At the start of the Italian Renaissance, portraits of nobles and important figures constituted one of the highest artistic genres, thanks in particular to the valuable contribution of Sandro Botticelli, a visionary painter who started this trend. Respected and sought after by the greatest patrons of his time, Botticelli produced some of the most famous portraits in the history of art (only a dozen have survived to this day), almost all of which are housed in important museum collections.
One of these works, Portrait of a Young Man Holding a Medallion, is arriving on the auction market and will be offered on 28 January 2021, during ‘Masters Week’ organised by Sotheby's in New York. The estimate, which is around $80 million (£60 mil), propels the painting among the most important portraits ever presented at auction, all periods combined, alongside the Portrait of Adele Bloch-Bauer II by Gustav Klimt (sold in 2006 for $87.9 million) and Portrait of Dr Gachet by Van Gogh (sold in 1990 for $82.5 million).
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Christopher Apostle, Head of Sotheby’s Old Master Paintings Department, New York, said:
It is in his portraits... that Botticelli most clearly opens a window onto the world of Renaissance Florence – never more so than in ‘Young Man Holding a Roundel’, a painting that encapsulates the intellectual, courtly and humanistic virtues that define the Italian Renaissance.
The painting, probably painted between 1470 and 1480, is a pictorial synthesis of the ideals of Renaissance Florence, then carried by a humanist dimension and a renewed importance of the individual. Botticelli was among the first to break with the tradition of the ‘profile portrait’, trying his hand at allegorical and contemplative works. The quality of Portrait of a Young Man Holding a Medallion is comparable to some of Botticelli's most significant portraits, now preserved in museums, such as Portrait of a Man with Medal by Cosimo the Elder (Uffizi Gallery in Florence) and Portrait of Julien de Médicis (National Gallery of Washington, DC).
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The medallion in the hands of the young man is an original 14th-century work attributed to the Sienese painter Bartolomeo Bulgarini. The presence of this specific work is yet to be deciphered, but it probably relates to the identity of the young nobleman illustrated, who exhibits it with great pride. Some researchers have suggested that the subject could be Pierfrancesco de Medici (also known as the Popolano), brother of Laurent de Medici, one of Botticelli's most important patrons.
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X-ray and infrared analysis revealed the lines, structures and circles sketched by Botticelli beforehand, allowing him to elaborate the pose of his model while constructing his composition. The initial sketch differs from the final version in many ways, a symptomatic process of continuous revision in Botticelli, always in search of the ideal that characterises his work.
This is a painting that transcends the normal boundaries of the Old Master genre, and one of the best-preserved, most exquisite, classical Renaissance portraits that anyone could ever wish to own.
The painting was first listed in the 1930s as part of Lord Newborough's collection in Caernarvon, Wales, and is said to have been purchased by his ancestor Sir Thomas Wynn while living in Tuscany. Around 1935-38, the portrait was sold by a London dealer to a private collector, whose heirs auctioned it off in 1982 to its current owner for £810,000.
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Over the past 50 years, the painting has been on loan to the National Gallery in London, the Metropolitan Museum of Art in New York, and the National Gallery of Art in Washington, DC. It has also been the subject of major exhibitions at the Royal Academy, the National Gallery of Art in Washington, DC, and the Städel Museum in Frankfurt am Main.
Sotheby's describes it as ‘The ultimate Renaissance portrait’, one of the most important of this period still in private hands. Estimated at over $80 million, the work has already set Botticelli's new auction record, since the current is set at $10.4 million (£6.4 mill) for the Virgin and Child with the young Saint John-Baptiste (Rockefeller Madonna), sold at Christie's in January 2013.
