A Leonardo da Vinci drawing soon to be up for sale is poised to fetch nearly $17 million at auction.
Christie’s, the London-based auction house, will sell Head of a Bear on July 8 after a display tour takes the drawing to New York and Hong Kong. The company put a low-end estimate for the drawing at 8 million pounds, or just over $11 million, but said it could sell for as high as $16.7 million.
“The work has been owned by some of the most distinguished collectors in the field of old masters across many centuries, not least the present owner who has owned it since 2008,” Ben Hall, the head of Christie’s in New York, said of the drawing, according to the Guardian.
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“It has been admired around the world, while shown by prestigious museums, and Christie’s is honored to bring this Leonardo to the market this season,” he said.
Head of a Bear, which measures just under 3 square inches, is a silverpoint drawing on a pink-beige paper and is “one of less than eight surviving drawings by Leonardo still in private hands outside of the British Royal Collection and the Devonshire Collections at Chatsworth,” the auction house said.
“I have every reason to believe we will achieve a new record in July for Head of a Bear, one of the last drawings by Leonardo that can be expected to come onto the market,” said Stijn Alsteens, who is the international head of the Old Master Drawings department for Christie’s in Paris.
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Christie’s began its display of the drawing in New York on Saturday.
