Da Vinci’s ‘Salvator Mundi’—Most Expensive Painting In The World—Gets Downgraded
Image via Wikimedia Commons (public domain)
In 2017, Saudi Arabia’s Culture Minister, Prince Badr bin Abdullah, bought Leonardo da Vinci’s Salvator Mundi, for US$450 million, breaking the record for most expensive painting in the world. It had been sold at Christie’s as an authenticated work, though recently, the painting was spotted to have been downgraded by the Prado Museum.
In the catalog of the museum’s Leonardo and The Copy of The Mona Lisa exhibition, the painting is recorded under the category of “attributed works, workshop, or authorized and supervised by Leonardo,” instead of under “by Leonardo” for works ascertained to be created by the artist himself.
According to The Art Newspaper, this is one of the hardest-hitting aspersions cast by a leading museum, which now brings the question of the work’s authenticity back into the spotlight, as some specialists argue the painting wasn’t done by Da Vinci.
Prado curator Ana Gonzáles Mozo said that “some specialists consider there was a now lost prototype [of Leonardo’s Salvator Mundi], while others think the much debated Cook version (sold to the Saudi Minister) is the original,” though she feels that neither are the famed artist’s original prototype.
Mozo suggested that another copy of the artwork, a Ganay version dating back to the 1500s, could be the closest to the original. The painting had been sold at Sotherby’s back in 1999, and remains in private hands till this day.
Vincent Delieuvin, curator of the Musée du Louvre’s Da Vinci exhibition in 2019, remarked that the US$450 million Salvator Mundi had “details of surprisingly poor quality,” though he did not reveal a direct verdict as to the painting’s authenticity.
In an online seminar last month, Delieuvin said that while the work was “an interesting painting, it is not the most personal composition of Leonardo.”
While experts continue to bicker over the work’s authenticity, it appears that the actual artist behind the world’s most expensive painting still remains a mystery lost to time.
[via The Art Newspaper, cover image via Wikimedia Commons]
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