A nude photograph of Carla Bruni-Sarkozy, France’s First Lady, that caused furors during the model-turned-singer’s state visit to the UK last month, sold at auction for $91,000 (£45,000.) The photo fetched almost 20 times its high estimate, at Christie's International in New York on Friday.

The image was shot by Michael Comte in 1993, and it managed to make headlines around the world when the announcement that it was up for sale concurred with Carla Bruni’s official state visit as the wife of French President Nicolas Sarkozy.

According to Christie’s, a Chinese collector, Alex Cao, bought the black-and-white photo. At the auction, buyers competed for nude pictures of models Kate Moss, Gisele Bündchen and Naomi Campbell. A private art dealer who specializes in photography, Rick Wester, declared that the group of pictures was not “terribly challenging.” “It’s more titillating than anything else,” he said quoted by the International Herald Tribune.

It appears that the top lot was Helmut Newton’s “Sie Kommen (Naked and Dressed),” a 1981 diptych incorporating two almost identical images of four women marching in high heels. In one, they are dressed; in other, they are naked. “Sie Kommen” fetched $241,000. David LaChapelle's color image “Naomi Campbell: Have You Seen Me?” (1994) managed to fetch $28,800 and Irving Penn's 1999 photograph of the nude Giselle Bündchen was sold for $193,000.

Heiko Roloff from German magazine Bild was quite disappointed that Bruni’s portrait was achieved by the Chinese art dealer, as he wanted to buy the photo as a gift for the French president. “That would have been a very nice gesture and also a nice story,” he said, according to Vogue.com