Rembrandt and Raphael artworks sell for record 50m

A record-breaking auction in London saw two works of art, a Rembrandt and a Raphael, sell for almost 50 million. The drawing by Raphael, Head of a Muse, sold for 29.2 million, a world record price for any work on paper to go under the hammer. The Rembrandt painting, entitled Portrait of a Man, Half-Length, With His Arms Akimbo, fetched 20.2 million, a record price for the artist at auction. Christie's Old Masters and 19th-century art sale fetched a total of 68,380,250 from 28 lots sold. The auction house said it was the highest total for an auction of Old Masters. Raphael's Head of a Muse was drawn as a study for a figure in Parnassus, one of the series of four frescoes in the Stanza della Segnatura in the Vatican which was commissioned by Pope Julius II and which was executed between 1508 and 1511. Rembrandt's painting went under the hammer for the first time since 1930, when it sold for 18,500 - a noteworthy sum at the time. Before the pre-sale exhibition the late portrait had not been publicly displayed for 40 years. Portrait of a Man, Half-length, With His Arms Akimbo, was painted in 1658 during one of Rembrandt's most artistically inventive periods. It depicts an unknown sitter facing the artist with a defiant pose and hands on hips.