‘One of the rarest things on the planet’
SIX DECADES AFTER IT SOLD FOR $125, LOST DA VINCI WORK NETS $450 MILLION
Leonardo da Vinci’s painting, Salvator Mundi or Saviour of the World, sold for US$450,312,500 Wednesday at auction, making it “the most expensive painting ever sold at auction,” according to Christie’s auction house.
THE ART
Salvator Mundi is one of some 16 known surviving paintings — including the Mona Lisa — by da Vinci, the master of the Italian Renaissance. The others are scattered throughout the world’s museums.
Billed by the auction house as “The Last da Vinci,” the painting spent centuries in obscurity until it was rediscovered in 2005 and underwent a six-year restoration and verification process. The small piece depicts Jesus raising his right hand in blessing and holding a crystal orb, meant to represent the world, in his left. Da Vinci painted it in the early 1500s, and it quickly inspired a number of imitations. Over the years, art historians have identified about 20 of these copies, but the original long seemed lost to history.
THE AUCTION
The bidding, coordinated out of Christie’s New York office, lasted less than 20 minutes, from the price guaranteed by Christie’s of $100 million to about $330 million before long pauses set in, as bidders dropped out. At about $370 million there appeared to be two remaining bidders on lines, each represented by Christie’s specialists, Francis de Poortere and Alex Rotter. “Back to Francis’ clients at $370 million,” said Jussi Pylkkänen, as the room grew quiet. Then came $400 million bid “Francis is out,” said Pylkkänen. He then turned to Rotter. “It is with Alex Rotter at $400 ... and the piece is sold,” said the auctioneer, to great applause. With the buyer’s premium, an extra fee tacked on by auction houses, the final tally came to $450,312,500. The identity of the winning bidder is not known.
THE OLD OWNERS
At one point, the painting was part of the royal collection of King Charles I of England. It disappeared in 1763 for nearly a century and a half. In 1900, Sir Charles Robinson purchased the painting for the Cook Collection in London. But by then, it was no longer credited to da Vinci but to his follower, Bernardino Luini.
In 1958, the collection was auctioned off in pieces, with Salvator Mundi going for a mere £45, which translates to about $125 today, CNN reported.
Then it dropped off the grid for 50 years until resurfacing in Louisiana in 2005. There, for $10,000, New Yorkbased art collector and da Vinci expert Robert Simon and art dealer Alexander Parish found and bought it. After six years of restoration and investigations, the painting was declared a genuine Leonardo, and was sold to Dmitry Rybolovlev, a Russian businessman for $127.5 million in a private sale that is the subject of a lawsuit.
THE DOUBT
For decades Salvator Mundi has been the subject of debate about whether or not it was truly painted by da Vinci.
Experts discussed whether the orb held in Christ’s left hand offered proof that the painting was not the work of the artist. They said the passage of light through the orb should warp the robes behind, especially given Leonardo’s skill at depicting light and perspective.
Michael Daley, the director of ArtWatch UK, has claimed that the painting is too “deadpan flat, like an icon, with no real depth in the modelling.” He has also claimed that a later engraving, by Wenceslaus Hollar, a 17th-century etcher, which was based on the original, did show a distortion, suggesting that this version is not the same one he worked from. However, Christie’s disputes this and says the two works match. Walter Isaacson, Leonardo’s biographer, concluded that the painting is genuine and the artist was using the technique deliberately to “impart a miraculous quality.”
THE PROOF
One of the key pieces of evidence was found via Xray, which revealed what’s called a pentimento, a trace of an earlier painting beneath the visible one. It showed that Jesus’ right thumb was originally positioned differently. But while working on the piece, da Vinci must have changed his mind and painted over it — the thumb was moved to the position in which it appears today.
“If you’re making a copy of a picture, there’s no way you’d do that,” British art critic Alastair Sooke said in a video for Christie’s. “It wouldn’t make any sense.”
That’s especially true when considering that “in all the copies of the painting, (the finger) follows the finished position,” as Simon told National Geographic.
There were other clues as well, History.com reported. It was painted on walnut in “many very thin layers of almost translucent paint,” like other da Vinci pieces from the era. Infrared light showed that the painter pressed his palm into the wet paint above Jesus’ left eye to smudge the colours, a technique da Vinci favoured called sfumato blurring.
In 2011, the art community reached a consensus: This was a bona fide da Vinci. “It’s the most unimaginable discovery of the last 50 years,” London-based art dealer Charles Beddington told the New York Times. “A painting by Leonardo is one of the rarest things on the planet. You can’t imagine it’s ever going to happen again.”
THE RECORD
The previous record for the most expensive painting sold at auction was $179,364,992 for Picasso’s Les Femmes d’Alger (Women of Algiers), according to Christie’s. The highest price previously paid at auction for a da Vinci was in 2001 for his Horse and Rider, a work on paper, which went for $11,481,865.