Salvator Mundi

Was it the artistic power of the work, casting the aesthetic spell known as Stendhal syndrome over some powerful tycoon? Was it the rarity of what Christie’s promoted as ‘‘The Last da Vinci’’? Or was it what Marx called ‘‘commodity fetish,’’ driven to new heights in the rarefied strata of the hyperrich?

Even in a business in which prices have soared in recent years, the sale of Leonardo da Vinci’s Salvator Mundi at Christie’s in New York for $400 million, plus $50.3 million in commissions, has everyone, experts and commoners alike, groping for explanations.

Salvator Mundi is rare; on that there is no debate. There are only 15 other known Leonardos, all in museums. Whoever bought the painting must be possessed of supreme self-confidence, for there are also reasons collectors might have shied away. Though the work is generally accepted as a real Leonardo, doubts linger among some scholars as to its authenticity.

But even if the motive is a pure love of art, the price paid for the Leonardo testified to something gone wrong in the balance of value and values. It reflects a world in which the minute sliver of the obscenely rich see nothing untoward in parking hundreds of millions of dollars on a rare but unexceptional painting that may well spend the next several years in a tax-free storage facility. That the subject is the ‘‘Saviour of the World’’ makes it all the more lamentable.