RARE BOTTICELLI PORTRAIT SOLD FOR RECORD $92 MILLION

Fri 29 January 2021:

On Thursday morning, Sotheby’s blockbuster Old Masters sale at its New York headquarters saw its star lot, a rare 15th century portrait by Renaissance master Sandro Botticelli Young Man Holding a Roundel, go for a staggering $92.2 million, making it one of the most expensive Old Masters works to ever sell at auction.

The piece features a portrait of a noble sitter who is believed by scholars to be made in the image of a Medici family member. Botticelli’s young noble holds a roundel depicting a saint that painted in the mode of Sienese artist Bartolommeo Bulgarini’s work.

Experts believe the work may have been done on commission. Last sold on the market for in 1982 at a Christie’s London for just £810,000, the painting broke the artist’s previous record of $10.4 million, made by the sale of The Rockefeller Madonna at Christie’s in 2013.

The Botticelli, which had come from the collection of late real estate developer Sheldon Solow and which had guarantee, was estimated to sell for $80 million. Before bidding opened on the work, Sotheby’s veteran auctioneer Olivier Barker announced its designation as a premium lot, meaning only telephone and absentee bids would be accepted.

Barker opened bidding at $70,000, and after several minutes of bidding between clients represented by Sotheby’s Russia desk specialist in London, Lilija Sitnika, and the house’s co-chairman of Old Master paintings, Alexander Bell, the work hammered at a final bid of $80 million, going to Sitnika’s bidder. With premium, the final price was $92 million.

The result marks the second-highest price ever achieved for an Old Masters work at auction. The only Old Masters lot ever to have sold for a higher price was Leonardo da Vinci’s Salvator Mundi, which went for $450.3 million in 2017 at a Christie’s contemporary art sale.

The Botticelli may have overperformed, but other lots failed to impress. Before the sale, a minuscule Rembrandt biblical scene belonging to Metropolitan Museum of Art trustee Mark Fisch, which had been estimated to sell for $20 million, was removed, depriving the auction of one of its top lots.

Also offered in Thursday’s auction were six deaccessioned lots from the collection of the Albright-Knox in Buffalo, New York. Four of them sold for a collected $3.2 million.