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Da Vinci painting of Jesus sets record auction price
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A 500-year-old painting believed to be by Leonardo da Vinci sold for US$450.3 million in New York on Wednesday, blazing a new world record for the most expensive work of art sold at auction, Christie’s said.
“Salvator Mundi” or “Savior of the World,” which depicts Jesus Christ, more than doubled the previous record of US$179.4 million paid for Pablo Picasso’s “The Women of Algiers (Version O)” in New York in 2015.
Lost for years only to resurface at a regional auction in 2005, “Salvator Mundi” is one of fewer than 20 Da Vinci paintings generally accepted as being from the Renaissance master’s own hand, said auction house Christie’s.
All the other paintings are held in museum or institutional collections.
The record price of US$450.3 million was all the more extraordinary given that the painting fetched only 45 British pounds in 1958. At that time, it was believed to have been a copy, before disappearing for years.
Dated to around 1500, “Salvator Mundi” sold after 19 minutes of frenzied bidding — an incongruous Old Master in Christie’s evening postwar and contemporary sale, which draws the biggest spenders in the world of international billionaire art collectors.
Christie’s declined to identify the buyer, other than to confirm that bids came from “every part of the world.”
The price could call into question a legal suit lodged by its Russian seller, who accused a Swiss art dealer in Monaco of allegedly overcharging him when he bought the work for US$127.5 million in 2013.
Even discounting any commission, the sale represents a tidy profit for Dmitry Rybolovlev, the boss of soccer club AS Monaco, who bought the painting in 2013.
Rybolovlev has accused art dealer Yves Bouvier of cheating him out of hundreds of million dollars by overcharging him on a series of deals, including on the Da Vinci, and pocketing the difference.
Bouvier bought the work at Sotheby’s for US$80 million in 2013. He resold it within days to Rybolovlev for US$127.5 million.
An aide to Rybolovlev, Sergey Chernitsyn, praised the “professionalism and expertise of Christie’s” and said the sale “restores part of the value” of the billionaire’s art collection.
But the legal case would continue, he said.
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