If you turn Botticelli’s painting “The Man of Sorrows” upside down, you can see another motif that was originally on the canvas. So far nobody had noticed.
Another drawing was discovered on the same canvas under the painting “The Man of Sorrows” by Sandro Botticelli (1445 to 1510). The work, which is dated around 1500, is due to be auctioned at Sotheby’s on January 27th. The minimum bid is $ 40 million. Like the industry magazine The Art Newspaper reported, the London auction house found a different picture under the layers of paint during a technical analysis before the sale.
If you look at the painting upside down, you can see drawings that emerge in some places under and between the color and result in a completely different motif: the portrait of a Madonna and Child. A mother hugs the cheek of the child in your arms. Many such portraits of the Virgin Mary were created in Botticelli’s workshop.
The Florentine artist, one of the most important greats in painting, seems to have simply turned a used canvas upside down and painted over it. Canvas was a precious commodity in the Renaissance period. Many painters used unsuccessful or unfinished works for new pictures.