Christie's announced on Tuesday that a drawing by Michelangelo unearthed in 2019 will be auctioned next month and might fetch up to 30 million euros ($33 million). The drawing, one of the rare works by the Renaissance Italian artist in private hands, was auctioned in Paris in 1907 and identified as a work by Michelangelo's school. It was mostly forgotten until 2019 when a Christie's expert identified it as a Michelangelo masterpiece. The drawing is estimated to date around the end of the 15th century and is one of the artist's early works. It is a replica of a shivering man seen in Masaccio's fresco "Baptism of the Neophytes." In the drawing, two other persons stand beside him.
"I believe this drawing is one of the most interesting finds in the field of Old Master drawings in a long time," said Stijn Alsteens, Christie's international head of the Old Master drawings department. "It shows Michelangelo doing two things at once, looking back at artists who came before him, in this case, Masaccio, as well as looking forward to his own work and the revolutionary aspect of it — in particular the depiction of the human body, which becomes such an important part both in the sculptures, I think of the David in Florence, or the many, many figures he painted in the Sistine Chapel," Alsteens continued.
The drawing had been classed as a French national treasure, preventing it from being exported, but Christie's said the French government recently withdrew the status, allowing it to be offered to collectors anywhere around the globe. Before being auctioned in Paris on May 18, the drawing will be exhibited in Hong Kong and New York.
Jean Dubreil
