?Final Price Realized includes Buyer’s Premium added to Hammer Price
Estimate: $ 1,500 - $ 2,500
JOHN LEONE (1929-2011) Capture for gold on Playa de Muertos.
Altered version of the original double-page opening spread illustration for the story "Curse of the Spanish Treasure" by Ramon Valdes published in Argosy magazine November 1959, pages 26-27. Oil on board. 470x680 mm; 18 1/2x26 3/4 inches. Signed "Leone" in lower left. A copy of the published magazine showing the original composition accompanies the artwork.
The original published image shows the Spanish crew restraining a handsome man, his shirt ripped open in the struggle, revealing his strapping torso. After publication, seeing an opportunity to sell the painting itself, Leone changed the captured man to the sexy woman we see here. While it now had absolutely nothing to do with the story line of the lost $10,000,000 gold treasure, it made the action scene a little more titillating and Leone undoubtedly benefitted from his reworking.
