$170 million can buy you a plane, a couple rollercoasters or the amount of humanitarian aid the US federal government provided to Somalia in 2013 — or it can buy you this Modigliani painting.
On Monday night, Christie's auction house sold Amedeo Modiglian's 1917-18 "Nu Couché" ouevre to the Long Museum in China for $170,405,000.
That was the highest price paid for a Modigliani work at auction, and it is one that, according to Christie's Global President Jussi Pylkkänen, is well deserved.
"It is a superb and well-deserved recognition for the artist to have realized a price $100 million higher than any other work previously offered at auction," Pylkkänen said.
"Works of this quality appear only rarely on the market and Christie’s is proud to have sold many paintings of this caliber in recent seasons."
The Modigliani was just one of many paintings up for grabs in "The Artist's Muse" curated sale. Participants bid on works by artists like Pablo Picasso, Balthus and Roy Lichtenstein, with Paul Gauguin's "Thérèse" selling for $30,965,000 million.
In total, the November 9th curated sale sold a grand total of $491,352,000 worth of art. For comparison's sake, that's nearly double the GDP of the Pacific nation Palau.