Botticelli’s portrait is sold at auction for over $ 92 million

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Written by Oscar Holland, CNN

Contributors Jacqui PalumboLily Smith, CNN

One of the last portraits of Sandro Botticelli left in private hands was sold at auction for over $ 92 million USD (net of costs) on Thursday morning in Sotheby’s New York.

The 15th century painting “Young Man Holding a Roundel” was the most expensive work by the Renaissance artist to ever appear at auction, and the most valuable of the Old Masters’ work ever sold in a Sotheby’s, the auction house announced.

The portrait, believed to have been taken in the late 1470s or early 1480s, was bought by its previous owner in 1982 for just £ 810,000 (just over $ 1 million in today’s money). It depicts an unidentified young man with a small circular painting known as a rondel.

The rondel itself contains a miniature religious portrait of the 14th-century Sienese painter Bartolomeo Bulgarini that Botticelli incorporated into the work.

Botticelli incorporated the work of a previous artist into the roundel of his unidentified subject.

Botticelli incorporated the work of a previous artist into the roundel of his unidentified subject. Credit: Sotheby’s

“This painting is not only the largest privately owned Botticelli, but must be considered one of the finest privately owned Renaissance paintings,” said Christopher Apostle, head of the painting department at Sotheby’s Old Master, in an email prior to sales.
After announcing the work as “one of the most important portraits of any era to ever appear at auction,” Sotheby’s estimated bids in excess of $ 80 million initially. But Apostle also predicted that it “could very well be the next painting to cross the lofty $ 100 million threshold.” Had it done so, it would have become the first painting to achieve a nine-figure figure at auction since Claude Monet’s “Haystacks,” which raised more than $ 110 million in 2019.

While not as well known as Botticelli masterpieces like “The Birth of Venus” and “Primavera,” the portrait sold on Thursday depicts “the quintessential Renaissance man,” Apostle said. “It feels very modern, thanks in large part to its amazing condition and environment,” he said.

How do art auctions really work?

Market rarity

Although celebrated in his lifetime, Botticelli’s legacy faded after his death in 1510. It was not until the end of the 19th century that interest in his oeuvre was rekindled.

Today, however, he is considered a key figure in the Western art tradition. A blockbuster exhibition featuring around 40 works by the painter, opening in September at the Musée Jacquemart-André in Paris, is one of the most anticipated art exhibitions of 2021.

Botticelli rarely made portraits, focusing most of his career on religious scenes and paintings from classical mythology. Only a dozen of them are known to survive, and almost all of them can now be found in museum collections.

Prior to Thursday’s sale, the auction record for one of his paintings was the $ 10.4 million paid at Christie’s in New York in 2013 for “Madonna and Child with Young Saint John the Baptist” – aka “The Rockefeller Madonna. “.

The Birth of Venus depicted in the Uffizi Gallery in Florence in 2016. Credit: Alberto Pizzoli / AFP / Getty Images

“Young Man Holding a Roundel” was the star of Sotheby’s “Master Paintings and Sculpture” sale, which brought together still lifes and portraits of celebrated European artists. The other standout lot, a rare biblical scene by Rembrandt entitled ‘Abraham and the Angels’, which had not appeared for auction since the 1840s, was one of four works withdrawn just before the sale began.

Other items yet to be sold as part of the auction house’s Masters Week series include a 17th century sculpture by Pietro and Gian Lorenzo Bernini, which is estimated to sell between $ 8 million and $ 12 million, and a triptych by Flemish painter Pieter Coecke van Aelst that is expected to reach $ 3.5 million.

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