Michelangelo valuation
Sculptor of the David and painter of the Sistine Chapel ceiling, whose drawings are among the rarest works on the market.
Michelangelo Buonarroti (1475–1564) was born at Caprese, in Tuscany, trained briefly in the workshop of Domenico Ghirlandaio in Florence and studied sculpture in the household of Lorenzo de' Medici.
What a work by Michelangelo is worth
Send photographs and whatever paperwork came with it. The first question is what the work actually is — edition or unique, when, and in what condition — because everything else follows from the answer. A valuation is free, made online from the photographs you send, and it commits you to nothing. We act for sellers across the United Kingdom, Europe and the United States.
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Bio
Michelangelo Buonarroti (1475–1564) was born at Caprese, in Tuscany, trained briefly in the workshop of Domenico Ghirlandaio in Florence and studied sculpture in the household of Lorenzo de' Medici. He carved the Pietà in St Peter's in Rome in 1498–99 and the marble David for Florence in 1501–04, and between 1508 and 1512 painted the ceiling of the Sistine Chapel for Pope Julius II, returning in 1536–41 to paint The Last Judgment on its altar wall. In later life he worked increasingly as an architect, designing the Medici Chapel and the Laurentian Library in Florence and the dome of St Peter's. He thought of himself above all as a sculptor, and wrote poetry throughout his life.
His sculptures and paintings are in churches and museums, and only a small number of his drawings remain in private hands, so a genuine Michelangelo of any kind on the market is a rare event. What does come up is the work of his followers and of the many artists who copied him: drawings after the Sistine ceiling and The Last Judgment, small bronzes and terracottas after his sculptures, and engravings after his designs by printmakers such as Giorgio Ghisi. Drawings once given to him are regularly reassigned to pupils and copyists, and occasionally the reverse, so attribution rests on comparison with his documented drawings and the judgement of the few specialists in them.
Whitebank Fine Art is an art advisory and gallery, not an auction house, and is not affiliated with any auction house or with the artist, their estate or their representatives. This page describes the range we advise on. Nothing here is investment advice.
