Art Roundup: January 2022

Banksy miniature stable sold for £1 million at auction

Banksy’s miniature horse stable at a model village was sold for £1 million at auction on 27 January at The Modern Art & Design Auction in Anderson & Garland Auctioneers, Newcastle. It’s the first time in the auction house’s 182-year history that a piece has sold for a seven-figure sum as estimated before. The miniature stable with Banksy's scribbles and the words "Go Big or Go Home" appeared at Merrivale Model Village, Great Yarmouth, Norfolk last August in the "Great British Spraycation" movement.

First Superman comic, Action Comics No. 1, sold at auction for $3.18m

A copy of Action Comics No. 1 sold for $3.18 millions at Heritage Auctions. The copy of DC Comic is called “the Rocket Copy” because the original owner who bought it at the newsstand when he was 13 years old used a rocket stamp on the cover. The 1938 comic is considered as one of the most important comics of all time which marks the first appearance of Superman, created by Jerry Siegel and Joe Shuster.

Single page of Spider Man comic sold for record $3.36m

A single comic book page from a 1984 issue of Spider Man fetched $3.36 million at Heritage Auctions. The artwork features the now-iconic black costume Spider Man that was drawn by Mike Zeck and became page 25 of Marvel Comics' Secret Wars No 8. The black suit seen in this issue is the “symbiote suit” which eventually led to the emergence of the character Venom.

Sandro Botticelli’s ‘The Man of Sorrows’ sold at auction for $45.4 million

Italian painter Sandro Botticelli’s rare painting was sold for $45.4 million at Sotheby’s living auction “Master Paintings and Sculpture Part I” in New York on 27 January. It is a realistic portrayal of Jesus Christ titled “The Man of Sorrows”. The painting becomes the second most expensive Old Master painting sold at auction in the last five years.

Sandro Botticelli’s ‘Young Man Holding a Roundel’ sold at auction for $92.2 million

Another rare painting by Sandro Botticelli, a 15th century portrait of a “Young Man Holding a Roundel”, sold for $92.2 million at Sotheby’s New York on 27 January. The painting was sold to a Russian-speaking collector during a live-streamed online sale. The price makes the painting the second most valuable Old Master painting ever sold at auction. It was only surpassed by Leonardo da Vinci’s "Salvator Mundi", which sold for $450.3 million at a Christie’s auction in 2017.