Carla Bruni-Sarkozy,Wife of France president Nicolas Sarkozy, standing in a pigeon-toed pose and covering her modesty with her hands, sold for $91,000 on April 10 in New York.
Italian-born supermodel-turned-singer Bruni, married Sarkozy less than 3 months after meeting the French premier. Sarkozy saw his popularity plummet in France during his whirlwind romance with the former model.
A Chinese art collector bought the black and white image of Carla Bruni's nude portraits, taken by photographer Michel Comte in 1993 during Bruni's modeling days. The sale of the photo by Christie's has attracted attention since Bruni married French President Nicolas Sarkozy in February.
The Bruni photo had been expected to fetch between $3,000 and $4,000. It was auctioned as part of a sale of 140 photos from German collector Gert Elfering, which also features work by Irving Penn, Richard Avedon, Helmut Newton and Peter Beard. Josh Holdeman, Christie's Senior Vice President of Photographs, said the winning bid far exceeded expectations. "We all kind of were trying to imagine this morning what it would go for and we all kind of had, I think, a number in our head, but this far exceeded what anyone kind of guessed, so it was very pleasant surprise," he said.
The Bruni photo had received a variety of phone, Internet and room bids, including from Heiko Roloff, a bidder in the room representing on-line magazine, bilde.de, whose bid fell short. "I was disappointed that I was outbid, because I would have bought the photo as a gift for the French President. That would have been a very nice gesture and also a nice story," he said after the auction.
The source said "Carla is very angry, not to say deeply upset, that a commercial organisation has chosen to release this print at such an important time. Her priority is to establish herself on the world stage as a First Lady, whom France can be invariably proud of."
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