by a deep interest in Egyptology. She later turned to Renaissance art, becoming a historian specialising in Italian sculpture.
Together with her husband, she founded Galerie Sismann, whose discoveries now form part of major museum collections, including the Louvre in Paris and the Metropolitan Museum of Art in New York. Her jewellery, like her scholarship, carries forward a lifetime spent tracing beauty across cultures and centuries.
A Gallery Built on Discovery
The Sismann Gallery has long been distinguished for its instinctive approach to early European sculpture. Its strength lies in uncovering works that time has obscured, then restoring them to clarity through careful attribution. Every acquisition begins with a search for fragments of the past that deserve renewed attention. Gabriela and Mathieu Sismann pursue these forgotten pieces with a determination to identify their creators, understand their original purpose, revive their meaning and restore the visual language of their age.
This pursuit has made the gallery a recognised authority on French and German Gothic sculpture and a trusted guide for collectors working within this niche field. From their early days at the Louvre des Antiquaires to their current space on the Quai Voltaire, the Sismanns have built a destination devoted to European sculpture in all its forms. Their holdings range from the Middle Ages to the mid-eighteenth century, encompassing the Renaissance, Classical and Baroque periods. What unites these works is not so much time but the clarity of vision with which they have been chosen: each piece has a singular story waiting to be rediscovered.
History Reframed in Jewellery
At Sotheby’s Salon, this exhibition becomes a wearable expression where each piece safeguards the artwork within it, allowing history to be carried as closely as a personal memory. Their rarity lies in the survival of the images, materials and ideas contained within.
Leading the selection is a French medieval miniature of the Virgin and Child, Paris, circa 1420. Fashioned in painted and gilded stucco and now set within a gilt silver torque, it weighs 93.3 grams and is offered at USD 34,886.
Another highlight is represented by a German Renaissance necklace centred on a silver belt clasp from the early seventeenth century, decorated with sculptural hemispheres and reimagined through a modern mount. It is priced at USD 22,677.
Completing the ensemble is an Italian pendant necklace featuring a painted Last Judgment on oval agate, created in the early seventeenth century and later framed in gilt silver. Suspended from a matching chain, it is valued at USD 26,165.
Sotheby’s exhibition-sale event in Paris perfectly embodies the artistic spirit of Gabriela Sismann and Sismann Gallery. Presenting singular pieces, the event celebrates the dialogue between historic keepsakes and jewellery creations from the contemporary world.
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