Portrait of a Young Man holding a Roundel

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Portrait of a Young Man Holding a Roundel
Botticelli - Portrait of a young man holding a medallion.jpg
Artist Sandro Botticelli
Yearc. 1480
MediumTempera on poplar wood
Movement Italian Renaissance
OwnerPrivate

The Portrait of a Young Man Holding a Roundel (also known as Portrait of a Young Man holding a Trecento Medallion [1] ) is a painting attributed to the Italian Renaissance master Sandro Botticelli. On the basis of its style it has been estimated to have been painted around 1480. [2] The identity of the portrait's subject is unknown, but analysts suggest it could be someone from the Medici family, as Lorenzo de' Medici was one of Botticelli's main benefactors. [3]

Contents

Description of the painting

The painting, thought to have been completed c. 1480, is believed to represent the beauty ideals [4] of Renaissance Florentine high society. [5] The young man's tunic is of a simple, fine quality with a blue color very rare at the time. [6] The work was painted in tempera on poplar wood [7] with a width of 38.9  cm and a height of 58.7  cm. [1] The figure of the bearded saint in the trecento medallion [8] was added after the portrait was completed and is believed to be an original by Bartolomeo Bulgarini, also known as the "Ovile Master". [8] The medallion is very similar to other works by Bulgarini [9] with a presumption that it was originally trimmed from a rectangular trecento. [10] The young man is portrayed in front of a window frame in which the artist has fashioned a series of color planes. [8] The inner frame is a uniform grey color, and appears to have a bright blueish tone to the left with a darker grey one in the right so the colors seem to change from left to right. [8] One of the young man's fingers, supporting the medallion from below, rests on a bright grey strip at the bottom of the painting. The hand acts as a repoussoir that provides the illusion that the medallion is in another level within the painting. [8]

History and ownership

The first modern record of the painting was in 1938, when it was owned by Baron Newborough of Caernarvon. [1] At the time, the art dealer Frank Sabin [2] visited the Newborough estate and appraised the painting's value. [1] Lord Newborough was ignorant of the true value of the painting, so Sabin managed to buy the piece for a relatively low price. [1] Art historians assumed that the painting came into the possession of the Newborough family when the 1st Baron Newborough, Thomas Winn, lived in Florence, Italy between 1782 and 1791. [2] [1]

Sabin sold the portrait to the collector Sir Thomas Merton in 1941 for a five-figure sum. [2] During Merton's ownership the portrait was first described as a work by Botticelli. [1] The attribution to Botticelli was doubted later, as prominent monographs on Botticelli did not include the portrait as one of his. [9] Currently a majority of the art historians accept the attribution to Botticelli. [2] While the Merton family owned the portrait, it became the subject of a poster for a Royal Academy of Arts Exhibition of Italian Art in 1960. [11] In 1982, Merton's descendants sold the painting for £ 810,000 at an auction at Christie's. [2]

After Sheldon Solow bought the piece in 1982, [12] [2] the portrait was loaned to major museums including the Metropolitan Museum of Art in New York, the National Gallery in London, and the Städel Museum in Frankfurt, [3] where it was displayed in a Botticelli exhibition in 2009–2010. [2] In January 2021, the portrait was sold at an auction at Sotheby's New York for more than US$92.2 million [13] to a Russian-speaking collector. [14] The price for the painting was the highest paid for a Botticelli and the highest for an Old Master work since Leonardo Da Vinci's Salvator Mundi sold in 2017. [15]

See also

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References

  1. 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 Stapleford, Richard (1987). "Botticelli's Portrait of a Young Man Holding a Trecento Medallion". The Burlington Magazine . 129 (1012): 428–436. ISSN   0007-6287. JSTOR   882920.
  2. 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 Thomas, Gina. "Mehr als 80 Millionen Dollar: Dieser Jüngling kann teuer werden". Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung (in German). ISSN   0174-4909 . Retrieved 2020-09-27.
  3. 1 2 Brown, Mark (2020-09-24). "'True beauty for the ages': $80m Botticelli to appear at auction". The Guardian . Retrieved 2020-09-27.
  4. ↑ McGreevy, Nora. "One of the Last Privately Owned Botticelli Portraits Could Fetch $80 Million". Smithsonian Magazine . Retrieved 2020-12-19.
  5. ↑ "Rare Botticelli portrait could reach $100 million at auction". Reuters . 2020-09-25. Retrieved 2020-12-19.[ dead link ]
  6. ↑ Garabedian, Maya. "Sandro Botticelli: A Closer Look at Young Man Holding a Roundel". Mutualart.com. Retrieved 2020-12-19.
  7. ↑ Gropp, Rose-Maria. "Altmeister-Markt: Der Preis ist heiß". FAZ.NET (in German). ISSN   0174-4909 . Retrieved 2021-01-25.
  8. 1 2 3 4 5 Stapleford, Richard (1987), p.428
  9. 1 2 Stapleford, Richard (1987), p.432
  10. ↑ Stapleford, Richard (1987), p.430
  11. ↑ Hartley, H.; Gabor, D. (1970). "Thomas Ralph Merton. 1888-1969". Biographical Memoirs of Fellows of the Royal Society . 16: 434. doi: 10.1098/rsbm.1970.0017 .
  12. ↑ Kazakina, Katya (2020-09-24). "NYC Property Billionaire Selling Botticelli for $80 Million". Bloomberg . Retrieved 2020-10-27.
  13. ↑ "Botticelli portrait sells for record $92.1m at Sotheby's in New York". The Art Newspaper . Retrieved 2021-01-28.
  14. ↑ Crow, Kelly (28 January 2021). "Botticelli's 'Young Man' Portrait Sells for $92.2 Million". Wsj.com. Retrieved 10 February 2022.
  15. ↑ Kazakina, Katya (2021-01-28). "A Botticelli Portrait Sells for $92 Million at Sotheby's Auction". The New York Times. ISSN   0362-4331 . Retrieved 2022-02-17.
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