Almost a detective story: How a painting by Leonardo da Vinci was found. "Salvator Mundi" by Leonardo da Vinci sold for $450.3 million at Christie's This painting is by Leonardo da Vinci

A selection and brief description of works devoted to this subject.

Savior of the world is an iconographic plot depicting Jesus with his right hand raised, with which he blesses people, and his left hand, in which he holds a ball topped with a cross, which symbolizes the earth. The composition has a strong eschatological overtones.

Hans Memling

The theme was popular among northern artists, including Jan van Eyck, Hans Memling, Titian and Albrecht Dürer.

Savior of the world

Leonardo

Previously lost and restored in 2011, this work is attributed to Leonardo da Vinci and depicts Christ with crossed fingers on his right hand and a crystal ball in his left. Later, in 2013, the work was sold to a Russian collector, Dmitry Rybolovlev, for $127.5 million.

Leonardo da Vinci

The poor condition caused by early restoration attempts makes it impossible to accurately determine the authorship of the painting. However, detailed examination revealed several features, such as a number of pentimento and unusual pressure techniques, that were characteristic of other works by da Vinci. In addition, the paint pigments and the walnut board on which the Savior is depicted are consistent with other works by the master.

Durer

Albrecht Dürer, the main artist of the German Renaissance, probably began this work shortly before he went to Italy (1505), but at that time he completed only the drapery. The unfinished parts of Christ's face and hands reveal the vastness and thoroughness of the preparatory drawing. The work is painted in oil on linden board.

Titian

In addition to the work of 1570, stored in the Hermitage, Titian painted the painting “The Savior of the World and the Saints” with a similar theme, however, in it Christ does not have an orb, and his figure is surrounded by saints.

Other paintings

The plot can be found on the stained glass window of St John's Anglican Church (New South Wales).

The work of an unknown master dating from the second half of the 16th century.

Previtali

In addition to these works, several dozen other works on the plot, authored by many, have survived to this day. Lombard artists, imitators and icon painters.

Savior of the world updated: September 12, 2017 by: Gleb

A painting by a great Renaissance master from the controversial collection of billionaire Dmitry Rybolovlev has officially become the most expensive work of art in the world

The painting caused a stir already at the Christie’s press conference on October 10, 2017. Photo: GettyImages

The painting, which dates to around 1500, was the top lot at Christie's evening auction of modern and post-war art in New York on November 15. Moreover, $450.3 million is an absolute record price for a work of art sold at public auction. The total revenue of the auction house, which also sold works by Andy Warhol, Cy Twombly, Mark Rothko and others that evening, amounted to $789 million.

The bidding began at $90 million (the day before it became known that Christie’s had a guaranteed bid from an absentee buyer who offered just under $100 million) and lasted a full 20 minutes. The main contenders were 4 telephone buyers and 1 participant in the hall. In the end, the work went to a telephone-haggling client of Alex Rotter, head of Christie’s international contemporary art department. When auctioneer Jussi Pilkkanen confirmed the sale of the painting for $400 million with the third blow of the hammer (taking into account the auction house commission, the price reached $450.3 million), the hall burst into applause.

Christie’s explained their decision to sell “Salvator Mundi” at a contemporary art auction due to the incredible significance of the work. “A painting by the most important artist of all time, depicting an iconic figure for all of humanity. The opportunity to put such a masterpiece up for auction is a huge honor and a once-in-a-lifetime opportunity. Despite the fact that the work was painted by Leonardo approximately 500 years ago, today it influences contemporary art no less than in the 15th and 16th centuries,” said Loic Gouzer, chairman of the New York department of post-war and contemporary art at Christie’s.

Russian-born billionaire Dmitry Rybolovlev, whose name is now constantly heard in the news of the art world, decided to sell the last work of Leonardo da Vinci in a private collection. Firstly, he is suing his art consultant, accusing him of fraud and claiming that he overpaid twice for the collection, and secondly, he is gradually selling this collection at auctions and privately, usually receiving much less for the works than he paid. Now it’s the turn of Leonardo da Vinci’s “Savior of the World,” which went under the hammer for more than three times as much: Rybolovlev cost the painting $127.5 million, and he sold it for $450.3 million.

Both the history of this painting, which was long considered destroyed, and the scientific debate devoted to its attribution are noteworthy. There are several facts that indirectly prove that Leonardo painted Christ in the image of the Savior of the world at the turn of the 15th-16th centuries, that is, during his stay in Milan, most likely by order of the King of France, Louis XII, who at that time controlled the north of Italy. Firstly, there is a known engraving from 1650, made by Wenceslas Hollar from an original by Leonardo da Vinci (as indicated by the engraver himself). The master's sketches have also been preserved - a drawing of the head of Christ, dating back to the 1480s, from Leonardo's Codex Atlanticus (kept in the Ambrosian Library in Milan), as well as sketches of draperies (kept in the Royal Library of Windsor Castle), which compositionally coincide with those depicted on the painting put up for auction, and with those in the engraving. There are also several similar compositions by Leonardo’s students with the same plot. However, the original was considered irretrievably lost.

The painting “Salvator Mundi” by Leonardo da Vinci was sold at Christie’s post-war and contemporary art auction in New York on November 15, 2017 for $450.3 million. Photo: Christie’s

“Savior of the World,” now owned by Rybolovlev, was first documented in the collection of the British monarch Charles I: in the 17th century, it was kept in the royal palace in Greenwich. The following evidence dates back to 1763, when the painting was sold by Charles Herbert Sheffield, the illegitimate son of the Duke of Buckingham. He was selling off his father's legacy after he sold Buckingham Palace to the king. Then the painting disappears from view for a long time, and its trace is rediscovered only in 1900, when “Salvator Mundi”, as a work by a follower of Leonardo Bernardino Luini, is acquired by Sir Charles Robinson, art consultant to Sir Francis Cook. This is how the work ends up in the Cook collection in Richmond. It is believed that by this time the work had already undergone inept restoration, which was necessary after the board split in two (in particular, the face of Christ was rewritten). In 1958, Sotheby's sold the collection; a heavily rewritten image of Christ went under the hammer for £45. Such a modest price is explained by the fact that the work was attributed in the auction catalog as a late copy of a painting by the High Renaissance artist Giovanni Boltraffio.

In 2005, Salvator Mundi was purchased by a group of art dealers (including New York old master specialist Robert Simon) as a Leonardesque work for just $10,000 at a small American auction. In 2013, a consortium of dealers sold the painting to Yves Bouvier for $80 million, who almost immediately resold it to Dmitry Rybolovlev for $127.5 million.

It is assumed that it was the gallery owner and art critic Robert Simon who was the first to see Leonardo’s hand in the untitled work. On his initiative, the necessary research and consultations with experts were carried out. At the same time, the work was restored. Six years later, the sensational appearance of “Savior of the World” as a genuine painting by Leonardo da Vinci himself at an exhibition, and even in one of the most authoritative museums in the world, the National Gallery in London.

Curator of the exhibition “Leonardo da Vinci. Artist at the Milanese Court (November 2011 - February 2012) Luc Syson, then keeper of Italian painting before 1500 and head of the scientific department, warmly supported Leonardo's authorship. The work was included in the exhibition catalog edited by the same Sison as a work by Leonardo from a private collection. The catalog emphasizes that the most preserved part of the image is the fingers of Christ folded in a blessing gesture. Here the most characteristic techniques of the Italian genius are noticeable, in particular the numerous changes that the artist made during the process of work. In addition, other details point to Leonardo: the complex draperies of the tunic, the smallest air bubbles in the sphere of transparent quartz, as well as the way Christ’s curly hair is painted.

According to the online publication ARTnews, the then director of the National Gallery, Nicholas Penny, and Luke Syson, before deciding to include the work in the exhibition, invited four experts to look at the painting: the curator of the department of painting and graphics of the Metropolitan Museum of Art Carmen Bambach, the leading restorer of the fresco “The Last Supper” » in Milan by Pietro Marani, author of books on the history of the Renaissance, including a biography of Boltraffio, Maria Teresa Fiorio, as well as honorary professor at Oxford University Martin Kemp, who devoted more than 40 years to studying the legacy of Leonardo da Vinci. It seems that the work was accepted, but only Kemp spoke publicly in favor of attributing the “Savior of the World” to Leonardo in a 2011 interview with Artinfo. Answering the journalist’s questions, he notes the special feeling of “Leonardo’s presence” that you experience when looking at his works - you feel it in front of the Mona Lisa and in front of the Savior of the World. In addition, the professor spoke about the stylistic features characteristic of the master’s style.

To be fair, it should be noted that the matter was not limited to art historical analysis—scrupulous technical and technological research was also carried out. The restoration and study of Salvator Mundi was carried out by Professor Dianne Modestini, who heads the Samuel Henry Kress Program in Painting Restoration at the Institute of Fine Arts of New York University. The results of her research were presented at the Leonardo da Vinci: Latest Technological Discoveries conference in February 2012 in New York. However, Modestini is actually the only one who had access to technological research data, and without them it is not entirely correct to speak about authorship.

The Italian Leonardesque specialist Carlo Pedretti publicly spoke out against the attribution of the “Savior of the world” to Leonardo, who in 1982 curated the artist’s exhibition in his hometown of Vinci and then included in the exhibition another “Savior of the world”, from the collection of the Marquis de Gane, considering that painting to be the work of himself masters In addition, the Guardian quotes a number of points from Walter Isaac's biography of Leonardo da Vinci, published in October this year. He draws attention to the image of the ball in the hand of Christ, which is incorrect from the point of view of the laws of physics. The publication also refers to the opinion of University of Leipzig professor Frank Zellner (author of a 2009 monograph on Leonardo), who in a 2013 article called Salvator Mundi a high-quality work from the workshop of Leonardo or his follower. However, this article in the Guardian has already become the subject of a lawsuit from Christie’s International.

“Salvator Mundi” is a painting by Leonardo Da Vinci, which was considered lost for a long time. Its customer is usually called King Louis XII of France. Several sketches are kept at Windsor Castle. About 20 Leonardesque works on this subject have survived. It is possible that one of them is a badly damaged original by Leonardo, completed by someone from his workshop.

Paris version

For decades, the Marquis de Gane tried to convince the museum community of the primacy of the “Savior” that adorned his mansion in Paris. According to de Gane, one of the previous owners of the painting, Baron de Laranti, acquired it in the 19th century from a monastery in Nantes, where the widow of Louis XII bequeathed the work.

In 1982, the painting participated in an exhibition of the master’s works in his hometown of Vinci; this exhibition was curated by Carlo Peretti, an experienced specialist in Leonardesque attribution. Despite all his efforts, the Marquis was unable to prove that the Parisian “Savior” was painted by Leonardo. In most modern catalogs it is attributed to Francesco Melzi or Marco d'Oggiono.

In 1999, the painting was sold at Sotheby's for $332,000.

New York version

An engraving from the mid-17th century, made by Wenceslas Hollar, is also known, probably commissioned by the English queen Henrietta Maria. If the engraving is made from Leonardo's original, then we can conclude that the painting belonged to the Stuarts at that time. Perhaps it was this work that entered the collection of the Duke of Buckingham in 1688. In any case, in 1763 his descendants sold it at auction as a work by Leonardo, after which all trace of the painting was lost.

In late 2011, London's National Gallery announced that an upcoming exhibition of Leonardo's work would include Salvator Mundi from a private collection in New York alongside authentic works from his Milanese period brought to London from across Europe. In 1900, it was purchased as a work of the Milanese school by one of the richest people in Victorian England, Baronet Frederick Cook, owner of the luxurious Montserrat Palace in Sintra. In his house hung works by Filippo Lippi, Fra Angelico, Hubert van Eyck, Diego Velazquez and Rembrandt.

Reproduction from the catalog of the Cook collection, 1913. Painting before restoration. (left)

“Savior Mundi” from Cook’s collection was distorted by later entries and corrections: during the era of the Counter-Reformation, the traditional mustache and goatee were added to the beardless and strangely feminine face of the Savior. In this form, it was so difficult to attribute the painting that in 1958, Cook’s heirs were able to sell it at Sotheby’s for only 45 pounds.

In 2004, at an undisclosed auction, this work was acquired by Robert Simon, an expert on old masters, and a group of art dealers. The work was then sent for restoration, during which it was cleared of records. Details of the restoration have not been disclosed. After this, “The Savior” was examined in several museums in Europe and the USA, and only the London one, after consultations with major experts, agreed to recognize the authorship of Leonardo. Attention is drawn to the high craftsmanship of the glass orb and the seemingly luminous hand of Christ, the airy lightness of the blue robes, the use of sfumato, the similarity of the drawing with sketches from Windsor Castle and the complete correspondence of the pigments of the New York “Savior” and the London “Madonna of the Rocks”.

Although Carlo Peretti disputes the attribution of this painting to Leonardo, the market value of the New York “Savior” was estimated at $200 million in the summer of 2011. In 2012, the Dallas Museum of Art made an attempt to acquire the painting. A year later, the painting was bought by Russian billionaire Dmitry Rybolovlev for $79 million.

On October 11, 2017, it was announced that Leonardo da Vinci’s painting “Savior of the World” would be auctioned at Christie’s in New York on November 15. The starting price of the lot is approximately estimated at $100 million.

Dmitry Rybolovlev put up for auction his work by Leonardo da Vinci “Savior of the World”. The auction will take place on November 15, New York auction house Christie's announced on Tuesday. The painting is estimated at $100 million. Christie’s did not name the seller of the painting. The fact that the painting is being sold by the Rybolovlev family trust was confirmed to The Wall Street Journal by a representative of the Russian billionaire - former owner of Uralkali and now owner of the Monaco football club.
The canvas “Savior of the World” depicts Jesus Christ in blue robes, holding a glass ball in his left hand, and his right hand raised in a sign of blessing. The painting dates back to around 1500. Unlike the rest of Leonardo's works that have survived to this day (there are less than 20 of them), Salvator Mundi is in a private, not a museum, collection.

In the middle of the 17th century. The painting was owned by England's King Charles I, although there is evidence that it was originally painted for the French royal court, Alan Wintermute, a senior specialist in old master paintings at Christie's, told the Financial Times. Then, over the course of several centuries, the painting was owned by various European monarchs.
For a long time it was considered lost. And in 1958 it was sold at auction for only 45 pounds (then about $125) as one of the works of the “school of da Vinci”. The authorship of Leonardo himself became known only in the mid-2000s. In 2005, during restoration, the canvas was freed from the layers of paint superimposed on top of the original image. Thus, “Salvator Mundi” became the last discovered painting by da Vinci after “Benois Madonna”, found at the beginning of the last century.
Christie's experts call the da Vinci painting the "holy grail," and its discovery is "a bigger event than the discovery of a new planet," says Loic Gouzer, co-chairman of Christie's post-war and contemporary art department.

The public first saw the painting in 2011 at an exhibition of da Vinci’s works at the National Gallery in London. Subsequently, “Savior of the World” became one of the subjects of dispute between the Swiss art dealer Yves Bouvier and Rybolovlev, his former client. Two years after the exhibition at the National Gallery, through the mediation of Sotheby’s, the painting was sold to Bouvier for $80 million, and he resold it to Rybolovlev for $127.5 million.
This price premium later became the basis for a lawsuit that the Russian billionaire filed, accusing Bouvier of fraud. Legal proceedings continue, but the rights of the Rybolovlev family to the painting are not disputed. The billionaire hopes that "the upcoming auction will finally put an end to this very painful story," said his representative Brian Katell.
Dmitry Rybolovlev, owner of the Monaco club, may become persona non grata in the principality

The painting is valued lower than Rybolovlev paid for it in 2013. Bouvier's lawyer Ron Soffer doubts that the Russian billionaire needs the money from its sale. “If he sells Leonardo da Vinci's painting just to score points in this case, he can only throw up his hands,” he told the WSJ.
Rybolovlev saw in publications about “Monacogate” attempts to influence justice
If “Salvator Mundi” sells for more than the preliminary estimate, it will become the second painting sold in New York this year for more than $100 million. In May, Sotheby’s sold an untitled work by Jean Michel Basquiat for more than $110 million.

On November 15, 2017, Leonardo da Vinci's painting "Savior Mundi" was sold at Christie's auction in New York for $400 million + auction commission $50,312,500 totaling $450,312,500. After the sale, the painting "Savior Mundi" became the most expensive in the world history with a work of art.

But how does it compare to some of the most valuable paintings? Look below to find out...FOOD FOR CONSIDERATION!

Interchange
Willem de Kooning
1955, 200.7×175.3 cm


Number 17A Jackson Pollock 1948

As Bloomberg reports, last fall the famous billionaire, collector and philanthropist Ken Griffin set the absolute maximum amount for a private transaction for the sale of works of art. Griffin acquired from Hollywood tycoon David Geffen, whose collection before this deal was valued at $2.3 billion, paintings by abstract expressionist classics Willem de Kooning “Interchange” and Jackson Pollock “Number 17A”, paying for them 300 and 200 million dollars.

Thus, Kunning’s “The Exchange” shared the palm with Paul Gauguin’s Nafea Faa Ipoipo (“When is the wedding?”), sold in 2015 for the same amount of $300 million to the Qatar Museums Authority.

Culture

If you look at the crystal sphere, you can see that it is completely transparent. However, in reality, such a sphere will enlarge and “blur” the background, rather than make it transparent.

According to the latest research, such a mistake is an anomaly for the Italian genius.

But what is even more puzzling to experts is that da Vinci studied optics in detail, to the point of obsession, and how light is reflected and refracted.

There is an assumption that the artist deliberately ignored this realistic aspect in favor of the symbolic aspect in order to convey a certain message.

There are only two reasons for this error, experts say. Either Leonardo simply did not want the image of the sphere to distract from the rest of the picture, or he was trying to convey the wonderful essence of Christ in this way.

The secrets of da Vinci's paintings

It is worth noting that in September 2017, a painting of a nude woman was found that is very similar to the Mona Lisa. Experts believe that at least part of this painting was created by Leonardo da Vinci.

The drawing was made using charcoal and is called "Monna Vanna". It is believed that the artist prepared this painting for oil paints, but did not have time. Experts have been studying the work for several months, but it is very fragile, which slows down its study.