Australians may be losing their religion, as the latest census suggests, but they can still appreciate a standout religious painting. Acclaimed Australian artist Justin O’Brien, who died in 1996 in his adopted city of Rome, set a new auction record last week when his brilliantly coloured oil painting, Madonna, circa 1959, sold at Menzies in Melbourne for $340,000 on the hammer, or $417,273 with buyer’s fees (25 per cent of the hammer price including GST).

That’s significantly above O’Brien’s previous auction record, set in 2015, for Still Life Against a Landscape, 1972, which sold for $220,000 (hammer).