Record for Cimabue found in kitchen: sold at auction for 24.1 million euros

Record sale for the thirteenth-century tablet with Christ Mocked discovered last month in France and attributed to Cimabue (Florence, c. 1240 - Pisa, 1302). The painting went up for auction yesterday at the Actéon house in Compiègne, northern France, with an estimate that was already very high (between 4 and 6 million euros). The small panel (25.8 x 20.3 centimeters) fetched a record 24.1 million euros (or 19 plus royalties), the highest ever reached at auction for amedieval work (the seventh highest ever for a work of ancient art). In the room were three of the eight bidders who battled for the work: however, we do not know the identity of who came out on top, since the buyer preferred to remain anonymous.

The discovery of this work had come about in a rather daring manner: it had in fact been reported to the auction house by the owner of the tablet, an elderly lady from Compiègne who kept it hanging in her kitchen, near the stove.

“It is the most expensive work by a primitive that has ever been sold in the world,” the auction house declares. "And it also ranks seventh among the most expensive ancient works ever, after Leonardo da Vinci’s Salvator Mundi, Rubens’ Massacre of the Innocents, a Pontormo, a Rembrandt, a Raphael and a Canaletto." It is indeed a very rare work: according to Actéon’s experts, it would belong to a 1280 diptych, later dismembered, on which the stories of Christ were painted and of which only two scenes are currently known, the Flagellation preserved at the Frick Collection in New York and the Madonna and Child Enthroned at the National Gallery in London.

Record for Cimabue found in kitchen: sold at auction for 24.1 million euros

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