It may be hundreds of years since they picked up their brushes, but the Old Masters proved their work still holds the art world enthralled.

An auction at Sotheby’s in London last night fetched more than £35 million, sending records for sales tumbling.

Collectors from 33 countries as far afield as Asia and the Middle East bid for works by artists from El Greco and Claude-Joseph Vernet to Rachel Ruysch and Giandomenico Tiepolo.

El Greco’s Saint Dominic in Prayer, painted in 15th-century Toledo, was sold for £9,154,500, shattering its estimate of £3-5 million, setting a record for a Spanish Old Master at auction.

His Christ on the Cross also sold for £3,442,500, making it the first time that two masterpieces by the artist were offered at the same auction.

View of Avignon from the Right Bank of the Rhone, by Claude-Joseph Vernet, also outstripped pre-sales expectations, fetching £5,346,500, while Rachel Ruysch’s Still Life of Roses from 1710 set a new auction record for a female Old Master artist, selling for £1,650,000.

The evening auction saw eight new artist records set, with seven lots over £1 million, while an afternoon auction of treasures including a Renaissance marble inlaid table top, a Louis XIV mantel clock and an Imperial Porcelain Vase from the period of Nicholas I also fetched more than £9.2 million.

Alex Bell, worldwide head of Sotheby’s Old Master paintings, said: “The greatest Old Master paintings have a timeless quality that transcends their era and gives them a relevance to audiences today, as tonight’s global bidding and record result for El Greco attest.

“The dialogue between Old and New is injecting fresh energy into our field. We’re now firmly in a new era, where clients from new markets are collecting Old Masters in new ways.

“Our response has been to offer the most exciting and diverse works we can find - and to present them a more contemporary way.”