A ‘Leonardo’ sells for $450M, but what did the buyer actually get?
Before it sold, the debate about a painting that some scholars and a very assertive auction house believe is by Leonardo da Vinci was all about authenticity. Was this painted panel, known as “Salvator Mundi,” or “Savior of the World,” an actual Leonardo?
It had been so aggressively cleaned and over painted that it had long been assumed to be a copy of a Leonardo by another, far lesser-known artist. But after extensive restoration it looked sufficiently like a Leonardo that the auction house Christie’s secured a $100 million bid to begin a recent auction. In the end, it went for $450.3 million, the highest price ever paid at auction for a work of art.
So now the question is, will that astonishing amount of money banish doubts about its authenticity? Logically, one should say: Of course not. Although some serious scholars believe the painting, which depicts Jesus holding a transparent crystal orb in his left hand, can be attributed to the Renaissance master, the restoration was so thoroughgoing that it might be safer to say: There is possibly some Leonardo in there.
Those who are convinced it is by the artist point to games the artist played with clarity and focus, the way some details are strikingly clear but other areas seem slightly blurry, rather like a lens can separate foreground and background with different focal points. Others find material evidence and details of brush work convincing. But between the time the unrestored painting was sold at an estate sale in 2005 for $10,000, and its arrival on the world scene as a long-lost “Leonardo” at the National Gallery in London in 2011, the painting has come to life with significant modern retouching.
If nothing else, the astonishing amount someone or some institution paid for this work (the buyer hasn’t been named) proves that with a handful of artists, Leonardo pre-eminent among them, any amount of authenticity is sufficient for marketers, salesmen and audiences who crave sacred objects. This is disconcerting to people who have trained themselves to think skeptically about attributions.
Over the last 700 years or more, a lot of magnificent art has been produced that can’t be definitively ascribed to any one particular artist. Sometimes works are by more than one artist; sometimes the artist’s name has simply been lost to history. Sometimes an apprentice, who painted a few details in a work largely by his master, becomes more famous than his teacher. In that case, which artist gets the credit? The measured way to think about this is: Focus on the art itself, and don’t ascribe mystical value to the attribution.
But the power of the brand, especially brands as well known and revered as Leonardo’s, inevitably wins out. A quasi-religious hysteria takes over, and a painting that possibly has some Leonardo in it becomes a sacred relic, something touched by the master.