High-end art is very, very, very expensive.
Invariably measured in the millions, the prices quoted at the world’s auction houses and art dealerships are beyond most people by a matter of zeroes, plausible only for the world’s largest bank accounts. Now, a small portrait named Young Man Holding A Roundel, by Renaissance master Sandro Botticelli, has become the most expensive piece by the artist ever sold, notching $92.2 million at auction in New York.
It’s an extraordinary amount of money, but on the all-time list it may not even make the top 50. Art dealers can be cagey about exact sums, but these are arguably the priciest pieces of all time.
1. Salvator Mundi by Leonardo da Vinci
The only original Da Vinci still held in private hands, the Salvator Mundi, garnered worldwide media attention when it went up for auction at Christie’s, New York, in 2017. Particularly feted for the transparent orb in Jesus’ left hand, a staggering technical feat of brushwork, the painting smashed the previous world record when Prince Bader bin Abdullah bin Mohammed bin Farhan al-Saud forked out $450.3 million to take the piece home to Saudi Arabia.
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2. Interchange by Willem de Kooning
Perhaps the most obscure painting on this list, abstract expressionist Willem de Kooning can’t match the star power of Da Vinci, but he still commanded a bumper pay packet with this sprawling canvas completed in 1955. An early abstract landscape, apparently depicting a city, the painting was briefly history’s priciest when it commanded three fifths of a $500 million deal for two artworks closed by billionaire investor Kenneth Griffin in 2015.
3. The Card Players by Paul Cézanne
One of France’s premier painters – in a very crowded field – Cézanne composed a series of ‘Card Player’ paintings, some of similar or identical scenes.
There are five iterations, painted in the early 1890s, each in varying states of texture and clarity, and one was bought for a princely sum by, it is thought, the Qatari royal family in 2011. The exact price is not known, but estimates range from $250 million to $300 million.
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4. When Will You Marry? by Paul Gauguin
Desde viernes @museoreinasofia exhibe “Nafea faa ipoipo”, de Gauguin, dentro de la exposición del Kunstmuseum Basel pic.twitter.com/0N1fTjZzzv
— Descubrir el Arte (@DescubrirelArte) July 1, 2015
The Qataris appear to have a soft spot for French masterpieces painted in the 1800s by people named Paul, and added to the nation’s haul with this painting from Gauguin’s late Polynesian period. Depicting two local women on the island of Tahiti, the work was met with ambivalence when Gauguin returned to France, but fetched $210 million when sold in 2014.
Sold to a high-ranking Qatari buyer, the price was first reported as a then-record-setting $300 million, but was revised down following a lawsuit.
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5. Number 17A by Jackson Pollock
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Among the world’s most recognisable artists, Jackson Pollock’s deliberately imprecise ‘action painting’ divided critics during his lifetime, but earned him an enduring reputation and some quite enormous cheques. His 1948 work Number 17A picked up the $200 million shortfall in Ken Griffin’s bumper deal, pipping Klimt, Rembrandt and Rothko to a place in the top five.
– With PA
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