Raphael drawing barred from export

Published: 11:47AM GMT twenty-six February 2010

Head of a Muse: Culture apportion Margaret Hodge has put the trade club on the work Photo: DAVID ROSE

Head of a Muse sole for �29,161,250, together with buyer"s reward - a universe jot down cost for any work on paper to go underneath the produce - at Christie"s in London in December.

It was the second top cost for an Old Master portrayal or sketch sole at auction and a universe jot down cost for the Italian Renaissance artist.

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Culture apportion Margaret Hodge has put the trade club on the work, after a letter of reference by the Reviewing Committee on the Export of Works of Art and Objects of Cultural Interest, administered by the Museums, Libraries and Archives Council (MLA).

The cabinet endorsed that a preference on either the work can be exported be paid in instalments on the drift that it is of ""outstanding"" cultured stress and significance.

The cabinet awarded a starred rating to the drawing, definition that each bid should be done to lift sufficient income to keep it in the country.

Head of a Muse was drawn as a investigate for a figure in Parnassus, one of a array of 4 frescoes in the Stanza della Segnatura in the Vatican, commissioned by Pope Julius II and executed in between 1508 and 1511.

This array is at large deliberate to be Raphael"s biggest masterpiece.

The drawing, that was offering at open auction for the initial time in some-more than 150 years, had been approaching to sell for up to �16 million and was paid for by an unknown write bidder.

Professor David Ekserdjian, reviewing cabinet member, said: ""Raphael was a autarchic draughtsman, and Head of a Muse is a star drawing.

""It encapsulates an preferred of delicate beauty that characterised his art and shabby after artists via Europe.

""The UK is abounding in Raphael drawings, but this is the usually auxiliary animation associated to the Stanza della Signatura commission.

""It is critical for the investigate of Raphael"s work as a singular jot down of his strange inventive vision.""

The preference on the trade looseness focus for the sketch will be paid in instalments for a duration finale on May twenty-five inclusive.

This duration might be lengthened until Nov twenty-five thorough if a critical goal is shown to lift supports with a perspective to creation an suggest to buy the sketch at the endorsed cost of �29,161,250 (excluding VAT), the Department for Culture, Media and Sport said.