When the owner of a tiny sketch sent a photo of it to an auction house’s online valuation portal, they had no idea of its significance. The drawing is barely bigger than a hand. And it depicts only a foot, with its heel slightly raised off the ground and the outline of a shadow underneath.
Yet on Thursday, it sold for $27.2 million including fees at a Christie’s sale in New York after the auction house identified Michelangelo as the artist responsible.
The Renaissance master sketched out this foot using red chalk in preparation for one of his frescoes on the Sistine Chapel ceiling at the Vatican, which he painted between 1508 and 1512.
If you peer closely at the Libyan Sibyl on…