Gazette Drouot - C apencheres

THE MAGAZINE UPCOMING AUCTIONS
Raphael a mature drawing
68 GAZETTE DROUOT INTERNATIONAL I N° 19
The dream of any collector
of classical drawing?
To own a drawing by the
great Raphael, the Italian
Renaissance painter,
celebrated by Giorgio Vasari. But
the numbers of art lovers capable
of buying this holy grail are few and
far between. In London in 2009, one
had to pay £29,161,250 in order to
obtain “Head of a Muse”, drawn as a
study of a figure for the fresco
of Parnassus at the Vatican, executed
by the Italian master between 1510
and 1511.
Although such drawings are extremely
rare on the market, collectors
didn’t have to wait long before
another work by the artist was up for
auction. On 5 December, Sotheby’s
in London (home of numerous
sumptuous Raphael collections) is
selling “Head of a Young Apostle”
from the Devonshire Collection at
Chatsworth (£10/15M). This drawing
was executed later in the artist’s
career, towards the end of his life,
sometime between 1519 and 1520,
which saw the elaboration of an ultimate
masterpiece “The Transfiguration”,
now hanging in St. Peter’s Basilica.
Our drawing is one of the last six
existing studies for this work.
Stéphanie Perris-Delmas