Rare Botticelli painting sold for $45 million

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3 年前

This rare Botticelli painting sold for $45 million

Location: New York

'The Man of Sorrows' is a portrait of Jesus Christ

Art experts say the painting dates back to the early 1500s

It has remained in private hands

and out of the public eye for much of the 20th century

(SOUNDBITE) (English) CHRISTOPHER APOSTLE, DIRECTOR OF THE OLD MASTER PAINTINGS DEPARTMENT AT SOTHEBY'S IN NEW YORK, SAYING:"Botticelli is one of those artists I think that everybody knows. He's really, you know, the first or second chapter of any art history book. And even people who, you know, don't frequent museums or maybe have taken a formal course in art history, know the name and certainly know the images, the Primavera, the Birth of Venus. They're absolutely iconic. And so, he probably more than any artist represents that great flowering of the Renaissance in Florence in the late 1400s. So to have a work by him is extremely exciting and rare, and to have a work from like this painting of the Man of Sorrows from his late period is even more rare.