Pursuits
NYC Property Billionaire Selling Botticelli for $80 Million
- ‘Young Man Holding a Roundel’ was bought for $1.3 million
- It was on loan at the Met in New York from 2013 to February
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Sheldon Solow bought a rare portrait by Renaissance master Sandro Botticelli for $1.3 million in 1982. The nonagenarian Manhattan real estate tycoon plans to sell it for more than $80 million next year through Sotheby’s.
“Young Man Holding a Roundel” will be sold anonymously in January in a test of the ultra high-end art market after the pandemic restricted sales and largely caused the cancellation of live auctions that are the lifeblood of the industry. Over the years, the portrait was loaned to the National Gallery of Art in Washington, D.C., and to the Metropolitan Museum of Art in New York from 2013 until February.