Controversial Da Vinci painting a star at NY auction
New York: What is the only Da Vinci painting on the open market worth?
A Russian billionaire believes he was swindled when he bought it for US$127.5mil (RM534.54mil) and this week he will find out if he was right.
Salvator Mundi, a painting of Jesus Christ by the Renaissance polymath Leonardo da Vinci circa 1500, is the star lot in New York’s November art auctions that will see Christie’s and Sotheby’s chase combined art sales of more than US$1bil (RM4.19bil).
It goes under the hammer at Christie’s on Wednesday, an incongruous piece in the post-war and contemporary-themed sale, which attracts the biggest spenders in the high-octane world of international billionaire art collectors.
The auction house, which declined to comment on the controversy and identifies the seller only as a European collector, has valued it at US$100mil (RM419mil).
“Look at the painting. It is an extraordinary work of art,” said Francois de Poortere, head of the master’s department at Christie’s. “That’s what we should focus on.” But the price will be closely watched – not just as one of fewer than 20 paintings by Da Vinci’s hand accepted to exist, but by its owner Dmitry Rybolovlev, the boss of soccer club AS Monaco who is suing Swiss art dealer Yves Bouvier in the city-state.
Rybolovlev accuses Bouvier of conning him out of hundreds of million dollars in parting with an eye-watering US$2.1bil (RM8.8bil on 37 masterpieces, one of which was Salvator Mundi, which has been exhibited at The National Gallery in London.
Bouvier bought the Da Vinci from Sotheby’s at US$80mil (RM335.4mil) in 2013. He sold it to the tycoon for US$127.5mil (RM534.5mil).
The painting’s rarity is difficult to overstate. For years it was presumed to have been destroyed. In 1958, it fetched £45 (RM252 in today’s money) and disappeared again for decades, emerging only in 2005 when it was purchased from a US estate.
It was long believed to have been a copy, before eventually being certified as authentic.
All other known paintings by Da Vinci are held in museum or institutional collections.
“For auction specialists, this is pretty much the Holy Grail,” Loic Gouzer, co-chairman of Christie’s Americas post-war and contemporary art department, has said.
Christie’s has sought to emphasize Da Vinci’s inestimable contribution to art history by hanging Salvator Mundi next to Andy Warhol’s Sixty Last Suppers – which depicts Da Vinci’s The Last Supper 60 times over, also on sale with a US$50mil (RM209.62mil) estimate.
Pablo Picasso holds the world record for the most expensive piece of art ever sold at auction.
His The Women of Algiers (Version O) fetched US$179.4mil (RM752.13mil) at Christie’s in New York in 2015.