The sketch, which depicts a naked man with two other background figures, was created in the 15th century with pen and brown ink.
Around the size of an A4 piece of paper, the sketch recently resurfaced in a private French collection, after being lost for more than a century.
The sale price of this sketch far outstripped the record set for Michelangelo’s The Risen Christ, which sold at Christie’s in London for 9.5 million euros in 2000.
The sketch, partly based on a fresco by Masaccio in the Brancacci Chapel in Florence, was declared by specialists to be “very well preserved”.
Though French authorities and museums were given a period of 30 months to buy the sketch, no offers were forthcoming, and the artwork was exhibited in Hong Kong and New York to drum up interest.
The sketch was last put up for sale in 1907, at Paris’s Hotel Drout.
