The Uffizi Gallery in Florence is turning some of its most prized artworks into NFTs and selling them to raise funds after a cash-strapped year. And it’s starting off with a bang: an encrypted Michelangelo painting of the holy family, Doni Tondo (1505–06), just sold for €140,000 ($170,000).
The museum will split the proceeds with Cinello, an Italian company that has patented a new way to make digital facsimiles of famous paintings, as part of a new partnership announced today. Cinello’s digital artworks, which it calls DAWS, are produced in the dimensions of the original piece, and purport to be completely unique and theft proof. An NFT token is created on the blockchain for each DAW, certifying ownership.
