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The last time it was up for auction, “The Man of Sorrows,” an image of Christ by Sandro Botticelli, sold for $26,000. Adjusting for inflation, that would be about $240,000 today. This Thursday, the painting by the Renaissance master was awarded for 45.4 million dollars at a Sotheby’s auction in New York. This monumental price, the second highest for any work by ‘great masters’ sold at auction in the last five years, is explained not only by the revaluation of the art market.
The millionaire is due, above all, to the fact that the painting has recovered its direct association with Botticelli and has been exalted as one of the best examples of his darkest period.
For decades, the painting was not considered executed by the hand of the Florentine painter.
The painting is far from the conventional idea of Botticelli, from the oneiric and delicate image of ‘The Birth of Venus’ (1484-86) or from the silky robes and exquisite vegetation of his ‘Primavera’, dated between the 1470s and 1480.
‘The Man of Sorrows’ is a harsh depiction of Christ, with a piercing, sorrowful gaze. When it was auctioned in 1963 -also by Sotheby’s, this time in London- it was actually attributed to Botticelli. But a few years later, the main student of the Renaissance painter of that time, Ronald Lightbown, described the painting as part of Botticelli’s “workshop and school” works.
In 2005, the monograph that the German expert in art history Frank Zöllner dedicated to Botticelli, included him within “late workshop products of the circle of Botticelli”.
With that attribution, it is possible that the valuation of ‘The Man of Sorrows’ had not changed much over the years since that auction in London. The wind changed in 2009, when the painting was included in the exhibition ‘Botticelli: Likeness, Myth, Devotion’, at the Städel Museum in Frankfurt, as a work by Botticelli.
The show’s catalog, written by Bastien Eclercy, called it a “rediscovered” work that “not only represents an important example of Botticelli’s late period, but also adds a surprising facet to our understanding of the representation of Christ in the Renaissance.” .
The painting, believed to be painted around 1500, went from being the work of an assistant or apprentice to a decisive example for understanding Botticelli’s final stage.
That period of his life and his work cannot be explained without the influence of the Dominican friar Girolamo Savonarola. He was a charismatic preacher, a religious extremist who declared Florence the new Jerusalem, demanded that citizens purge their sins and promoted the burning of any object considered sinful: luxuries, indecent clothing and objectionable paintings – it is possible that among them some of Botticelli – they burned at the stake.
Savonarola suffered the same fate as them – the authorities arrested him, tried him and burned him as a heretic in the Piazza della Signoria – but he left much influence on the Florentine citizens. Among his followers, it is quite possible that Botticelli was. This was stated by his first biographer, Giorgio Vasari, almost his contemporary, and it is documented that the artist’s brother was one of them.
The reality is that, with the influence of the friar, who denigrated the type of Botticelli’s earlier paintings, the painter transformed his work towards a somber and spiritual tone and makes more archaic forms in his later years.
Amid growing interest in this Botticelli period, others supported the Städel Museum attribution: Laurence Kanter, chief curator of European art at the Yale University Art Gallery, and Keith Christiansen, who was responsible for European painting at the New York Met, also awarded ‘The Man of Sorrows’ to Botticelli.
Everything has contributed to its reappearance on the market with force. Sotheby’s called it before the sale “the defining masterpiece of the end of Botticelli’s career.” Three buyers bid strongly on Thursday for the painting, which had a guaranteed price of 40 million dollars, but which rose to 45.4 after seven minutes of auction.
The sale comes just a year after Sotheby’s broke the record for the Florentine painter with the sale of ‘Portrait of a Young Man Holding a Medallion’. It was owned by real estate magnate and collector Sheldon Solow and was sold for $92.2 million.