A drawing by young Michelangelo for sale at Christie's in Paris: estimated at 30 million euros

An unpublished drawing by Michelangelo will go up for auction at Christie’ s in Paris on May 18: it is a male nude from one of the frescoes executed by Masaccio in the Brancacci Chapel, estimated to be worth around 30 million euros. It is one of the few works by the great Michelangelo Buonarroti still in private hands. The work will be part of the Maîtres anciens et du XIXe siècle sale.

The drawing comes from a private French collection. After being classified as a “national treasure” by France (the homologue of a listed cultural asset of ours), it has now been granted permission to be exported and therefore can be offered without restriction to collectors around the world. Before being offered for sale in Paris, the drawing will be exhibited in Hong Kong and New York. It was recognized as a work by Michelangelo in 2019 by Furio Rinaldi, and the attribution was later confirmed by Paul Joannides, professor of art history at Cambridge University and author of the complete catalog of drawings by Michelangelo and his school in the Louvre Museum and the Ashmolean Museum in Oxford. The drawing was sold in 1907 at the Hotel Drouot as a work of Michelangelo’s school, and escaped the attention of all specialists until its recent rediscovery.

According to Christie’s experts, the young Michelangelo made the drawing (probably his first known nude study, according to the house) in Florence in the late 15th century. The central figure captures one of the characters from the Baptism of the Neophytes, one of Masaccio’s famous frescoes on the walls of the Brancacci Chapel in the church of Santa Maria del Carmine in Florence. Several other studies by the artist from Masaccio are known, notably in the Cabinet of Drawings and Prints in Munich and the Albertina in Vienna, while a copy from a fresco by Giotto is in the Louvre.

Using two brown inks with different tones, Michelangelo appropriated Masaccio’s figure by making it more muscular, robust, and monumental, like his future representations of the human body. In the drawing Michelangelo associates two figures on the sides, unrelated to Masaccio’s fresco, executed with a freer, more vigorous pen stroke. The sale of this sheet, in good condition, is in line with major drawings offered at auction by Christie’s, such as Raphael’s Head of a Muse, which sold on Dec. 8, 2009, in London for more 29 million pounds, Leonardo da Vinci ’s Bear’s Head Study, which realized nearly 9 million pounds last July as well as a Study of a Male Nude by Michelangelo, whose price obtained in London on July 4, 2000 (more than 8 million pounds) remains the world record for a work by the artist for the time being.

“All Christie’s teams involved in the sale of this drawing,” says Cécile Verdier, president of Christie’s France, “are extremely honored to be able to offer a work of such importance, a great rediscovery for art history. The sale of this drawing is an important event for the art market.”

“Since the discovery in 2001 of a drawing by Michelangelo at Castle Howard, now housed at the J. Paul Getty Museum,” points out Stijn Alstens, director of Christie’s ancient drawings department, “a drawing of such beauty and significance, by one of the greatest figures in the history of art, had not reappeared. This drawing is one of the most remarkable of the fewer than ten sheets by Michelangelo still in private hands, and will become an essential work for any study of the early days of the artist’s long career. I would like here to express my thanks to Furio Rinaldi, former specialist in ancient drawings at Christie’s in New York, and now curator of drawings and prints at the Fine Arts Museums in San Francisco, who was the first to suggest this attribution, which was unanimously accepted.”

A drawing by young Michelangelo for sale at Christie's in Paris: estimated at 30 million euros

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