Sold for £18.5m, a Raphael portrait that once cost $325

By Emily Dugan
Friday, 6 July 2007

A rare portrait by Raphael that had not been seen by the public for more than 40 years sold for £18.5m at Christie's last night. It was the largest sum ever paid at auction for a work by the Renaissance painter.

The work, an oil portrait of the Florentine ruler Lorenzo de' Medici which has been described as "the most important Renaissance portrait to be offered at auction for a generation", had been predicted to fetch between £10m and £15m.

But its recent history has been far from illustrious. Sold to the American collector Ira Spanierman for just $325 in 1968, the painting ­ then in poor condition ­ was regarded with scepticism by many, who doubted that it was the work of the Italian master.

Three years later, art historians confirmed that the work was indeed by Raffaello Sanzio, popularly known as Raphael, leaving Mr Spanierman sitting on a potential gold mine.

According to Christie's, the largest sum fetched for a Raphael at auction prior to this sale was a drawing sold in 1996, which went for £5.3m. This lower figure is in part due to the fact that it is so rare for his oil paintings, which are significantly more valuable than sketches, to be auctioned.

Private sales are more common for Raphael's works, and in 2004 the National Gallery paid £22m to stop his Madonna of the Pinks leaving the UK. The portrait sold yesterday, to a private collector, shows a sumptuously dressed Medici, draped in a shawl of gold and red with a delicately painted fur collar, standing against a rich green background.

The detail in the depiction of his robes is typical of the Italian master, who began his career in provincial church decoration, and came to be known as the "Prince of Painters".

The painting, which has been on display at Christie's in London since 30 June, is also politically important. It was commissioned by Medici's uncle, Pope Leo X, just before the duke got married to a wife he had never seen. The miniature portrait of his future wife that can be seen clutched in the sitter's hand gave the duke his first sneak preview of his betrothed. The pope was involved in the commission as he had personally arranged his nephew's marriage to Madeleine de la Tour D'Auvergne, a cousin of the king of France.

Lorenzo de' Medici, who was the Duke of Urbino and the ruler of Florence between 1513 and 1519, was the Charles Saatchi of the Renaissance. As one of the most influential art collectors of the time, he and his family commissioned a score of artists that reads like a Who's Who of artistic Florence. The masters patronised by the Florentine family included Botticelli, Leonardo da Vinci, Donatello and Fillippo Lippi.

Richard Knight, the international director of Christie's old master department, said he was delighted the "remarkable" painting had finally come to auction. "The importance of the artist and the sitter, together with the provenance and the historical context behind this painting's creation, make it one of the most significant old master pictures to be offered at auction for a generation," he said.

Other masterpieces under the hammer at Christie's yesterday were a Pieta by the 17th-century Venetian artist Domenico Zampieri, and a portrait by the British Restoration painter and official artist to Charles II, Sir Peter Lely.