/
The sale of Young Man Holding A Roundel 1470-80 by Sandro Botticelli, which went under the hammer today at Sotheby’s has achieved in excess of $80m ($92.1m plus fees). It was reported that it sold to a Russian buyer on the phone with Lilija Sitnika, a director and senior client liaison on Sotheby’s Russia desk in London.
The painting embodies Sandro Botticelli’s achievements as a portraitist. Praised by the great Italian Renaissance scholar and museum director John Pope Hennessy as “a giant among portraitists,” Botticelli was celebrated in this field, yet precious few examples of his portraits survive today. Were it not for his fashionable tunic, the supremely elegant individual depicted here could have stepped out of one of Botticelli’s mythological or religious paintings, so striking is his resemblance to the beautiful figures that inhabit those works. Innovative in form and at the same time wholly characteristic of Botticelli’s genius, this timeless masterpiece dates to the height of his career. It represents the perfect visual expression of late quattrocento Florentine culture, yet the crisp simplicity of its setting and the lifelike presence of the sitter renders it profoundly modern.