How do you sell a £10m Raphael (ctd.)
November 15 2012
Video: Sotheby's
It's interesting to see that Sotheby's have toned down the hyperbole in their video for Raphael's drawing Head of an Apostle, which is being offered for sale in London next month at £10m-£15m. In the 'trailer' for the above film, we previously had Sotheby's head of contemporary art, Tobias Meyer, saying:
This drawing is the complete pivotal centrepoint of art history. It opens up everything toward the future.
Now that has become a more honest:
Everything that ultimately becomes relevant for the future of art history is right in this drawing.
But in a sign that Sotheby's are still hoping to lure contemporary bidders towards the drawing, we get Meyer summarising it thus:
...it has the intensity of a great Warhol, or a great Bacon. The fact that it is over 500 years old is completely irrelevant.
You and I might disagree about that. But what is incontrovertibly (and to me mind-bogglingly) true is that compared to a 'great Warhol', this undeniably great Raphael is cheap.
Also worth a watch is Sotheby's video on two important Burgundian manuscripts being sold by the Duke of Devonshire in December. It's notably free of guff, and much the better for it. Somebody should give Sotheby's manuscript specialist Dr Timothy Bolton his own TV show - he's brilliant.
Update - a reader writes, naughtily:
I think the real star of that Sotheby's video is Tobias Meyer's hairdo.
