Uffizi Gallery Turned a Michelangelo Into an NFT and It Sold for $170,000

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Photograph: Inventory Images from Ruben Olavo Vicente/Shutterstock

The pandemic has been hard on museums, numerous of which had to shut their doors to website visitors for a time. In accordance to The Artwork Newspaper, the Uffizi Gallery saw its variety of annual site visitors slide by millions from 2019 to 2020—from 4.4 million to just 1.2 million. In an work to recoup a part of that dropped revenue, the famed artwork museum has resolved to offer up some of its most iconic artworks for sale as NFTs. Initially on the listing is Renaissance masterpiece, Michelangelo’s Doni Tondo, painted circa 1505.

The Uffizi embarks on this endeavor in partnership with Italian company Cinello, with which the earnings from each individual sale will be split evenly. The non-public corporation has patented a new process of making digital versions of popular artworks in their unique dimensions, which they simply call DAWs. Just about every piece is endorsed with an NFT token and a certification of authenticity signed by the museum’s director, Eike Schmidt. Thus, each and every perform is exclusive and theft-proof.

“In the medium phrase [the NFT sales] will be equipped to lead to the funds of a museum, comparable to the proceeds of the cafe organization,” Schmidt tells Italian newspaper Corriere della Sera. “It is not a alter of way in terms of earnings, it is an more profits. But creating these kinds of a market is not a rapid matter.”

Even now, the Uffizi’s economic endeavor has started off with a bang, with the Michelangelo advertising for €140,000 ($170,000 USD). The museum has now named various other key functions from its selection that it intends to transform into DAWs in the coming weeks. Amongst those included are Botticelli’s The Birth of Venus, Caravaggio’s Bacchus, Raphael’s Madonna del Granduca, and Titian’s Venus of Urbino.