Stolen Art DealerA tiny medieval panel with a gold background: Christ stands calm in a blue cloak over a red robe at the centre while soldiers crowd around him, one hand reaching toward his halo, with pale blue-roofed buildings in the top corners. The surface is dark and worn.
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Catalogue No. 11 · Actéon · Senlis
Christ Mocked
Sold for
about $26.8 million
Actéon, Senlis · 27 October 2019 · 82nd of 392 in the Record Book
Confirmed by two sourcesAbout $35.1 million in today’s money: 400 years of the typical US household’s income. Source
- Artist
- Cimabue (Italian, c. 1240–1302)
- Title
- Christ Mocked (La Dérision du Christ)
- Date
- c. 1280
- Medium
- Tempera and gold ground on poplar panel
- Size
- About 25 cm high (about 10 in)
Look closer
The gold ground
Unbroken gold fills the space above the crowd, with fine cracks and losses in the surface. It is the icon tradition the family took the panel for.
Hand at the halo
A raised hand reaches over Christ’s head towards his halo, a gesture of insult. It is the moment of mockery, in a panel only about 25 cm tall.
Cimabue painted this small gold panel around 1280, a generation before Giotto. It is about 25 centimetres tall. In 2019 it hung between the kitchen and living room of an elderly woman’s house in Compiègne, near or above the hotplate. The family thought it was an icon.
During a house clearance, the auctioneer Philomène Wolf spotted it. The Paris expert Eric Turquin attributed it to Cimabue. At the time, that attribution rested on Turquin and the auction house. The French state and the Louvre have since treated it as a Cimabue.
At Actéon in Senlis on 27 October 2019, against an estimate of €4–6 million, with three bidders in the room, it sold for €24.18 million with fees: about $26.8 million then. The Art Newspaper called it the most expensive pre-1500 painting sold at auction, as of 2019. The buyer stayed anonymous.
France then refused an export certificate and gave the panel national treasure status for 30 months. In early November 2023 the Louvre announced that it had acquired the panel. The price was not published; The Art Newspaper understands it matched the auction price. The Louvre showed it in 2025 in its exhibition on Cimabue.
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The sale
- Auction house
- Actéon, Senlis
- Date
- 27 October 2019
- Estimate
- €4–6 million
- Sold for
- about $26.8 million (including buyer’s premium) · €24,180,000
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Provenance
c. 1280
Painted by Cimabue, as part of a devotional ensemble of which the French Ministry of Culture says only two other examples are known. Reported
c. 1280 to 2019
No history is documented. The family of the 2019 owner could not say how she came to own it.
2019
Hung in a private house in Compiègne, between the kitchen and living room, until the auctioneer Philomène Wolf found it during a house clearance.
27 October 2019
Sold at Actéon in Senlis for a hammer price of €19.5 million, or €24.18 million with fees.
27 October 2019
Reportedly bought through the Moretti gallery as intermediary, for an anonymous collector. Reported
23 December 2019
The French Minister of Culture, Franck Riester, refused an export certificate and gave the panel national treasure status for 30 months.
November 2023
The Musée du Louvre announced its acquisition of the panel. No price was published.
See it on a wall
Sources
- The Art Newspaper: Kitchen Cimabue sells for €24.1m (27 October 2019)
- Ministère de la Culture: Un panneau peint par Cimabue vers 1280 reconnu trésor national (23 December 2019)
- The Art Newspaper: Cimabue kitchen painting blocked at auction ends up at the Louvre (6 November 2023)
- Musée du Louvre: Revoir Cimabue. Aux origines de la peinture italienne
- Finestre sull’Arte: Is the tablet discovered in the kitchen of a private home in the French province by Cimabue?
Prices include the buyer’s premium, in US dollars at the time of sale, unless marked as a hammer price.
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