A fragment of a medieval altarpiece by Luis Borrassa changed hands for $238,600 (€213,800) at Artcurial in Paris on 10 November, setting a new auction record for the Catalan Gothic painter. The tempera and gold panel, The Martyrdom of Saint Lawrence, had never been traded before, and bidding carried it to more than seven times its low estimate.

The panel is a fragment from a larger altarpiece, painted in tempera and gold on wood with raised arcades and braced by two vertical crossbars on the reverse. It depicts the martyrdom of Saint Lawrence, the third-century deacon executed on a gridiron, a subject that recurs across late medieval devotional painting. Works by Borrassa, one of the leading painters of Catalan Gothic art, reach the market only rarely, and a fresh-to-market panel of this kind is an unusual offering even for a specialist old masters sale.

The result comfortably passed the artist's previous auction record, set more than three decades ago. El Bautismo de Cristo sold for $89,800 at Sotheby's in 1992, a mark that had stood for 34 years. The Saint Lawrence panel beat it by $148,700, more than two and a half times the old figure, underlining how far demand has moved for early panel painting when a work arrives with no prior auction history.

The sale took place during a busy November fortnight for the Paris salerooms, with Artcurial's old masters session drawing on a mix of fresh consignments and long-held private collections. For Borrassa, whose surviving works are mostly held in Catalan churches and museums, the result is a reminder that the market for early Renaissance and Gothic painting still rewards rarity and provenance over scale: a modestly sized devotional fragment, unseen at auction until now, outperformed far larger and better-known names in the same season.