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At Sotheby’s London’s Evening Sale of Old Master & British Paintings on December 5, a rare drawing by Raphael set a new record for the artist at auction. A masterpiece in black chalk, Head of a Young Apostle (circa 1519-20), has been part of the Devonshire Collection at Chatsworth since 1720 and features one of the key figures in the artist’s final work, Transfiguration, a celebrated painting from the Renaissance, which is now in Rome’s Vatican Museum.

Amid a considerable amount of bidding both in the auction room and on the telephone, Head of a Young Apostle sold for $47.8 million, nearly three times the drawing’s low estimate of $16 million to $24 million. Gregory Rubenstein, Worldwide Head of Old Master Drawings at Sotheby’s, said, “A number of the world’s greatest collectors stepped up tonight in recognition of the genius of Raphael and the extraordinary beauty of this drawing.”

The sale proves that the market is still prime for Old Master works. Head of a Young Apostle is one of three exceptional Raphael drawings to appear at auction in the past 50 years; each work has set an all-time sale record for an Old Master drawing. This particular sale is the highest price paid at a European auction in 2012 and is the second highest Old Master sale to date. The first is Peter Paul Rubens’ Massacre of the Innocents, which sold for $76.7 million at Sotheby’s in 2002.

Sotheby’s Old Master sale realized almost $94 million and sold 74.5% by lot.

Last week at Sotheby’s auction house in London, Gerhard Richter’s Abstraktes Bild (809–4) sold to a telephone bidder for $34.2 million, the highest price paid for a living artist’s work at auction. Previously owned by musician and collector, Eric Clapton, the abstract painting was estimated to bring $14.1 million to $18.8 million.

Alex Branczik, Senior Director and Head of the Evening Auction of Contemporary Art, said, “The combination of outstanding provenance and gold-standard quality in this sublime work by this blue-chip artist made for an historic auction moment. Gerhard Richter’s international appeal as one of the hottest Contemporary artists was once again confirmed this evening.”

The German postwar painter, best known for his abstract and figurative works, was recently the subject of a critically acclaimed retrospective, Gerhard Richter: Panorama, at the Tate Modern in London, the Pompidou Center in Paris, and the Staatlichen Museum in Berlin. After the show, the prices of Richter’s works have continued to climb.

Friday’s sale beat out Jasper Johns’ Flag painting from the 1960s, which brought $28.6 million at Christie’s in 2010, for a living artist at auction. Richter, 80, lives in Cologne, Germany.