Museums: Pricing the Priceless

With old masters bringing record prices at auction, what would happen if one of the great museums of Europe suddenly put its masterworks up for bids? Italian Art Historian Carlo Ragghianti and a committee of experts have just finished assaying the worth of masterpieces in Florence’s Uffizi Gallery. At current prices, their top guesstimates:

> Botticelli’s Spring, $40 million.

> Botticelli’s Birth of Venus, $30 million.

> Giotto’s Madonna, $30 million.

> Duccio’s Madonna, $25 million.

> Da Vinci’s Annunciation, $25 million.

> Cimabue’s Madonna, $20 million.

> Van der Goes, Portinari Tryptych, $20 million.

No one expects these highs to be tested. In fact, the commission found that the Uffizi had 50 paintings “without which it would be impossible to write the history of Western art,” and each worth $2,000,000 or more. Which was just the point of the whole exercise —to shock Italians into realizing the value of their own patrimony.