New York - A Renaissance prayer book has sold for $13.6 million, just short of the auction record it set 15 years ago for an illuminated manuscript.
Christie's auction house says the Rothschild Prayerbook was purchased Wednesday by a private collector bidding by telephone.
The ornately illustrated Book of Hours sold in 1999 at Christie's London for $13.4 million to a European collector.
It was commissioned around 1505 by a member of the imperial court of the Netherlands. It entered the Rothschild family collection in the 19th century.
The 150-page book features full-page color drawings, called miniatures, by leading masters of illumination.
The manuscript was part of a collection of Nazi-confiscated treasures that was returned to the Rothschild banking dynasty by the Austrian government in 1999.
Sapa-AP