Is the Salvator Mundi a long-lost da Vinci or a spurious fraud? In this video, we'll explore the arguments for and against. Where do you stand?
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It’s fair to say that there’s a lot of money in the art world.
It’s a place where you can duct-tape actual bananas to a gallery wall, and sell them later for a cool $120,000 each.
Or, maybe decomposing sharks are your thing? Pickled cows? Check and check (and for under 20 million)!
It’s also a creative space, where you can buy a painting for 1.4 million, then watch it shred itself right after the hammer comes down. Yep…it’s all here.
So, what’s the most expensive painting ever sold? We’ll find out, in this video!
When it comes to ultra expensive paintings, there are some strong contenders, like:
The Card Players by Paul Cézanne — sold in 2011 for 250 million
Or Willem de Kooning’s abstract expressionist masterpiece, Interchange — bought by Ken Griffin in 2015 for about 300 million
But by far the most expensive painting in the world, is this one: Salvator Mundi, controversially attributed to Renaissance genius, Leonardo da Vinci.
On November 15, 2017 at a Christie’s auction in New York (after a 19 minute bidding war), history was made. The painting sold for 450.3 million dollars (a full 150 million more than any other painting ever).
The buyer? A relatively unknown Saudi prince, Prince Bader bin Abdullah bin Mohammed bin Farhad al-Saud, ostensibly on behalf of Saudi Arabia’s crown prince, Mohammed bin Salman.
…But, why? What is it about this painting that justifies such a high price tag?
The argument for rarity is a good one. Less than 20 paintings believed to be by da Vinci exist, and most are housed in museums… A Leonardo coming up at auction is virtually unprecedented.
Of course, there’s also the argument for the painting itself: a masterfully executed, full face portrait of Christ as the ‘salvator mundi’ or “Savior of the World.”
To get a better idea of what’s actually happening here, let’s take a closer look.
In this painting, Christ is dressed in an exquisitely draped blue robe. His right hand is raised in benediction, while his left supports a crystalline globe — a representation of the heavenly sphere.
As a common iconographic subject, the Salvator Mundi has been handled by many artists over the years — from Carlo Crivelli’s Christ Blessing to the central verso panel of Earthly Vanity and Divine Salvation by Hans Memling to Titian’s Salvator Mundi
…But the Leonardo has a quiet power all its own
Here, the image almost stops you in your tracks — you cannot really help but look. Unlike the Memling, da Vinci’s Christ is unadorned, shown against a black, empty background
…And, unlike most other salvator mundis, there is no nimbus (or halo) encircling Christ’s head, marking him as otherworldly. Instead, his pallor, and the way he’s lit up (as if from the inside), speaks for itself — revealing his divinity, his true identity as the “light of the world.” In this painting, Christ seems to emanate from the canvas — a manifest something out of nothing — as his right hand (the blessing hand) gently reaches toward us, in sharper focus, in a kindly act of intercession.
Art Historian Martin Kemp has called the Salvator Mundi the “spiritual counterpart of the Mona Lisa”...
[Continued in video]
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Works Cited:
Cole, Alison and Georgina Adam. “The real reason why the Salvator Mundi didn’t make it into the Louvre’s Leonardo show.” The Art Newspaper. 7 April 2021. [ Ссылка ].
Hartt, Frederick, and David G. Wilkins. History of Italian Renaissance Art: Painting, Sculpture, Architecture. Pearson/Prentice Hall, 2011.
Hosack, Karen, et al. Great Paintings. Dorling Kindersley Limited, 2018.
Jacobs, Sarah. “The 16 most expensive paintings ever sold.” Business Insider. 15 May 2019. [ Ссылка ]- million-nude-modigliani-2018-5?r=US&IR=T
Kirkpatrick, David. “Mystery Buyer of $450 Million ‘Salvator Mundi’ Was a Saudi Prince.” The New York Times. 6 December 2017. [ Ссылка ] middleeast/salvator-mundi-da-vinci-saudi-prince-bader.html
“Rediscovering Leonardo’s Salvator Mundi.” YouTube, uploaded by Oxford Academic (Oxford University Press), 14 October 2019, youtube.com/watch?v=VDozBKAFTH0
“Salvator Mundi (Leonardo).” Wikipedia. en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Salvator_Mundi_(Leonardo).
“Salvator Mundi — The rediscovery of a masterpiece: Chronology, conservation, and authentication.” Christie’s. [ Ссылка ]- timeline-8644-3.aspx
The Bible: Authorized King James Version. Edited by Robert Carroll and Stephen Prickett, Oxford UP, 2008.
“Timeline: How ‘Salvator Mundi’ Went From £45 to $450 Million in 59 Years.” ArtNet News. 15 November 2017. [ Ссылка ]- 450-million-59-years-1150661.
