Three Renaissance Masterworks including Raphael's Head of an Apostle to be Offered at Sotheby's in December 2012
Sotheby’s today announces that this December it will offer for sale three Renaissance masterworks from the Devonshire Collection at Chatsworth: one of the greatest drawings by Raphael remaining in private hands, and two 15th-century illuminated manuscripts which rank among the finest examples of their kind ever to come to auction.
Executed in black chalk, Raphael’s Head of an Apostle, c.1519-20, (estimated at £10–15 million) is a highly important drawing within the artist’s oeuvre: an extremely refined study for one of the key figures in theTransfiguration, one of the greatest of all Renaissance paintings, which now hangs in the Vatican Museum in Rome. When Raphael died, his body was laid out in state in his studio, with the Transfiguration hanging at his head.
Just as the Transfiguration was a major milestone in the history of art, anticipating elements of the much later Baroque style, so too the drawings relating to it were unlike anything previously seen in Raphael’soeuvre or anywhere else. The sale of this drawing is an auction event of enormous significance. Only two other Raphael drawings of this calibre have appeared at auction in the last 50 years – both of which set a new all-time record for an Old Master Drawing.
The manuscripts to be sold were made for two of the greatest libraries of the 15th century and are flawlessly preserved, with dazzling royal and ducal provenances. The first, the Mystere de la Vengeance (estimated at £4-6 million) was acquired by the 6th Duke of Devonshire at the celebrated Roxburghe sale of 1812, when it sold for £493.10s. - then the highest price ever paid for any illuminated manuscript. The second illuminated manuscript, estimated at £3-5 million, is an account of the fictional and swashbuckling Deeds of Sir Gillion de Trazegnies in the Middle East and was once among the most treasured works in the library of great Renaissance patron of the arts François I, King of France, 1515-47.
The works, which are to be sold by order of the Trustees of the Chatsworth Settlement, will be offered in Sotheby’s sale of Old Master Paintings and Drawings in London on 5th December 2012.
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