Rafael's drawing was sold for $ 48 million, possibly to Russia

The drawing of Raphael “The head of the young apostle” from the collection of the Duke of the Devonshire Peregrine Cavendish was sold for a record 29.7 million pounds ($ 47.9 million) at the evening auction “Painting and Drawings of the Old Masters”, RIA Novosti reports with a link to the message of the Sotheby auction house.

Over the past half a century, only two drawings of Rafael of a similar level appeared at the auction, and each of them set a record, so the auction house was not surprised that the cost and this lot almost twice the most bold expectations of experts that estimated it at 10-15 million pounds.

The name of the new buyer is not reported, however, according to Reuters agency, the winner’s rate came from an employee of the auction house, who works with buyers from Russia.

According to Sotheby's experts, Raphael's drawing made in black coal is extremely important in his work, since it is a preparatory sketch to one of the central figures in his canvas “Transfiguration”, which was ordered by the artist Cardinal Julio Medici around 1516 and which is now in the Vatican museums. Currently, 17 surviving sketches to the “transformation” are known, nine of which, including auction, are shown at the Late Raphael exhibition in the Prado Madrid.

The sketch belonged to the old English aristocratic genus Cavendish for almost 300 years.