Ferrari News – You have $120m – do you buy a masterpiece or 29 Ferraris?

“The people at Christie’s who created the [promotional] video for Salvator Mundi should have won an Oscar,” Coll says. The video in question, The Last da Vinci: The World Is Watching, is a four-minute film that shows rapid-fire clips of people of every age, race and class staring at the picture, often weeping – the actual work of art is never shown.

“They took the painting out of the equation,” Coll says.

Christopher Apostle, head of old master paintings at Sotheby’s, has a slightly different explanation for the Botticelli’s evaluation, but it still comes back to the notion that so-called masterpieces are in a class unto themselves. “I didn’t sort of think, ‘Oh, I can make this into a cultural phenomenon,’ ” he says, adding that the Leonardo sale was proof of nothing more than “at auction, sometimes things happen”.

Instead, Apostle says, “you’ve got to look at the whole panoply of what a masterpiece is, and I don’t think there’s a difference between a masterpiece by Basquiat or Rembrandt or Botticelli”. In other words, Young Man Holding a Roundel shouldn’t be valued against other Botticellis; rather, it should be valued as the best possible version of a work of art by a superstar artist.

“I’ve always felt that this was a picture that’s in its own category,” Apostle says. “I looked at Picasso and Basquiat as much as I did any other old master.”

When you look at something like that, it’s the same emotion as when you’re listening to your national anthem. How can you value that?

— Carlo Orsi, a dealer in London and Milan

That might sound like hype, but there’s almost unanimous consensus that this Botticelli is, in fact, the finest portrait still in private hands. “Without any doubt it’s the best old master painting to come to market in the last 10 years, and for me, past 20 years,” says Fabrizio Moretti, founder of the Moretti Gallery in London. “I deal in this period, and it’s so rare to find a painting [like this] in great condition.”

Most recently, Carlo Orsi, a dealer in London and Milan, brought another Botticelli portrait to the 2019 Frieze Masters art fair in London. Valued at about $US30 million, the work “was a very well-known portrait, full of history,” Orsi says, but he notes that the Spanish government had it listed as a work of cultural interest, meaning it couldn’t leave the country for long. Given the painting’s temporary export licence, he says, the price was suppressed. It failed to find a buyer.

“When you look at something like that, it’s the same emotion as when you’re listening to your national anthem. How can you value that?”

Despite that setback, Orsi stridently supports the valuation of Young Man Holding a Roundel. “If you want another one like this, you could steal it from a museum,” he says, “but there aren’t any others.”

It’s an argument that surely resonated with the work’s buyer, whose identity is still unknown, though art world whispers suggest it could be a Russian oligarch. During the bidding, Sotheby’s auctioneer Oliver Barker, set up in the house’s streaming-audience-only stage set, opened at $US70 million. Only two bidders – both on the phone to auction house specialists – stepped up to the plate; one seemed to back down after a single bid.

It still took four minutes for the hammer to fall as Barker attempted to coax the collector back into the fray. The total certainly was “in excess of $US80 million,” as Sotheby’s predicted, but not much more than that.

This wasn’t great news for Coll, who’d bet that it would sell for $US200 million and is now on the hook for a very expensive meal. “It’s going to be 10 people at a good restaurant,” he says. “At one point I was thinking I should bid for the painting, because it’s going to be cheaper than the dinner.”

Still, he says, it could be worse. “If it went unsold, I would still have to pay, and we’d have nothing to celebrate. Because if the old masters world can still produce $US100 million sales, that makes me happy.”

4999 luxuries for the price of a masterpiece

What else can you purchase that adds up to $US92 million?

2580 bottles of Bowmore’s 30-year-old Scotch
Start by buying up the entire collection of Bowmore’s new single malt, which has been aged in the distiller’s best sherry hogsheads and bourbon barrels. $US2500 per bottle

29 Ferrari F8 Tributos
The most beautiful Ferrari in a decade has a 3.9-litre, 711-horsepower engine that pays tribute to the powerful V-8s of the brand’s illustrious past. $US270,530 each

645 bottles of 2017 Domaine de la Romanée-Conti
The ultra-rare Romanée-Conti label is a collector’s dream. $US15,500 per bottle

391 bitcoin
If the cryptocurrency tanks, you’d lose $US13 million – about the cost of the auction house’s premium. $US33,900 apiece as of February 1

325 Birkin bags
Not that you can actually buy this many ever, but just trying to could bump you to the front of the line. From $9850 each

1028 Rolex Datejust watches
The timepiece preferred by US presidents – Joe Biden wore one in steel to his inauguration – is also available in 18-carat white gold with diamonds. From $US16,050

1 private island
End your spree with this 257-acre property in the lower Exuma Cays of the Bahamas. It includes a 1700-square-foot main house, three guest houses, utility buildings, and staff accommodations. $35 million

— Bloomberg Businessweek