Record-breaking Michelangelo. One of his drawings sold for 23 million euros.

On May 18, 2022, an important drawing by Michelangelo Buonarroti depicting a nude man and two figures behind him and made in pen and brown ink was sold at auction for a record price of 23,162 million euros. Modest in size (33 x 20 centimeters), the drawing probably constitutes the artist’s earliest known nude, executed in Florence early in his career at the end of the 15th century.

The man in the center recalls the trembling figure visible in the fresco that is part of the decoration of the Brancacci Chapel in the Church of Santa Maria del Carmine in Florence, the Baptism of the Neophytes, painted by Masaccio. Michelangelo then took up the figure of the latter, highlighting his muscular body and adding two other figures behind him, but they have no connection with Masaccio’s work.

The drawing had been sold in 1907 by Drouot, also in Paris, as a Michelangelo school drawing, while it was first recognized as a work by the celebrated artist in 2019 by the then specialist in Christie’s Old Masters Drawings Department Furio Rinaldi. France had prevented its export for a period of thirty months because it was considered a"national treasure," but now the government has recently removed this impediment, granting its export and permission to be offered without restriction.

Coming from a private French collection, the painting has now been sold by Christie’ s becoming the most expensive work ever sold by the artist and the third highest price achieved for the sale of an Old Master drawing.

Record-breaking Michelangelo. One of his drawings sold for 23 million euros.

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