Leonardo da Vinci Painting Sells for $450.3 Million, Shattering Auction Highs And It Has Gone Missing Why ???
A Leonardo Da Vinci painting that sold
for a record $450 million at auction is heading to the new Louvre in Abu
Dhabi, according to the museum. The
painting, dubbed Salvator Mundi or Savior of the World, depicts Jesus
Christ. It was sold for $450.3 at auction, and the enormous price tag
makes it the highest auction price for any piece of art. Despite massive interest in the auction, mystery still surrounds who actually purchased the painting.
The New York Times reports
that it was purchased by Bader bin Abdullah bin Mohammed bin Farhan
al-Sau, a Saudi prince. USA TODAY has reached out to Christie's for
comment; meanwhile,
The Today Show, citing reports that investment firms had purchased the painting in hopes of putting on display, said the auction house would not confirm whether the museum purchased the painting or someone else.
The
artwork was commissioned by Louis XII of France, but later disappeared.
It re-emerged in the 1950s, but was written off as a copy and sold
for £45 or $60, according to Today Show. It was later purchased by art dealers,
restored and eventually sold to Russian businessman Dmitry
Rybolovlev for $127.5 million.
The Louvre Abu Dhabi tweeted that the painting would be featured in the museum.Leonardo da Vinci Painting Sells for $450.3 Million, Shattering Auction Highs
The last moments of the historic bidding war for Leonardo da Vinci’s “Salvator Mundi.”Published On CreditCreditImage by Michelle V. Agins/The New York Times After 19 minutes of dueling, with four
bidders on the telephone and one in the room, Leonardo da Vinci’s
“Salvator Mundi” sold on Wednesday night for $450.3 million with fees,
shattering the high for any work of art sold at auction. It far
surpassed Picasso’s “Women of Algiers,” which fetched $179.4 million at
Christie’s in May 2015. The buyer was not immediately disclosed.
There
were gasps throughout the sale, as the bids climbed by tens of millions
up to $225 million, by fives up to $260 million, and then by twos. As
the bidding slowed, and a buyer pondered the next multi-million-dollar
increment, Jussi Pylkkanen, the auctioneer, said, “It’s an historic
moment; we’ll wait.” Toward the end,
Alex Rotter, Christie’s co-chairman of postwar and contemporary art, who
represented a buyer on the phone, made two big jumps to shake off one
last rival bid from Francois de Poortere, Christie’s head of old master
paintings.
That $450 Million Leonardo? It’s No Mona Lisa.
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You
can’t put a price on beauty; you can put a price on a name. When the
National Gallery in London exhibited a painting of Christ in 2011 as a
heretofore lost work by Leonardo da Vinci, the surprise in art
historical circles was exceeded only by the salivating of dealers and
auctioneers.
The painting, “Salvator Mundi,” is the only Leonardo in private hands, and was brought to market by the family trust of Dmitry E. Rybolovlev,
the Russian billionaire entangled in an epic multinational lawsuit with
his former dealer, Yves Bouvier. On Wednesday night, at Christie’s
postwar and contemporary sale (in which it was incongruously included to
reach bidders beyond Renaissance connoisseurs), the Leonardo sold for a
shocking $450.3 million, the highest price ever paid for a work of art
at auction. Worth it? Well, what are you buying: the painting or the
brand?
The
painting, when purchased at an estate sale in 2005 for less than
$10,000, was initially considered a copy of a lost Leonardo, completed
around 1500 and once in the collection of Charles I of England. Over
time, its wood surface became cracked and chafed, and it had been
crudely overpainted, as an image in the sale catalog shows. Cleaned by
the conservator Dianne Dwyer Modestini,
the painting now appears in some limbo state between its original form
and an exacting, though partially imagined, rehabilitation.
A detail of the Leonardo da Vinci Painting. CreditBenjamin Norman for The New York Times.
You can’t put a
price on beauty; you can put a price on a name. When the National
Gallery in London exhibited a painting of Christ in 2011 as a heretofore
lost work by Leonardo da Vinci, the surprise in art historical circles
was exceeded only by the salivating of dealers and auctioneers.
The painting, “Salvator Mundi,” is the only Leonardo in private hands, and was brought to market by the family trust of Dmitry E. Rybolovlev,
the Russian billionaire entangled in an epic multinational lawsuit with
his former dealer, Yves Bouvier. On Wednesday night, at Christie’s
postwar and contemporary sale (in which it was incongruously included to
reach bidders beyond Renaissance connoisseurs), the Leonardo sold for a
shocking $450.3 million, the highest price ever paid for a work of art
at auction. Worth it? Well, what are you buying: the painting or the
brand?
The painting, when purchased at an estate sale in 2005 for less than
$10,000, was initially considered a copy of a lost Leonardo, completed
around 1500 and once in the collection of Charles I of England. Over
time, its wood surface became cracked and chafed, and it had been
crudely overpainted, as an image in the sale catalog shows. Cleaned by
the conservator Dianne Dwyer Modestini,
the painting now appears in some limbo state between its original form
and an exacting, though partially imagined, rehabilitation.
Authentication is a serious but
subjective business. I’m not the man to affirm or reject its
attribution; it is accepted as a Leonardo by many serious scholars,
though not all. I can say, however, what I felt I was looking at when I
took my place among the crowds who’d queued an hour or more to behold
and endlessly photograph “Salvator Mundi”: a proficient but not
especially distinguished religious picture from turn-of-the-16th-century
Lombardy, put through a wringer of restorations.
Its
most engaging passages are in the embroidered blue gown that Christ
wears. The robe’s folds are supple and sinuous, and the trim, zigzagged
with an elaborate and unbroken knotting pattern, has a mathematical
intricacy that gives this Christian painting a surprising Islamic touch.
(Technical analysis confirms that Leonardo used pure lapis lazuli for
the robe, rather than cheaper azurite.)
The orb that
Christ holds in his left hand, symbolizing his dominion over all
creation, is not as showy as Dan Brown devotees might like, but its
watery coloring, glossy edges and dimpled bottom do the trick well
enough. His curly hair, especially the lower tresses framing Christ’s
neckline, has a certain corkscrew adeptness, though it’s not as
proficient as the similarly kinky locks of Leonardo’s recently restored “St. John the Baptist,” at the Louvre in Paris, or Botticelli’s slightly earlier “Portrait of a Lady,” at the Städel in Frankfurt.
Yet
there’s a meekness and monotony to “Salvator Mundi” that can’t be
redeemed by these marginally engaging details. The savior of the world
appears in this painting as a soft, spumy cipher. His eyes are blank.
His chin, flecked with stubble, recedes into shadow. The raised right
hand is stiffer and less sensate than John the Baptist’s, and overlit
relative to his shaded cheeks and mouth.
And unlike other Leonardo portraits — “St. John the Baptist” and the Mona Lisa, or the alluring “Lady With an Ermine,” or “La Belle Ferronnière,”
recently shipped from the Louvre to Abu Dhabi — here the subject
appears head-on, flattened into the picture frame like a medieval icon
painting. Other sophisticated paintings from around 1500, such as Albrecht Dürer’s Christifying self-portrait
in Munich’s Alte Pinakothek, made use of such frontal orientation. But
where Dürer’s self-portrait as Christ radiates authority, “Salvator
Mundi” retires into itself. This Jesus, far from saving the world, might
struggle to save himself a seat on a crosstown bus.
Of
course, the painting’s place within the history of northern Italian art
was not at hand in the sale room on Wednesday, nor did it trouble the
thousands of visitors who saw it in New York, London or Hong Kong.
Displayed in a darkened gallery under spotlights, framed by a pair of
security guards wearing funereal black, the Leonardo was presented
almost as a holy relic — and Christie’s marketing department rolled out
the superlatives alongside, sending the painting on a world tour and
hyping it with the rather sacrilegious nickname of “the male Mona Lisa.”
The
fantasy of individual genius was on offer, a fantasy more seductive and
enduring than any in Western art. It can infuse even the driest of
pictures with the illusion of greatness, and price tags this bloated,
too, can imbue workaday art with new weight. But reputations rise and
fall, attributions are assigned and reconsidered, and money — well,
money can’t buy you everything. When its new owner gazes at “Salvator
Mundi” over the mantelpiece (or, more likely, visits it in a
climate-controlled, tax-free storage facility) he or she may have cause
to reflect on the Gospel of Luke.
“Blessed
are ye that hunger now: for ye shall be filled,” intones the man in the
$450 million picture. “But woe unto you that are rich! for ye have
received your consolation.”
After
19 minutes of dueling, with four bidders on the telephone and one in
the room, Leonardo da Vinci’s “Salvator Mundi” sold on Wednesday night
for $450.3 million with fees, shattering the high for any work of art
sold at auction. It far surpassed Picasso’s “Women of Algiers,” which
fetched $179.4 million at Christie’s in May 2015. The buyer was not
immediately disclosed.
There were
gasps throughout the sale, as the bids climbed by tens of millions up to
$225 million, by fives up to $260 million, and then by twos. As the
bidding slowed, and a buyer pondered the next multi-million-dollar
increment, Jussi Pylkkanen, the auctioneer, said, “It’s an historic
moment; we’ll wait.”
Toward the end,
Alex Rotter, Christie’s co-chairman of postwar and contemporary art, who
represented a buyer on the phone, made two big jumps to shake off one
last rival bid from Francois de Poortere, Christie’s head of old master
paintings.
The price is all the more remarkable at a time when the old masters market is contracting, because of limited supply and collectors’ penchant for contemporary art.
And to critics,
the astronomical sale attests to something else — the degree to which
salesmanship has come to drive and dominate the conversation about art
and its value. Some art experts pointed to the painting’s damaged
condition and its questionable authenticity.
“This
was a thumping epic triumph of branding and desire over connoisseurship
and reality,” said Todd Levin, a New York art adviser.
Christie’s
marketing campaign was perhaps unprecedented in the art world; it was
the first time the auction house went so far as to enlist an outside
agency to advertise the work. Christie’s also released a video
that included top executives pitching the painting to Hong Kong clients
as “the holy grail of our business” and likening it to “the discovery
of a new planet.” Christie’s called the work “the Last da Vinci,” the
only known painting by the Renaissance master still in a private
collection (some 15 others are in museums).
“It’s
been a brilliant marketing campaign,” said Alan Hobart, director of the
Pyms Gallery in London, who has acquired museum-quality artworks across
a range of historical periods for the British businessman and collector
Graham Kirkham. “This is going to be the future.”
There was a
palpable air of anticipation at Christie’s Rockefeller Center
headquarters as the art market’s major players filed into the sales
room. The capacity crowd included top dealers like Larry Gagosian, David
Zwirner and Marc Payot of Hauser & Wirth. Major collectors had
traveled here for the sale, among them Eli Broad and Michael Ovitz from
Los Angeles; Martin Margulies from Miami; and Stefan Edlis from Chicago.
Christie’s had produced special red paddles for those bidding on the
Leonardo, and many of its specialists taking bids on the phone wore
elegant black.
Earlier, 27,000 people
had lined up at pre-auction viewings in Hong Kong, London, San
Francisco and New York to glimpse the painting of Christ as “Savior of
the World.” Members of the public — indeed, even many cognoscenti —
cared little if at all whether the painting might have been executed in
part by studio assistants; whether Leonardo had actually made the work
himself; or how much of the canvas had been repainted and restored. They
just wanted to see a masterwork that dates from about 1500 and was
rediscovered in 2005.
“There is
extraordinary consensus it is by Leonardo,” said Nicholas Hall, the
former co-chairman of old master paintings at Christie’s, who now runs
his own Manhattan gallery. “This is the most important old master
painting to have been sold at auction in my lifetime.”
That
is the kind of name-brand appeal that Christie’s was presumably banking
on by placing the painting in its high-profile contemporary art sale,
rather than in its less sexy annual old master auction, where it
technically belongs. To some extent, the auction house succeeded with
the painting even before the sale, having secured a guaranteed $100
million bid from an unidentified third party. It is the 12th artwork to
break the $100 million mark at auction, and a new high for any old
master at auction, surpassing Rubens’s “Massacre of the Innocents,”
which sold for $76.7 million in 2002 (or more than $105 million, adjusted for inflation).
But
many art experts argue that Christie’s used marketing window dressing
to mask the baggage that comes with the Leonardo, from its compromised
condition to its complicated buying history and said that the auction
house put the artwork in a contemporary sale to circumvent the scrutiny
of old masters experts, many of whom have questioned the painting’s
authenticity and condition.
“The
composition doesn’t come from Leonardo,” said Jacques Franck, a
Paris-based art historian and Leonardo specialist. “He preferred twisted
movement. It’s a good studio work with a little Leonardo at best, and
it’s very damaged.”
“It’s
been called ‘the male Mona Lisa,’” he said, “but it doesn’t look like
it at all.” Mr. Franck said he has examined the Mona Lisa out of its
frame five times.
Luke Syson, curator
of the 2011 National Gallery exhibition in London that featured the
painting, said in his catalog essay that “the picture has suffered.”
While both hands are well preserved, he said, the painting was
“aggressively over cleaned,” resulting in abrasion of the whole surface,
“especially in the face and hair of Christ.”
Christie’s
maintains that it was upfront about the much-restored, damaged
condition of the oil-on-panel, which shows Christ with his right hand
raised in blessing and his left holding a crystal orb.
But
Christie’s was also slow to release an official condition report and
its authenticity warranty on the Leonardo runs out in five years, as it
does on all lots bought at its auctions, according to the small print in
the back of its sale catalog.
The auction house has also played down the painting’s volatile sales history.
The artwork has been the subject of legal disputes and amassed a price history that ranges from less than $10,000 in 2005, when it was spotted at an estate auction, to $200 million when
it was first offered for sale by a consortium of three dealers in 2012.
But no institution besides the Dallas Museum of Art, which in 2012 made
an undisclosed offer on the painting, showed public interest in buying
it. Finally, in 2013, Sotheby’s sold it privately for $80 million to
Yves Bouvier, a Swiss art dealer and businessman. Soon afterward, he
sold it for $127.5 million, to the family trust of the Russian
billionaire collector Dmitry E. Rybolovlev. Mr. Rybolovlev’s family trust was the seller on Wednesday night.
There
was speculation that Liu Yiqian, a Chinese billionaire and co-founder
with his wife of the Long Museum in Shanghai, may have been among the
bidders. In recent years, the former taxi-driver-turned-power collector
has become known for his splashy, record-breaking art purchases,
including an Amedeo Modigliani nude painting for $170.4 million at a
Christie’s auction in 2015. But in a message sent to a reporter via
WeChat, a Chinese messaging app, Mr. Liu said he was not among the
bidders for the Leonardo.
On Thursday
morning, soon after the final sale was announced, Mr. Liu posted a
message on his WeChat social media feed. “Da Vinci’s Savior sold for 400
million USD, congratulations to the buyer,” he wrote. “Feeling kind of
defeated right now.”
Correction: Was Before
An
earlier version of this article misstated the given name of Christie’s
head of old master paintings. He is Francois de Poortere, not Francis.
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