A recently rediscovered drawing by Michelangelo (1475-1564), entitled “A young nude (from Masaccio) surrounded by two figures”, executed at the beginning of his career, will be auctioned at Christie’s in Paris on May 18 with a starting estimate of 30 million euros. “This is an exceptionally rare work, one of the very few drawings by Michelangelo still in private hands”, Christie’s specified today announcing its sale in the catalog “Maîtres anciens et du XIXe siècle. Tableaux, dessins, sculptures” (Ancient masters and art 19th century: paintings, drawings and sculptures).
Coming from a French private collection, the design had been declared a ‘French national treasure’, initially preventing its export from France for a period of thirty months. The French government recently removed this impediment and granted its export license, allowing the design to be offered without restriction to collectors around the world. Before its sale in Paris, Michelangelo’s drawing will be exhibited in Hong Kong and New York.
The drawing was first recognized as a work by Michelangelo in 2019 by Furio Rinaldi, then a specialist in Christie’s department of antique drawings. Paul Joannides, emeritus professor of art history at Cambridge University and author of the complete catalogs of Michelangelo’s drawings and his school at the Ashmolean Museum in Oxford and the Louvre, was then able to study the original and arrive at the attribution. Sold in 1907 to the Hôtel Drouot in Paris as a work of Michelangelo’s school, the drawing had escaped the attention of all scholars until its recent rediscovery.
A work by the young Michelangelo in Florence, dating from the late 15th century, this drawing is probably the artist’s first surviving nude study. The central figure of the work reproduces the trembling man depicted in the Baptism of the Neophytes, one of the famous frescoes in the Cappells Brancacci of the church of Santa Maria del Carmine in Florence by the first Italian Renaissance master Masaccio (1401-1428).
Several other Masaccio-inspired Michelangelo studies are known, including a drawing at the Staatliche Graphische Sammlung in Munich and one at the Albertina in Vienna, as well as a drawing inspired by a Giotto fresco in the Louvre.
Using two shades of brown ink, Michelangelo makes the figure of Masaccio his own, enhancing the musculature of man and creating a more powerful and robust figure that heralds his most famous representations of the human body, such as his monumental David in marble at the Galleria dell ‘ Accademia di Firenze and its two slaves in the Louvre. In a completely different and more energetic style, Michelangelo later added two figures behind the trembling man, unrelated to Masaccio’s original composition.
The sale of this well-preserved drawing by Michelangelo takes its place among the ranks of other great works on paper offered at auction by Christie’s in recent years, including Raphael’s Head of Muse, which has sold in London for more than £ 29 million ( $ 38 million) in December 2009; Leonardo da Vinci’s exquisite Bear Head, which reached nearly £ 9 million ($ 11.8 million) in 2021; a rare male nude study by Michelangelo sold in London on 4 July 2000 for more than 8 million pounds (12 million dollars), setting the world record for a work by the artist.
Cécile Verdier, president of Christie’s France, said: “All Christie’s collaborators involved in this sale are deeply honored by the opportunity to present a work of this magnitude. An important discovery in the history of art, the sale of this design it is also an epochal event for the art market “.
Stijn Alsteens, head of the International Department of Antique Drawings, said: “Since the 2001 discovery of a Michelangelo drawing at Castle Howard, now at the J. Paul Getty Museum in Los Angeles, a previously unknown drawing has never re-emerged at auction. of greater beauty and importance than one of the greatest figures in the history of art. The drawing is one of the best of less than ten works on paper by Michelangelo still in private hands, and will become a touchstone for any discussion on the first part of the long career of the artist. It is with great pride that we bring to market this drawing, now fully recognized as a work of Michelangelo, after its last appearance more than a century ago. I also want to acknowledge and express my thanks to Furio Rinaldi, former specialist in Christie’s Old Master Drawings, and now curator of drawings and prints at the Fine Arts Museums in San Francisco, who was the first to suggest the attribution, which is now sta unanimously accepted “.
(by Paolo Martini)