(DAILY CALLER) – A rare portrait by Renaissance artist Sandro Botticelli sold for more than $92 million at auction at Sotheby’s New York, numerous sources reported.
“Young Man Holding a Roundel” is one of roughly a dozen portraits Botticelli painted, and is the most expensive work by the artist or by any old master to have ever appeared at Sotheby’s. It’s also the highest price paid for an old master work since Leonardo da Vinci’s Salvator Mundi sold in 2017 for $450 million, the New York Times reported.
The work was initially estimated at $80 million, and after only 4.5 minutes of the livestreamed auction, an anonymous bidder represented by a London-based staffer with Russian clients won the brief competition.
