# The only time the public saw it was a pre-sale view
> For some of the best-known objects in this archive, the whole public exhibition history is a viewing arranged in order to sell them, scheduled to close before the sale.
> The Study - 2026-09-10
> Canonical HTML: https://iconotheca.com/study/the-only-time-the-public-saw-it-was-a-pre-sale-view/
## Key points
- Two hundred and twenty-two of the 291 objects in this archive carry no exhibition history at all. Among those that do, a recurring kind of entry is not a museum show but a viewing arranged by whoever was selling the object.
- A pre-sale view is designed to end. It is scheduled to close before the sale, and the object it advertises usually leaves for a private collection immediately afterwards, so the showing is both the first and the last public access in a generation.
- Codex Sassoon toured five cities in 2023 because it was for sale. Its previous public appearance had been forty years earlier, at the British Museum, while it was owned by a pension fund. Both of its modern showings happened under financial ownership.
- The Sevso Treasure was never publicly exhibited before Hungary acquired it. Every viewing in its recorded history until 2014 was private and arranged around a sale or a possible sale.
## Most objects in this archive have no exhibition history at all
## A pre-sale view is scheduled to close before the sale
## The selling tour can be larger than any museum loan the object ever gets
## The Sevso Treasure was never publicly exhibited at all until a state bought it
## What this does to an exhibition history as evidence
## Why this archive is free to read
An exhibition history is supposed to record where an object has been seen and studied. For a certain class of object it records something narrower: the handful of days on which somebody wanted to sell it. Read the dates against the sale calendar before you read them as scholarship, and treat a thin exhibition history as a question about ownership rather than an answer about importance.
## Questions
**What is a pre-sale view?**
It is a public or invited showing of a lot arranged by the auction house in the days or weeks before it is sold. Its closing date is set by the sale calendar rather than by a curator, and the object usually leaves public view immediately afterwards.
**Does a pre-sale view count as an exhibition?**
It appears in an exhibition history in the same form as a museum loan, which is the problem. It rarely produces a catalogue, a condition report or sustained curatorial study, so it carries much less evidential weight than the line in a catalogue implies.
**Was the Cimabue Mocking of Christ shown before it was sold?**
Once. It was shown to the public at the town hall in Compiegne on 23 October 2019, where a little over four hundred people saw it, and it was sold four days later at Senlis for 19.5 million euros at the hammer.
**Why had Codex Sassoon not been seen for forty years?**
Because it was in private hands and on deposit rather than on display. Its previous public appearance was at the British Museum in 1982, when it was owned by the British Rail Pension Fund, and its next was the Sotheby's selling tour of 2023.
**Was the Sevso Treasure ever publicly exhibited before Hungary bought it?**
No. The recorded viewings before 2014 were private: scholars in a Zurich bank vault in 1982, the Getty examining it on approval in 1984, and an invitation-only display at Bonhams in London in November 2006. Public display began after Hungary acquired the pieces in 2014 and 2017.
## Sources
- [1] Trafficking Culture, 'Sevso Treasure' case study, Scottish Centre for Crime and Justice Research, University of Glasgow. Source for the Sotheby's announcement of 10 February 1990, the 1982 viewing by scholars in a Zurich bank vault, the Getty's examination on approval in 1984 and the invited display at Bonhams in November 2006 at which the silver was not offered for sale.
- [2] Will Fenstermaker, 'The remarkable history of Codex Sassoon', Sotheby's, 15 February 2023. Source for the pre-sale tour through London, Tel Aviv, Dallas, Los Angeles and New York, the estimate of 30 to 50 million dollars and the statement that the codex's last appearance had been forty years earlier.
- [3] Musee du Louvre, collections online, La Derision du Christ, inv. RFML.PE.2023.33.1, Departement des Peintures. Source for the accession number, the support, the dimensions and the museum's holding of the panel.
- [4] Ministere de la Culture, press release, 'Un panneau peint par Cimabue vers 1280, representant La Derision du Christ, reconnu tresor national'. Source for the classification of the panel as a national treasure following the refusal of the export certificate.
- [5] Anna Brady, 'Kitchen Cimabue sells for 24.1m euros', The Art Newspaper, 27 October 2019. Source for the sale at Senlis, the estimate of four to six million euros and the result.
- [6] Wikipedia, 'La Derision du Christ (Cimabue)', French edition. TERTIARY. Used only for the public showing at the town hall of Compiegne on 23 October 2019 and the figure of a little over four hundred visitors, which we have not been able to confirm against a primary source.
- [7] The Art Newspaper, 'Leonardo codex on the market', 1 June 1994. Source for the Christie's sale of 12 December 1980 at 2 million pounds excluding premium and for the length of the Earl of Leicester's ownership.
- [8] Museo Galileo, 'The European circulation of the Codex Leicester', online exhibition. Source for Thomas Coke's acquisition of the manuscript in Italy about 1717 and its presence in his London residence between 1719 and 1759.