£350m ‘Da Vinci painting’ may not even be a Leonardo
IT DEPICTS Jesus Christ as the saviour of the world and fetched a world-record £350million at auction – but now experts say the Salvator Mundi might not have been painted by Leonardo da Vinci after all.
The doubts over the famous artwork come two years after it was bought by Saudi Arabia’s Crown Prince Mohammad bin Salman. The record price was paid in the belief that it was Leonardo’s work, although even at the time, several specialists said the artist may have made only a small contribution to the painting.
Now, a new book by art scholar Ben Lewis claims the National Gallery in London asked five experts to examine the portrait in 2008, before its inclusion in the gallery’s blockbuster Leonardo exhibition three years later.
In The Last Leonardo, Lewis writes that just two of the experts were willing to verify that the painting was a genuine Leonardo, a third said it wasn’t and two refused to comment.
But the gallery failed to include any of the doubts in the catalogue.
The internationally renowned gallery’s public declaration of faith in the artwork was a crucial factor in the extraordinary auction price for a work that had been sold for only a four-figure sum in 2005.
The latest claims have divided the art world.
Michael Daley, director of ArtWatch UK, said: ‘We don’t think it’s a Leonardo and it should not have gone in the exhibition back in 2011.’
But Dr Bendor Grosvenor, who presents the BBC4 series Britain’s Lost Masterpieces, said he thought there were valid reasons to believe the work was by Leonardo. He told the BBC the sale of the painting for such a huge sum had brought out ‘everyone’s inner communist’ and led to repeated attempts to undermine its attribution. ‘Nearly all Leonardo scholars agree that it’s by him or at least mostly by him,’ he added.
A gallery spokesman said: ‘The National Gallery makes careful consideration before including any loan in an exhibition.’