Michelangelo Sistine Chapel sketch sells for $27.2M, setting new auction record
Credit: Touhey Photography
A recently discovered Michelangelo drawing tied to the Sistine Chapel has sold at auction for more than $27 million, shattering its $1.5 million to $2 million estimate and setting a new auction record for the artist. The drawing—a study for the right foot of the Libyan Sibyl—is the first unrecorded study of the famed ceiling ever to come to auction, and one of only about 10 Michelangelo drawings known to be in private hands. On Thursday, the sketch sold for $27.2 million after a 45-minute bidding war at Christie’s New York, surpassing the artist’s previous auction record of $24.3 million.
A monumental figure in art history, the Italian artist, architect, and intellectual Michelangelo is best known for his vivid frescoes in the Sistine Chapel, but he was also a prolific draftsman whose drawings often served as rough studies for works that later became canonical.
Though Michelangelo is believed to have created thousands of sketches, only about 600 sheets are known to survive, with just 10 currently held in museum collections, as 6sqft previously reported.
The drawing has been dated to around 1511-12, when Michelangelo was preparing to work on the second half of the Sistine Chapel ceiling, which includes the “Libyan Sibyl.” In the finished mural, the figure appears in a twisting pose, with her feet showing a wide range of motion and toes pressing into the platform below.
Notably, the work is one of only a few studies executed in red chalk, all marked by exhaustive anatomical detail, bold and energetic lines, and subtle revisions made directly on the paper as the artist refined his approach.
Giada Damen, a specialist in Christie’s Old Masters Drawings Department, discovered the sketch. In March, she received an alert indicating that a member of the public had requested a drawing valuation through Christie’s website—a routine inquiry the department receives many times each week.
The submission came from a man on the West Coast who inherited the drawing from his grandmother. He said it had hung in her home for as long as he could remember and had been passed down through his family in Europe since the late 1700s, though he was unaware of the artist’s identity.
Following a six-month authentication process, its origins were confirmed. Marked with a distinctive brown-ink signature, “Michelangelo Bona Roti,” the drawing matches inscriptions found on multiple authenticated works by the artist, including study sheets held by the Metropolitan Museum of Art.
The inscription also enabled researchers to trace the drawing’s ownership from artists in Michelangelo’s circle in the 16th century to an Italian collection in the 17th century.
In the days before Thursday’s auction, Christie’s Midtown location offered free public viewing of the sketch. It has previously been displayed at the auction house’s London headquarters from November to December and at its Dubai location from January 12 to 15.
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