Controversial Da Vinci is New York auction star
Russian billionaire believes he was swindled when he bought it for $127.5m
What is the only Da Vinci painting on the open market worth? A Russian billionaire believes he was swindled when he bought it for $127.5 million (Dh467.9 million). This week he’ll 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 $1 billion.
It goes under the hammer at Christie’s on Wednesday, something of an incongruous lot in the evening sale, which attracts the biggest spenders in the high-octane world of international billionaire art collectors. The auction house has valued it at $100 million.
“Look at the painting, it is an extraordinary work of art,” said Francois de Poortere, head of the old master’s department at Christie’s. 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 $2.1 billion on 37 masterpieces. One of those works was Salvator Mundi which has been exhibited at The National Gallery in London.
Bouvier bought the Da Vinci at Sotheby’s for $80 million in 2013. He resold it to the Russian tycoon for $127.5 million. The painting’s rarity is difficult to overstate. All ll other known paintings by Da Vinci are held in museum or institutional collections.