The Rembrandt painting, Portrait of a man, half-length, with his arms akimbo, fetched Ł20.2 million
Photo: AFP/GETTY IMAGES

The drawing by Raphael sold for Ł29,161,250
Photo: AP

The drawing by Raphael, Head of a Muse, sold for £29.2 million, a world record
price for any work on paper to go under the hammer, Christie’s said.

It was also the second highest price for an Old Master painting or drawing
sold at auction and a world record price for the artist.

The Rembrandt painting, Portrait of a man, half-length, with his arms akimbo,
fetched £20.2 million, a record price for the artist at auction and now the
fifth highest price for an Old Master painting or drawing sold at auction.

Another painting by Domenichino also reached a world record price for the
artist at auction, fetching £9.2 million.

Christie’s Old Masters and 19th-century art sale fetched a total of
£68,380,250 from 28 lots sold.

The auction house said it was the highest total for an auction of Old Masters.

The drawing by Raphael sold for £29,161,250.

Head of a Muse was drawn as a study for a figure in Parnassus, one of the
series of four frescoes in the Stanza della Segnatura in the Vatican which
was commissioned by Pope Julius II and which was executed between 1508 and
1511.

This series is widely considered to be Raphael’s greatest masterpiece.

The drawing, which was offered at public auction for the first time in more
than 150 years, had been expected to sell for £12 million to £16 million.

It was bought by an anonymous client on the telephone.

The previous record price for a work on paper was Danseuse au repos, a pastel
by Edgar Degas, which sold in New York in November last year for US dollars
37,042,500.

The joint previous record for an Old Master drawing sold at auction was £8.1
million for Michelangelo’s The Risen Christ in July 2000 and Leonardo da
Vinci’s Horse and Rider in July 2001.

Benjamin Peronnet, director and international head of Old Master and
19th-Century Drawings at Christie’s, said: “Raphael is universally
recognised as one of the greatest artists in history, and we are extremely
excited to have sold a beautiful drawing by his hand which played a major
part in the execution of one of the masterpieces of European art.

“This truly exceptional drawing offers us a glimpse into the working
mind of a genius; it presents us with the immediacy of his thoughts and
ideas, capturing the precise moment at which the artist’s hand and mind were
applied to paper.

“The drawing is not only a work of genius in its own right but is also
related to one of the artist’s great frescoes in the Vatican and has come
down to us in remarkable condition and with distinguished provenance having
previously been owned by both Sir Thomas Lawrence and King William II of
Holland.”

The late portrait by Rembrandt fetched £20,201,250.

Portrait of a man, half-length, with his arms akimbo went under the hammer for
the first time since 1930, when it sold for £18,500 – a noteworthy sum at
the time.

Before the pre-sale exhibition the late portrait had not been publicly
displayed for 40 years.

It was also bought by an anonymous client bidding by telephone.

The previous world record price for a work by Rembrandt sold at auction was
£19.8 million.

Portrait of a lady aged 62 was sold at Christie’s in London in December 2000.

Portrait of a man, half-length, with his arms akimbo, was painted in 1658
during one of Rembrandt’s most artistically inventive periods.

It depicts an unknown sitter facing the artist with a defiant pose and hands
on hips.

A prominent art collector, George Huntington Hartford II, the heir to the
Atlantic and Pacific supermarket chain, and one of the richest men in the
world donated the portrait to Columbia University in 1958.

It was sold privately in 1974 to benefit the university’s endowment fund.

And after appearing in the exhibition Rembrandt After 300 Years at The Detroit
Institute of Arts in 1970, it was not seen in public until last week.

A painting by Domenichino, described by the auction house as “one of the
most important Baroque pictures to be offered at auction for a generation”,
sold for £9,225,250.

Saint John the Evangelist by Domenichino was presented for sale for the first
time in more than 100 years.