NEW YORK, NY.- A photograph sent to Christie's online Request an Auction Estimate portal by an unsuspecting owner has resulted in a major discovery: a previously unknown study by Michelangelo for perhaps his most famous work, the frescoes on the Sistine Chapel ceiling. A Specialist in Christie's Old Master Drawings Department, Giada Damen, identified the powerful study in red chalk as an original drawing by Michelangelo, done in preparation for the right foot of the monumental figure of the Libyan Sibyl, at the far east end of the Sistine ceiling.

• This newly identified drawing is the first unrecorded study for the Sistine ceiling ever to come to auction.

• It is one of only about 10 Michelangelo drawings known to be in private hands.

• Of the roughly 600 sheets by Michelangelo that survive today – only a fraction of the thousands of drawings he must have produced – this is one of just around 50 studies relating to the Sistine Chapel.

Christie's will offer this piece on February 5, 2026, during the live auction of Old Master Drawings in New York with an estimate of $1.5 million to $2 million. The drawing will be on view in Christie's free, open-to-the public galleries at 20 Rockefeller Center in New York in February, prior to the sale.

It will also be on public display at Christie's London headquarters on King Street from November 27 to December 2, 2025.

“The discovery of a study relating to the Sistine Chapel, a work of art that is arguably the keystone of the Italian Renaissance, has been one of the most memorable moments of my career,” said Andrew Fletcher, Global Head, Christie's Old Masters Department. “Giada's discovery—made more than 500 years after the drawing's creation—represents Christie's expertise at its finest. It is the kind of story that inspires both the academic and commercial art worlds, while also capturing the imagination of virtually anyone who encounters it, regardless of their background in art. In the field of Old Masters, it is difficult to conceive of a more meaningful discovery, and we are thrilled to be offering it for sale in New York on February 5.”

THE DRAWING:

Michelangelo Buonarroti (1475-1564) is one of the towering figures of art history, famous for groundbreaking work as a sculptor, architect, painter, draftsman and thinker. His frescoes – murals painted onto wet plaster – on the ceiling and back wall of the Sistine Chapel in the Vatican are among his most famous works. Michelangelo is also legendary for his drawings, which have been prized by collectors, scholars, and museums, since the 16th century. Like most artists of his day, Michelangelo used drawings as the first drafts of his projects, sketching out his ideas for paintings, sculptures, and buildings. No one can say how many drawings Michelangelo made in his day, but around 600 sheets of drawings survive, all but around 10 in museums.

This newly discovered drawing is a study for the right foot of the Libyan Sibyl, which is part of the decoration of the Sistine Chapel ceiling in the Vatican in Rome. The drawing can be dated around 1511-12, when Michelangelo was preparing to work on the second half of his painting of the Sistine ceiling, which included the Libyan Sibyl. This powerful figure is depicted by Michelangelo in a dynamic, twisted pose, demonstrating a range of motion in the feet, and with the toes pressing down against the platform supporting the weight of this monumental figure that measures three times human size. The newly discovered drawing is part of a small group of studies executed in a distinctive red chalk, all characterized by careful attention to anatomical detail, a bold, energetic line, and subtle adjustments made directly on the sheet as the artist worked out how to approach his assignment.

THE DISCOVERY:

Auction house specialists dream of uncovering hidden masterpieces, fully aware of just how rare such discoveries are. But it does happen. In March of this year, a specialist in Christie's Old Master Drawings Department, Giada Damen, received an alert on her computer, letting her know that a member of the public had used Christie's website to request a valuation of a drawing. This is a commonplace occurrence; Damen says she receives numerous requests a week; Christie's website is open to anyone who wants to send in a photo.

An intriguing find in plain sight on the West Coast

Damen logged on and saw a photograph of a drawing of a foot, mounted and framed with another drawing. They had been sent by a man on the West Coast of the United States, who had inherited them from his grandmother. The owner – who has requested anonymity – had known the drawing all his life from his grandmother's house. He also knew the sheet had been passed down through his family in Europe since the late 1700s, but he didn't know who had made the drawing. As soon as Damen saw the photograph, she recognized that it had significant quality and seemed to be of the period. Although Damen's eye told her she was dealing with something special, her head told her not to jump to conclusions.

The drawing looks even better with research

Damen dropped what she was doing and got on a plane. When she saw the drawing in person, she was even more excited. With the owner's approval, she brought the piece back to Christie's in New York. That began half a year of painstaking detective work. Damen had the drawing photographed with infrared reflectography, which revealed drawings on the back of the sheet—concealed to the naked eye because the sheet is laid down onto another paper—that also looked like they were by a 16th Century Italian artist close to Michelangelo. She realized this drawing was similar in medium, style, and subject to a famous Michelangelo drawing at the Metropolitan Museum of Art in New York. She also realized that a copy of the Met sheet in the Uffizi in Florence showed the same studies that are on the New York drawing, but with one addition: the very same foot on the Christie's drawing.

Finally, after six months, Damen took the drawing of the foot and set it next to the Michelangelo drawing at the Metropolitan Museum. That was the final piece of the puzzle. What Damen had was an original Michelangelo drawing for the Sistine ceiling. “I was so excited. It was clear that the two studies had come were by the same hand, done in the same moment,” Damen recalled.

The evidence is conclusive: it's a Michelangelo

Damen had determined that the Christie's drawing was clearly made at the same time, in the same red chalk, and for the same project as a world-famous sheet of studies for the Sistine Libyan Sibyl at the Met. The Met sheet contains studies of the Sibyl's back, her head, left foot, toes, and her left hand. The drawing that Damen found depicts the right foot of the same figure. On the back of both the Met sheet and the Christie's drawing are loose anatomical studies, also by Michelangelo, done in black chalk. The Christie's drawing showed clear evidence that it had been cut from a larger sheet of paper, rather like the Met sheet that contains numerous studies for the figure.

The ownership history of the Christie's drawing also links it to Michelangelo. The drawing of the foot has a distinctive inscription in brown ink in a 16th Century hand, “Michelangelo Bona Roti.” This same inscription appears on a number of drawings by Michelangelo, including the Metropolitan Museum sheet. Through this distinctive inscription it is possible to trace the ownership of the Christie's drawing from artists in the circle of Michelangelo in the 16th Century, to a 17th Century Italian collection. At some point in the 18th Century, the drawing entered the collection of Armand Louis de Mestral de Saint-Saphorin (1738-1806), a Swiss diplomat working at the service of the King of Denmark and was then passed down to the present owner. The drawing has never appeared on the market and is unpublished. For centuries this sheet has remained in private hands, unknown to scholars and unrecorded.

“Making this discovery has been a once-in-a-lifetime opportunity for me,” said Giada Damen, a decades-long expert who has worked at Christie's for five years. “It has been a real pleasure to study this special drawing over the past nine months with my colleagues in the Old Master Drawings Department. We are thrilled to be able to share this finding with the wider world now and proud to bring this exceptional work to the market. I am deeply grateful to the owner for entrusting this work to Christie's and for his continued collaboration. I also want to acknowledge and express my sincere thanks to the leading international experts we consulted, all of whom have unanimously endorsed the attribution of this drawing to Michelangelo.”