Rare portrait expected to fetch $80M

An enigmatic painting from Renaissance master Sandro Botticelli will go on auction next year and art watchers will be seeing if it fetches more than its eye-watering $80 million estimate, despite the pandemic.

Botticelli’s 15th-century portrait of a nobleman in “Young Man Holding a Roundel” is the highlight of Sotheby’s Masters Week sale series in New York in January.

“Just the sheer beauty of this has been a joy,” said Christopher Apostle, who has for more than three decades hhandled Old Masters and is

oow head of thhe division. “I caan’t think of a

otticelli like thhis that’s been onn the open inteernational mmarket.”

Opportunitiees to acquire

Botticelli — thhe artist behind such masterpieces as “Primavera” and “The Birth of Venus” — are very rare.

“The fact that there are 12 known portraits by Botticelli puts it in an elite type of situation,” said Apostle. “These are the most personal things he produced, in a way. It’s just something he’s doing with one individual.”

The auction house believes it could get over $100 million. The last painting to achieve that at auction was Claude Monet’s “Meules” at Sotheby’s in 2019, going for $110 million.

If it reaches those dizzying heights, it would represent a windfall for the present owner. The painting was last acquired at auction in 1982 for £810,000 (or just over $1 million today).

Apostle doesn’t believe the global pandemic will depress interest in the work. “We’ve seen even during this time period that people are hungry for art, hungry for masterpieces, always.”

The painting — believed to have been executed in the late 1470s or early 1480s — actually represents two art works. Botticelli painted the noble sitter but the roundel — a circular disc used as a symbol — depicts a saint and is an original 14thcentury work attributed to painter Bartolommeo Bulgarini.