Moments ago Botticelli’s Portrait of a young man holding a roundel sold for $92,184,000 at Sotheby’s in New York sale of Master Paintings and Sculpture. It shattered the previous record for a Botticelli by nine times and was the highest price ever paid for an Old Master at Sotheby’s. It was last purchased at auction for $1.3 million in 1982.
The Botticelli now stands alongside Francis Bacon’s Inspired by the Oresteia of Aeschylus as the second work to have surpassed $80m at auction since Sotheby’s pioneered the new live-streamed auction format some seven months ago. The sale today is among the auctions which attracted the highest number of participants ever seen in a Sotheby’s live-streamed auction. Some 66% of bidders registered online. This echoes the pattern of 2020, which also saw many new buyers enter the field.
The Botticelli becomes the second most expensive Old Master ever sold at auction. In 2017 Leonardo’s Salvador Mundi mde $450 million at Christie’s and is the most expensive Old Master ever sold at auction.