One of the few paintings by Sandro Botticelli that still remain in private hands, “Cristo Varón de Dolores”, reached 45.4 million dollars on Thursday at an auction in New York, in which two buyers battled for the piece with constant you bid
The piece was sold for a hammer price of 39.3 million dollars, which when adding fees and taxes came to 45.4 million dollars, above the 40 million dollars that Sotheby’s experts had estimated.
“Christ Man of Sorrows”, which is sold almost exactly a year after another painting by the Italian Renaissance artist sold for 92 million dollars, was executed when the painter was already more than 50 years old, making it one of the his later works, and was last sold to the highest bidder in 1963.
The painting has a peculiarity, and that is that, as a result of the current auction, a sketch of a virgin with a child hidden under the painting of “Christ the Man of Sorrows” has been discovered.
“It is an exciting knowledge about the artist, how he worked and how he created his paintings,” Christopher Apostle, director of the department of Grand Masters at Sotheby’s in New York, explained to Efe.
The piece, which is estimated to have been completed by Botticelli around the year 1500, has been on display since October in London, Dubai, Los Angeles and Hong Kong before being sold in New York, and according to Sotheby’s it has been in private collections since the 19th century. .
“We believe that there are only about five paintings by Botticelli in private hands,” said Apostle, who underlined the retrospective and emotional nature of the painting, the result of the fact that it was painted in the last years of the painter’s life.
“It’s a metaphysical painting of a mature person facing their own mortality, and that’s what makes it so moving,” added the Sotheby’s expert.
Representing Christ with a crown of thorns, surrounded by bonds, with his hands crossed on his chest and with a halo of angels flying over his head, he has a sober and austere style, far from the innocence of his first works, such as the famous ” Birth of Venus”.
Today’s auction at Sotheby’s was also notable for being the first time an Egyptian limestone sculpture, “Figure of a Man,” estimated to date from between 2350 and 2990 BC, has been included in the so-called “Masters Week.” C., which had been given a value of between 3 and 5 million dollars.
Along with “Christ Man of Sorrows”, it was one of the most prominent items after a bidding battle lasting nearly a quarter of an hour, the sculpture reached a hammer price of 8.4 million dollars, which rose to 9 .9 million dollars.
The figure was excavated by the renowned American archaeologist George Andrew Reisner in the pyramids of Giza in 1913, after which it was presented by the Egyptian government to the Museum of Fine Arts at Harvard University in 1921.
The Flemish painter Pieter van Mol was another of the protagonists of the day, since his “Diogenes with his lamp in search of an honest man” was sold for 5.8 million dollars, almost double the value that had been given the company, an amount that smashed the artist’s previous record, which was $420,000.
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