A late Michelangelo drawing, one of the few to survive the artist's attempt to destroy them, will be auctioned off next year, when the 450-year-old work will likely fetch some $4 million. "Study of a male torso," which the Italian artist completed in the 1550s, is being sold by a private collector who bought the black chalk drawing in 1976 at a public sale for $318,214, which at the time set a new record for an Old Master Drawing. Christie's, which will sell "Male torso" on January 24, characterized the drawing as one of a small number of late works by Michelangelo, who died in 1564, that appear to be related to the Christ figure for a Pieta composition, which is among the artist's most renowned and revered sculptures. The work's proportions suggest it was the summation of a lifetime's study of the human form rather than a drawing from a studio model. Christie's did not identify the owner, but the New York Times reported on Friday that the piece is now owned by Walter Gernsheim, a dealer who is also a private collector. Once part of a famous collection created by Scotsman John Malcolm of Poltalloch, Scotland, most of which was bought by the British Museum upon his death, "Male torso" remained with the Malcolm family until the 1976 sale.
Dating from the period when the artist was completing his monumental work on St. Peter's in Rome, the piece was one of few to survive Michelangelo's determined destruction, chiefly by fire, of his own drawings, Christie's noted. Of the tens of thousands of drawings he is thought to have produced over seven decades, just over 600 survive, with only a small handful still in private collections.
