ITALIAN BAROQUE ARTIST BERNINI’S RARE DRAWING SELLS FOR $2.3 MILLION AT FRENCH AUCTION

Sun 21 March 2021:

Auctioned between 30,000 and 50,000 euros, the work, a red chalk made between 1630 and 1640, was finally auctioned for 1.3 million euros on Saturday afternoon during an online sale organized by the house Actéon, for a total price of 1,937,500 euros with the purchase costs.

“The world record for a drawing by Bernini (established at 139,000 euros in 2014, editor’s note) is shattered. We are extremely happy to have played our role of revealing a work of art“, reacted to AFP Dominique Le Coënt, auctioneer.

The identity of the purchaser – who was represented – has not yet been revealed but “it is probably an Anglo-Saxon purchase“, specified Mr. Le Coënt, for whom the work goes”leave France“.

This academy drawing, representing a man seated in a plant setting, is “a typical expression of baroque art and Bernini’s genius“, he added.

According to the auction house, “Men’s academy“belongs to a”extremely small corpus of academic figures known to Bernini“, art historians do not identify”more than seven“others,”all kept in museums and institutions, including one at the Uffizi Museum in Florence“.

The sale, broadcast live on the internet, attracted the interest of many collectors, mostly international, with the participation of nine bidders by telephone.

Discovered in an estate of a compiégnoise property, the drawing was first attributed to the French sculptor Pierre Puget before being authenticated as a work of Bernini.

Gian Lorenzo Bernini (1598-1680), known as Le Bernini, is particularly famous for his statues of the famous fountain in Piazza Navona in Rome, including the large male nude in the drawing, perhaps close together.

In 2019, Actéon had already broken a record with the sale of “Mocked christ“by Italian painter Cimabue, which had been sold for more than 24 million euros.