A rediscovered and sober Christ portrait by Italian Renaissance painter Sandro Botticelli (1445-1510) was auctioned on Thursday at Sotheby’s in New York for almost 41 million euros. The anonymous contributor bought the work in 1963 at an auction in London for £10,000.
Botticelli is the painter of The Birth of Venus and other profane masterpieces. The auctioned Christ portrait dates from circa 1500, his late career, when his hometown of Florence came under the influence of the fanatical penitential preacher Girolamo Savonarola. Botticelli then went on to paint pious work.
Botticelli has portrayed Christ with his hands crossed against his chest and with the wounds of his crucifixion. Around his shoulder-length hair is a wreath of miniature angels, equipped with the torture instruments used to work the savior on the cross.
The yield is according to The Art Newspaper just below the auction house’s undisclosed low target price. Only one work by Botticelli fetched a higher amount at auction. That was a year ago, when a boy portrait was auctioned for about 82 million euros.
A still life with a bowl of wild strawberries by the 17th-century Dutch painter Adriaen Coorte changed hands on Thursday at the same auction for 2.2 million euros. The yield for this canvas the size of A4 was well above expectations.
Spectacular was the yield for the misfit among the old master paintings, an 80 centimeters high Egyptian statue of sandstone from about 2400 BC. It was sold for 9 million euros, more than three times the low target price.
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