Botticelli masterpiece sells for US$92 mln at auction
NEW YORK: A portrait by Italian renaissance painter Sandro Botticelli sold for US$92 million at an online Sotheby’s auction Thursday, smashing the record price for the artist.
“Young Man Holding a Roundel,” believed to have been painted in the 1470s or 1480s, is considered one of Botticelli’s finest portraits and is the highlight of Sotheby’s Masters Week sale in New York.
“This is a work that transcends time and categories. Now we really do know the price of beauty,” said George Wachter, cochairman of old master paintings at Sotheby’s.
The 58-centimetre by 39centimetre painting shows a man in his late teenage years with long golden hair sitting holding a disc featuring a bearded saint.
The roundel, which depicts the saint with his right hand raised, is an original 14th-century artwork attributed to Sienese painter Bartolommeo Bulgarini. Art historians suspect the Botticelli depicts a nobleman proudly showing off the earlier artwork.
“This image symbolizes and exemplifies the Renaissance in Florence,” Christopher Apostle, Sotheby’s senior vice-president, told AFP ahead of the auction.
“We haven’t seen anything like it in my lifetime,” he added, describing it as “a masterpiece.”
The auction, which took place virtually and was streamed live online because of the coronavirus pandemic, saw fierce bidding between Sotheby’s representatives in New York and London, with a buyer directing orders through London winning out.
Sotheby’s said the final price, including fees and commissions, was US$92.2 million after it sold under the hammer for US$80 million.
The price establishes the work as one of the most significant portraits to have ever sold at auction. It becomes the second most valuable old master painting ever auctioned after Leonardo da Vinci’s ‘Salvator Mundi’ went for US$450.3 million at a Christie’s sale in 2017.