This week’s auctions of contemporary art in New York saw the market take a distinct upswing, with energetic sales culminating in an astonishing $43.8m given at Sotheby’s for a rare silk-screen painting by Andy Warhol. “This was an unbelievably strong sale,” said New York dealer Christophe Van de Weghe on Wednesday night. “People just wanted to spend money tonight, they were tired of holding back.” The auction house had just raised $134.4m in its 54-lot sale, well ahead of its high estimate of $97.7m (presale estimates do not include commissions; results do). Only two lots failed to find buyers.

While the Warhol was widely expected to beat its $8m-$12m estimate, many were astonished at how strongly it performed. Dating from 1962, “200 One Dollar Bills” comes from Warhol’s second series of serial images, and had a highly desirable provenance, having belonged to Robert and Ethel Scull, early patrons of Pop Art. According to Bloomberg, it was being sold by the London-based collector Pauline Karpidas. There were gasps in the saleroom when a Christie’s staffer on the telephone jumped to $12m immediately after the opening $6m bid, and applause and cheers rang out when the hammer came down at $43.8m.

“When you bring great quality you get great prices,” said one of two unsuccessful underbidders, the trader Alberto Mugrabi, whose family already owns several hundred Warhols.

Another Warhol on offer was a red-and-green self-portrait given in 1967 to Cathy Naso, then aged 17, who worked as a receptionist at Warhol’s Factory. She had kept the work in a cupboard until this year. “Fresh as the day it was made,” said auctioneer Tobias Meyer as he hammered it down to the London jeweller Laurence Graff for $6.1m, well over its $1m-$1.5m estimate. “I am overwhelmed by the price – Warhol made me famous for 15 minutes,” Naso commented, while Graff said, “It’s a gem!”

Christie’s sale of contemporary art hadits excitements too, with Peter Doig’s painting “Reflection (What Does Your Soul Look Like)” (1996) making $10.2m. It quickly shot past its $4m-$6m target and at $7m four bidders were still slugging it out, including the London dealer Jay Jopling on the telephone. The rumour was that the buyer was Ukrainian billionaire Victor Pinchuk, who in 2007 paid £5.7m for Doig’s “White Canoe”.

Christie’s sale made $74.2m, within its $61.5m-$88m pre-sale estimate, but one of its top lots, Basquiat’s “Brother Sausage” (1983) flopped, with no hands raised in the room. It had been consigned by the American publishing mogul Peter Brant, who is enmeshed in a divorce battle with his wife, former Victoria’s Secret model Stephanie Seymour. The work, according to several trade sources, failed because its $12m estimate was too steep.

The stunning exhibition at London’s National Gallery, The Sacred Made Real (until January 24), focuses on Spanish religious art from the Baroque period, and demonstrates the amazing skill of the sculptors and painters who breathed life into the wooden figures. To coincide with the show, London’s Matthiesen Gallery has assembled more than 30 Spanish sculptures dating from 1550-1750, some by the same artists as in the National Gallery show.

Among the works are a curly-haired infant Jesus by Juan Martínez Montañés, a bold pair of Atlantes by Domenec Rovira, and a full-length figure of Saint Benito of Palermo – one of the rare saints of African origin – in flowing golden robes by José Montes de Oca. All but one of these works have export licences, or come from collections outside the country – an important detail, given that there is a new team in the export arm of the Spanish culture ministry which is likely to tighten up regulations. An example is Alonso Cano’s pensive “Inmaculada” (1650-60), a work that has been reattributed to Cano after being on the Spanish art market: today, says Andréa Gates of Matthiesen, it would probably not be exportable at all. Prices from €75,000 to €2m.

Convicted fraudster Bernard Madoff once owned a Rolex with a premonitory nickname: “The Prisoner”. An Oyster chronograph dating from 1945, it was one of dozens of expensive luxury watches belonging to Madoff, who is now serving a 150-year jail sentence for fraud. After his conviction, US marshals seized his homes, cars and boats as part of attempts to claw back some of the $65bn investors lost in his Ponzi scheme.

On Saturday jewellery, furs and even ashtrays from two of his homes come under the hammer in New York’s Sheraton Hotel. In the $500,000 sale are seven Cartier watches and 17 Rolexes including “The Prisoner”, estimated at $75,000-$87,500, while 45 of Ruth Madoff’s handbags, by Vuitton, Hermès, Prada and others, are bundled into lots estimated at a few hundred dollars each.

More is to come, with Madoff’s higher-end art and furniture expected to go on the block at Sotheby’s or Christie’s in the future.

Among the fall-outs of Lehman Brothers’ bankruptcy last year was its sponsorship of the Hong Kong International Art Fair. “We heard the news of Lehman’s crash, and after that there was nobody to contact there any more,” says fair director Magnus Renfrew. But now the fair has a new sponsor, in the form of Deutsche Bank, “for up to five years”, says the bank’s communications manager Michael West, who sees the deal as “a marketing, networking and brand-building opportunity”.

Georgina Adam is editor-at-large of The Art Newspaper