Painting auctioned for record $656.8m
NEW YORK: Leonardo Da Vinci’s Salvator Mundi yesterday fetched $450.3 million ($NZ656.8 million) at an auction in New York — more than four times the expected price — making it the most expensive artwork ever auctioned.
Bidders drove up the price from the $100 million expected by Christie’s auction house for the last known privately owned work from the Italian Renaissance painter.
The oil painting of Jesus Christ, produced in 1500, was the centrepiece of the autumn season auction at Christie’s in New York.
The painting was displayed in Hong Kong, London and San Francisco ahead of its sale.
Some 27,000 people came to view the work before it went under the hammer.
Celebrities including Leonardo DiCaprio, Alex Rodriguez, Patti Smith and Jennifer Lopez stopped in to see the painting, The New York Times said.
The painting was discovered in 2005 at a regional auction in the US, where it was thought to be a copy, and restored and cleaned by its new owners, according to Christie’s.
It was most recently owned by Russian billionaire Dmitri Rybolovev.
In the first day of the special auction at Christie’s on Monday, Dutch artist Vincent van Gogh’s Laboureur dans un champ sold for around $81 million and Fernand Leger’s Contraste de formes went for $70 million — setting a new record for the French artist. — DPA