Legend has long surrounded Yves Saint Laurent’s male nude drawings.

The French couturier, who was also an avid illustrator, created these numerous nude sketches over his vaunted career, producing a body of work that he once told Bianca Jagger was “very erotic.” He had vague idea of compiling them into a book that never came to pass; he died in 2008. Years on, a portfolio containing more than 300 of these images landed at the heart of a fierce legal battle involving alleged theft and an elusive businessman eager to offload them.

In the latest chapter for Saint Laurent’s erotic oeuvre, more than 20 of his nude compositions are leading Sotheby’s sale of art and artifacts that were once owned or created by the designer. Coinciding with Paris Fashion Week, “Yves Saint Laurent/Pierre Bergé: An Intimate Collection” is offering artworks, photographs, personal mementos, and those storied drawings drawn from the collection of a French individual who was close to Saint Laurent and his long-time partner, Bergé.

Yves Saint Laurent, Male Nude from Behind. Photo courtesy of Sotheby’s.

“The sale,” Florent Jeanniard, the house’s co-worldwide head of design, told me over email, “gives an additional perspective on the taste of the couturier and his companion.”

The group of male nude illustrations—so steamy they are being shown in a private room—noted Sotheby’s in press materials, is “the most significant of its kind ever presented at auction.” Some, such as Male Nude from Behind (estimate: €2,000–€3,000, or $2,085–$3,130), offer an erotic perspective on the male physique, while others present a more abstract, almost decorative, approach to anatomy.

Yves Saint Laurent, Untitled. Photo courtesy of Sotheby’s.

These artworks will be accompanied by official certificates of authenticity from the Fondation Pierre Bergé-Yves Saint Laurent—the first time the organization is verifying the designer’s works, as counterfeits have proliferated on the market, according to WWD.

“It’s fascinating to see these works here for the first time, and to be lucky enough to own so many,” said Jeanniard. “The mastery of the body, the line of the curves and, for some, the magic of the colors, are to be found in a theme devoted exclusively to the male model.”

Sèvres or Paris porcelain medallion from the Empire period (ca. 1810–15). Photo courtesy of Sotheby’s.

Elsewhere in the sale are artworks that Saint Laurent and Bergé snapped up at the storied Kugel Gallery in Paris. According to Jeanniard, the pair regularly visited the antiques gallery to discover its art and objects, the provenance of which were “a synonym of quality.” Among them are decorative and classical objects, such as a 19th-century medallion featuring the profile of a Roman soldier (€1,500–2,000, or $1,560–$2,085).

The auction also draws out the trove of photographs that the one-time couple collected over the years, offering “some idea of the affections that Saint Laurent and Bergé might have had for photography,” Jeanniard noted.

Martine Barrat, Untitled, from Harlem, Do You See Your Face (1984). Photo courtesy of Sotheby’s.

Works by Andy Warhol, Helmut Newton, Martine Barrat, and Alice Springs are on offer, including portraits of Saint Laurent and Bergé. Warhol, who once deemed Saint Laurent “a complete artist,” created a series of Polaroid images of the designer in the 1970s, four of which are up for sale.

Also included is a tetratych of Barrat’s 1984 imagery of Harlem (€2,400–3,200, or $2,500–3,330), and an untitled image by Newton (€1,000–2,000, or $1,040–2,085), who famously lensed the designer’s 1975 Le Smoking tuxedo collection.

Helmut Newton, Untitled. Photo courtesy of Sotheby’s.

Sotheby’s auction follows Bergé’s sale of his and Saint Laurent’s massive collection in 2009 at Christie’s, which fetched a historic $483.8 million; and in 2018 at Sotheby’s, which made $31.3 million.

Compared to these earlier auctions, at which hundreds if not thousands of lots were on offer, this latest outing is smaller in scale but no less significant, Jeanniard told WWD. “It’s rare nowadays to find items having belonged to Yves Saint Laurent and Pierre Bergé,” he said.