In Sotheby’s recap of its “Masters Week,” headlined by the $45.4-million sale on of its much-touted “late masterpiece by Botticelli,” the auction house noted that the painting was “previously believed to be produced by the artist’s students [but] in 2009 the Städel Museum in Frankfurt reattributed it to Botticelli, in part due to technical analysis conducted by Sotheby’s [emphasis added].”
The findings of the auction house’s “technical analysis,” as reported in Sotheby’s presale post on Instagram, included the discovery of compositional revisions, such as “distinct changes observable in the rendering of Christ’s hands [that] further underscore Botticelli’s authorship, particularly in the refined contours of the fingers as well as their placement.” Also seen were “elements of an unrelated underdrawing…outlines of which have been interpreted by Sotheby’s specialists as the early stages of the figures of the Christ Child and the Madonna, suggesting that the panel was originally prepared for an entirely different image.”
Photo: Sotheby’s
As described in Sotheby’s presale catalogue essay, this painting was “out of the public eye for much of the last century, thus hampering its study and discussion….Until its inclusion in the major monographic exhibition devoted to Botticelli at the Städel Museum [curated by Andreas Schumacher]…, the painting was not widely known in the literature on the artist, receiving only a brief mention in Ronald Lightbown’s [1978] catalogue of Botticelli’s work, in which he took a restrictive view [emphasis added] of the artist’s production.”
“Restrictive view”? That’s a euphemism for its having been classified by Lightbown, a leading scholar of Renaissance art, among the “workshop and school pictures” (as reported under “Literature” on the auction house’s web page for the painting). Lightbown, who died last year, authored a two-volume study of Botticelli’s oeuvre and from 1975 to 1984, served as the keeper of the Victoria and Albert Museum’s library. Auctioned in 1963 as a Botticelli (not “workshop” or “school of”), the painting brought a mere £10,000 at Sotheby’s, London.
I can’t presume to venture a personal judgment regarding the painting’s quality or authorship, not only because I’m not a Botticelli expert, but also because I haven’t set eyes on it (staying close to home, as a Covid-vulnerable senior). By contrast, I had two up-close presale encounters at Christie’s with the hotly debated, $450.3-million Leonardo “Salvator Mundi” (c. 1500), and my own eye, coupled with my conversations with the painting’s restorer, emboldened me to venture a favorable opinion.
There’s no worse crime in art scholarship than “demoting” a work that belongs in the pantheon of a celebrated artist’s oeuvre. That said, I can tell, from viewing the photo, that “Man of Sorrows” is a far cry from what most people regard as quintessential Botticelli, “best known for his beautiful Madonnas, captivating portraits, and enchanting allegorical and mythological scenes,” as noted by Sotheby’s in its catalogue essay for Lot 14. A late work, “Man of Sorrows” is off-putting and strange, with Christ’s head doubly encircled—by a crown of bulky, intertwined thorns, and a halo of ghostly, agonized angels.
Christ’s contorted, wounded hands, bound at the wrists and crossed over his breast, are described in an Art Newspaper essay by art historian Frank Zöllner (author of a Botticelli catalogue raisonné) as having a curved right-hand pinky finger that that looks as if it were “made of a flexible chunk of rubber. I find it hard to imagine that Botticelli…would have made such a mistake….The overall clumsiness of the hands is also striking.” That negative verdict is counterbalanced in The Art Newspaper by an essay by Bastian Eclercy, a specialist in Italian Renaissance and Baroque painting at the Städel, who praised paintings in Botticelli’s late style (such as “Man of Sorrows”) as “highly idiosyncratic and beyond their time.”
As it happened, the NY Times‘ peripatetic Michael Kimmelman (last seen in the Bronx), showed up at the 2009 show in Frankfurt. Impervious to Botticelli’s charms, he described the Städel show as “a glamorous crowd pleaser, naturally, but a mixed bag….He [Botticelli] devised a signature style that acts like an advertisement for himself.” (He made no mention of “Man of Sorrows” in his downbeat review.)
More to the point are the informed judgments of two widely respected, veteran museum professionals: Laurence Kanter, the chief curator of European art at Yale University Art Gallery (and former curator-in-charge of the Robert Lehman Collection at the Metropolitan Museum), and Keith Christiansen, chairman emeritus of the Met’s European paintings department.
Photo by Lee Rosenbaum
Their favorable takes were briefly noted by Sotheby’s, and I contacted them prior to the sale for more insights. Perhaps appreciative of an opportunity to hold forth via email during this mask-muffled pandemic, they expounded more expansively than I had expected.
Here’s what Christiansen wrote me:
I was shown this painting some years ago by the dealer who was handling it. I thought then and still do that it is an exceptionally powerful picture dating from the last years of Botticelli’s career. As I wrote to a colleague, to me it is a picture of renunciation: one in which Botticelli rejects the sensual beauties of his great works of the late 1470s and 1480s, which include the “Birth of Venus,” the “Primavera” and the “Madonna of the Pomegranate,” etc. He even discards—or “moves beyond”—the still exquisite if brittle style of the sublime “Mystic Nativity” in the National Gallery, London, and works towards a style that in many ways looks forward to what we come, in the 16th century, to define as a Counter-Reformation style.
Is this so surprising, given the climate in Florence and, indeed, Italy following the invasion by French troops and the fiery preaching and subsequent burning at the stake of Savonarola? Just think of Michelangelo’s late work compared to the Sistine ceiling (I am speaking about the Pauline Chapel), or Ammanati’s wish at the end of his life that the nude statues he had created would be destroyed.
Like an archaic icon, Botticelli’s Christ is rigidly frontal [as is Leonardo’s “Salvator Mundi”—my observation, not Keith’s], his features harshly defined, his stare directed implacably at the viewer, and angels holding the instruments of the Passion, most with their eyes shielded so they do not see his pitiable state, create an aureole around his head—much as in a number of medieval images as well as in a fresco by Fra Angelico at San Marco—the Dominican convent where Savonarola had his cell. I believe the figurative and stylistic analogies of the picture are with the very late panels at the Gardner and in the Accademia Carrara with the stories of Lucrezia and Virginia, each of which carries political associations. There too the elegancies of Botticelli’s earlier style are replaced by something quite different, but deeply expressive and geared to the political trauma.
That said, I understand why this picture might not appeal to many and why that lack of appeal would translate into a feeling that it was not by Botticelli, who, after all, had a very active workshop engaged in the production of devotional images.
And this briefer but equally effusive praise from Laurence Kanter…
It would be difficult to overstate my admiration for this painting. You have correctly captured all of my opinions as they were shared with Sotheby’s. [“Kanter considers it “a masterpiece of the artist’s late period” and dates it to the first decade of the 1500s.]
The quality of Botticelli’s work varies widely, even among wholly autograph paintings. Much depended on his client, the nature of the commission, and condition of the surviving work. In all respects, this Christ is one of the finest I have ever seen [emphasis added], surely among the finest still in private hands.
That said, Sotheby’s fetched more than twice as much, one year ago, for a more conventionally appealing Botticelli that it had touted in its presale publicity as “The Ultimate Renaissance Portrait.” His Young Man Holding a Roundel (late 1470s or early 1480s) hammered at $80 million ($92.2 million, with fees) in January 2021, against a presale estimate “in excess of $80 million.”
What the auction house breathlessly billed (on Twitter) as a “bidding battle” felt to me more like a slow slog. As I tweeted while “attending” the sale via livestream, the auctioneer’s hammer finally came down “after an excruciatingly prolonged attempt to extract more bids.” The applause from attendees (including employees) may have been a demonstration of sympathy for the exceedingly patient, ultimately effective auctioneer, David Pollack, who filled the awkward silences with: “Take all the time you need…” “Take a moment to think…” “I’m not going anywhere!” And when Christopher Apostle, Sotheby’s Head of Old Masters, Americas, proffered a stingy increment on behalf of a phone bidder: “He’s my boss. I have to take it. We’re at bonus season!”
Screenshot from the sale’s livestream
Notwithstanding Pollack’s wheedling and cajoling, there was no suspense over whether the painting would ultimately find a buyer: Like many star lots at major auctions, this one had an irrevocable bid and a guaranteed price lined up in advance—a pre-orchestration that I have previously criticized as eliminating the “air of excitement and spontaneity [not to mention the competitive spirit] that used to enliven art auctions.” The only question regarding “Man of Sorrows” was whether it would inspire a bidding contest that would raise its price above the prearranged amount. Since the hammer price stalled at $39.3 million, against a presale estimate of hammer price of “in excess of $40 million,” Botticelli’s beset “Man of Sorrows” was a sorrowful underachiever.
Let’s move on to what market-watchers still hope to know: Who was the undisclosed buyer? I figured Max Hollein might have a clue: Now director of the Metropolitan Museum, he was director of the Städel Museum when the little-seen painting was displayed there as a Botticelli, essentially validating its ambitious attribution in what the museum had billed on its YouTube channel as “the first exhibition” devoted to that artist “in the German-speaking world.”
I asked Max (who had figured in the Städel’s video teaser) whether the Sotheby’s star lot had been “acquired by or for the Met.” His emailed reply was as unrevealing as it was unequivocal:
No. It was not acquired by the Met. [I] do not know who bought it or who was interested in it.
I then pursued another clue: Since the auction catalogue revealed that “Man of Sorrows” had been “requested for the forthcoming exhibition, ‘Botticelli and Renaissance Florence: Masterworks from the Uffizi,'” Oct. 15, 2022-Jan. 8, 2023, at the Minneapolis Institute of Art, I sought information there, but came up empty. When I asked the MIA whether it knew the identity of the owner and whether it had received any response to its loan request, a museum spokesperson replied: “We don’t know who the new owner is and haven’t heard anything regarding the request.”
Time (and perhaps a knowledgeable CultureGrrl reader) will tell. Or maybe not…
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