In November 2011, a small Renaissance portray called the Salvator Mundi (“Saviour of the World”) went on display at the National Gallery. It become a compelling, moody, rather ordinary photograph: a 1/2-period determine of Christ with ringlets of auburn hair, keeping a obvious crystal orb. Even extra compelling turned into the label, describing it as a newly observed paintings with the aid of Leonardo da Vinci.
This attribution, on the top stop of the art international’s Richter scale, was controversial for various motives, not least due to the fact – contrary to National Gallery coverage – it greatly stronger the market fee of a privately owned paintings. Its owners had been at this factor mysterious: an American “consortium” was noted. They have been, in truth, two mid-desk New York dealers, Robert Simon and Alex Parish, who had offered it in 2005 on an intuitive whim, heavily overpainted and in terrible condition, from a small public sale residence in New Orleans. They paid $1,one hundred seventy five. Cleaned, stripped and painstakingly restored with the aid of Dianne Modestini, authenticated through prominent Leonardo specialists which include Martin Kemp and David A Brown, and released with the imprimatur of the National Gallery, the Salvator Mundi had arrived. After five centuries of obscurity it become an global movie star, a fairytale frog became a prince of artwork.
In 2013 Simon and Parish sold the image for $80m to a Swiss middleman, who directly resold it to a Russian oligarch, Dmitry Rybolovlev, for $127.5m. These were personal sales, however when Rybolovlev in turn decided to promote, it became inside the complete theatrical spotlight of a public auction on the Christie’s New York saleroom within the Rockefeller Center. On the evening of 15 November 2017, the auctioneer opened the bidding on Lot 9b, which he billed as “the masterpiece by way of Leonardo of Christ the Saviour”. After a couple of minutes it reached $180m, breaking the previous document for a painting offered at auction, set in 2015 through Picasso’s Women of Algiers. For a while there have been five bidders in the sport – all anonymous, even though all seemingly classifiable, inside the unlovely terminology of excessive-end art-dealing, as UHNWIs (extremely-high-net-well worth people) – however for the final 10 minutes there have been just slugging it out. The final price tag changed into $450m, which blanketed Christie’s fee of $50m. The purchaser became a minor Saudi royal, Prince Badr bin Abdullah al Saud. He is widely rumoured to had been a proxy for Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman, although the instant beneficiary changed into the brand new Louvre Abu Dhabi, for whom (consistent with reliable Saudi sources) he changed into performing as an “middleman customer” of the portray.
The tale of the arena’s maximum high priced painting is narrated with outstanding gusto and formidably researched element in Ben Lewis’s book. He has talked to pretty much every body concerned, even the exposure-shy Rybolovlev, whom he describes as a “textbook oligarch” with the “clean air” of the billionaire. The ebook is timed nicely, as celebrations tools up for the 500th anniversary of Leonardo’s death on 2 May. Lewis has a background in arts journalism and documentary films: snappy reportage of mega-buck deals is his element. But to his credit, a great deal of the ebook is in a as a substitute one-of-a-kind mode of affected person historical research. He examines the chequered career of the painting from its inception – probable in Milan, someday round 1507-10 – which leads him into areas where lurk many more questions than solutions.
His investigation of the provenance of the Salvator Mundi casts considerable doubt on claims that it changed into once within the series of Charles I, and that it’s miles listed in an stock of 1650 as “a peece [picture] of Christ performed by using Leonard”. This idea turned into advanced within the National Gallery and Christie’s catalogues to signify that the portray changed into traditionally recognized and valued as a Leonardo. The question of provenance is complicated through the life of numerous different artwork with the Salvator iconography, some very plausibly attributed to scholars and imitators of Leonardo. One of these, in the Pushkin Museum in Moscow, changed into truly in the royal collection, as it bears the stamp CR (Carolus Rex) on the returned of the panel. This painting, attributed to Giampietrino, can be the “peece” itemised in 1650.
The first sure sighting of the Salvator Mundi isn’t always till 1900, whilst it was purchased by means of a wealthy textile producer, Sir Francis Cook. It hung within the Cook family residence in Richmond till 1958, and was then bought at Sotheby’s to an American businessman, Warren Kuntz, for £forty five, “a sum so low, it suggests he was the only bidder”. Kuntz and his wife Minnie lived in New Orleans, which is wherein the portray changed into later noticed on a sale room internet site by the speculative eye of Alex Parish.
Lewis’s probings of the Salvator’s backstory improve questions about its ancient status and visibility, and those lead in flip to the fundamental question of whether or not the painting is definitely an autograph work by Leonardo. Eight years after its appearance at the National Gallery, the consensus amongst Leonardo scholars might be weighted in opposition to the attribution, though the problem isn’t one amenable to a straight sure or no solution. The operating practice of a Renaissance Italian studio become collective. The maestro became its critical discern, but others – assistants, apprentices, specialists – collaborated in its products. Some clients stipulated the volume of the maestro’s contribution to a painting: they were prepared to pay extra for his brushwork. Others with a smaller price range just desired the Leonardo “appearance” and had been happy with a well-accomplished copy. A traveler to his studio in 1501 reviews: “Two of his assistants make copies, and he from time to time provides some touches to them.”
Some purple chalk sketches of sleeve draperies, observed in the Royal Collection at Windsor, are definitely with the aid of Leonardo. They are comparable, although not equal, to the sleeves in the painting, or even if they had been same they could no longer inform us whose paintbrush copied them directly to the walnut-wood panel of Salvator Mundi.
These workshop practices are an crucial context. The pertinent question isn’t “Is it via Leonardo?” but “How lots of it’s miles via Leonardo?” In 2012, Carmen Bambach argued: “Much of the unique painting floor may be through Boltraffio” – considered one of Leonardo’s most amazing Milanese assistants – “but with passages carried out by way of Leonardo himself.” She identifies the palms and the crystal orb as Leonardo’s. In the contemporary version of his catalogue raisonné of Leonardo’s works, Frank Zollner describes the Salvator as a “incredible made of Leonardo’s workshop” based totally on a layout by him. In a piece of writing within the German magazine Monopol he recognized the query that underlies the attribution debate. “It is about cash,” he writes. “A right workshop portray might fetch an expected $20m.” His article regarded the day before the painting, closely hyped as via Leonardo, sold in New York for 20 times that sum.
None of the earlier professionals who saw the painting in Richmond had any inkling it become via Leonardo. Tancred Borenius, who catalogued the Cook series in 1913, defined it as a “unfastened reproduction” after Boltraffio – two levels of separation from Leonardo – at the same time as every other cataloguer diagnosed it best as “Milanese college of circa 1520”. This is perhaps not surprising, because the painting is atypical – it’s miles Leonardo’s only solo portrayal of the adult Christ, and its full-frontal posture is pretty different from the three-quarter profiles and fluid contrapposto of his secular pictures.
Lewis sums up the story of the Salvator Mundi as a narrative with “too many plot holes” – “the provenance is speculative, the attribution optimistic, the recovery vast” and “the fee exorbitant”. A “potpourri” of vested hobbies has combined “to show a workshop painting into a Leonardo”. But he remains even-exceeded: thankful for the portray’s survival, admiring of Simon and Parish’s chutzpah, and protective of Modestini, whose restoration has been criticised for “Leonardising” the vestigial remains of the unique. The painting, he says, is “a Leonardo for our time, a post-reality Leonardo”.
There is one ultimate “plot hollow” that is giving those concerned in this tangled affair some cause for concern. The Salvator Mundi has – quickly, at least – disappeared. Three weeks after the public sale sale, Abu Dhabi’s Department of Culture tweeted: “Da Vinci’s Salvator Mundi is coming to #LouvreAbuDhabi”. The gallery’s internet site gushed: “Lost and hidden for goodbye … [the] masterpiece is now our gift to the sector.” Then in September ultimate 12 months, weeks earlier than the scheduled unveiling of the painting in its new domestic, the event become all at once cancelled. A press launch promised further statistics, however none has been approaching – an surprising chapter of silence, which the ghost of Leonardo may simply be taking part in.
