‘Salvator Mundi’ by Leonardo da Vinci
– Selling price: $450.3 million
– Inflation-adjusted price: $507.4 million
– Painted in: 1490-1519
– Sold in: 2017
According to the “Salvator Mundi” provenance, the emotive oil on canvas was commissioned by King Louis XII of France and his wife, Anne of Brittany, following the conquest of Milan and Genoa sometime after 1500. From there, the story of this “male Mona Lisa” painting gets murky.
Da Vinci’s masterpiece depicts a half-length figure of Christ as the savior of the world, facing the viewer and holding a crystal orb in his left hand as he raises his right in benediction. “Salvator Mundi” was traced around 1900, when it was positioned as a work of a lesser hand, Bernardino Luini.
The painting was part of an estate sale in 2005 in New Orleans, where dealer and art historian Dr. Robert Simon and his associate Alexander Parish purchased it for just $1,175. Conservator Dianne Dwyer Modestini restored the piece—some say excessively—from 2005 to 2017.
In 2013, art dealer Yves Bouvier purchased the painting for $83 million and resold the piece to Russian oligarch Dmitry Rybolovlev for $127.5 million in less than 48 hours. Rybolovlev then put it up for sale at Christie’s––and sold it to an anonymous buyer.
Some speculate its secretive buyer could be the crown prince of Saudi Arabia, Mohammed bin Salman, who may have the painting sequestered on a superyacht, away from public view. Two documentaries, “The Lost Leonardo” and ” The Saviour for Sale,” examine the painting’s strange story.
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