The Most Expensive Work Ever to Come to Frieze Masters Is This Magnificent $32 Million Botticelli Portrait

An arresting portrait by
Renaissance master Sandro Botticelli, thought to be the last in
private hands, is turning heads at Frieze Masters.

The painting of Michael
Tarchaniota Marullus, a 15th-century humanist scholar, is the only
work in the booth of the London-based gallery Trinity Fine Arts—and
it’s also the priciest ever to show up at Frieze Masters, with a
whopping price tag of $32 million.

Dealer Carlo Osi says it’s a fair price for the resplendent
picture, given the quality and
rarity of the work. “In the market, it’s very difficult to price
this kind of painting, but to compare with the last Leonardo, which
went for $450 million, it could be a reasonable price,” Orsi
says.

But whoever ends up buying the painting will have to jump
through some hoops to get it home. “It is a good price because we have some
problems with the Spanish authorities,” Orsi says. 

The work, which is technically claimed by Spain as part of the
country’s cultural heritage, required a temporary exit license from
the culture ministry before it could be brought to London.

Last year, the owners of the work (which was included in the
Metropolitan Museum of Art’s 2011 exhibition, “The Renaissance
Portrait: From Donatello to Bellini”) tried to get it to Frieze New
York. But the Spanish government denied their request, saying the
proper conservation and security conditions had not been
met, according to the Spanish
paper El
País. The owners
were finally granted the temporary export license in October last
year, after they worked with Orsi to get the deal
done.

If it sells, it still needs to
come back to Spain. If the new owner is not based in the country,
he or she will have to apply for a separate export
license. Either way,
the work must be returned to the country before October 15, and Spanish authorities will have
two months to make a counter-offer should it find a buyer at
Frieze.

But Orsi is not worried. Works
by the Renaissance master rarely come to market, and the dealer
says another great advantage is that Marullo, the sitter in the
portrait, was famously a member of the Medici court, which cements
the work’s place in history. (Marullo was married to
the poet Alessandra Scala, who is believed to have
commissioned the work after Marullo died in 1500.)

Orsi says the work was brought to London because “it’s the center of the art market,” and that
there would be particular interest at Frieze because of the broader
collecting tastes of buyers, who are not interested only in Modern
and contemporary art.

In the early hours of the fair,
Orsi said he already had interest from US and South Asian buyers,
but no firm agreements had been made. The Spanish media is also
reporting interest from the Museu Nacional d’Art de Catalunya after
the local culture counselor mentioned the painting in a tweet. But
it is unlikely that an already pressed culture budget will be able
to meet the hefty price tag.

The
painting, formerly
owned by European royalty, has been one of the jewels in the collection of
the family of the late
Catalan politician Francesc Cambó for the past century. It has been
on loan to the Prado Museum in Madrid for the past two
decades. 

The current auction record for a work by Botticelli
is $10.4
million, achieved at
Christie’s New York in 2013 according to the artnet Price Database.

The post The Most Expensive Work Ever to Come to Frieze
Masters Is This Magnificent $32 Million Botticelli Portrait
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