I’ve heard of rampant inflation, but this is insane. How can a painting explode in value from $1175 in 2005 to $450 million in the space of 12 years? It’s a story of greed and power that has captivated many in the art world including critic Ben Lewis, who wrote a book on the subject called “The Last Leonardo - The Secret Lives of the World’s Most Expensive Painting”. It’s basically a biography of a painting. A feature length documentary has also been produced on the subject.
The painting in question is ‘Salvator Mundi’, thought to have been the work of Leonardo da Vinci. Or is it? Concerns over the authenticity of the painting revolve around a number of areas - including the state it was in after centuries of overpainting was removed during a recent restoration. It’s thought that such is the extent of the restoration that little of it now bears the hand of the master.
Salvator Mundi, c.1500, Oil on board, 65.6 cm x 45.4 cm
Another concern about the painting’s authenticity relates to its provenance. In his book, Lewis writes of the limitations that investigations into the provenance of paintings produced prior to the 19th Century can have. “The result is that provenance histories for works of art from before the 19th century are frequently assembled from a range of probabilities, which reinforce each other. Such structures can be precarious, wobbling between the likely and the hypothetical. The evidence is often circumstantial…” He writes of the tendency to meld fact with fantasy.
Like many artists of his day (and even some today), Leonardo had a studio where he employed assistants and it’s not clear if the Salvator Mundi is an ‘autographed Leonardo’ - that is; designed and painted by him, or a ‘Leonardo plus workshop’ where an assistant painted it, perhaps under the guidance of the master. The problem is that there is a huge price differential between the two possibilities. And to complicate matters further, there is thought to be at least 20 copies of the painting floating around the world.
Leonardo was a celebrity by the time the Salvator Mundi was produced, and yet there is almost no documentation from the time indicating that he painted it. Which is unlike almost anything else he produced, no hype, no mention of it in his notebooks. According to Lewis, the greatest Leonardo experts in the world are divided over this painting which makes it such a fascinating topic.
After the overpainting had been removed by Dianne Modestini
It’s beyond the scope of this blog to trace the history of this painting, murky as it is, but in 1908 it appears in a photograph at the Cook Collection in poor condition, heavily overpainted. The painting remains in the collection until 1958 when the Cook family hold an auction and whilst every major art dealer in Europe is in attendance, no one buys the Salvator Mundi. That is, until an American couple who were travelling through the UK purchase it for 45 pounds before returning to the US on a cargo ship.
The painting remains in their household in New Orleans for nearly 50 years, during which time the couple die and a relative decides to sell their collection of paintings. A representative of Christies visits the home and ignores the painting which is eventually sold at a “forth division auction house” in 2005 to two New Orleans art dealers, Alex Parish and Robert Simon, for $1175. They later claimed they spent $10,000 because they wanted to give the painting more credibility.
And here the story becomes really intriguing. Although the painting was in poor condition, it was the depiction of Christ’s hand that convinced them that it was worth restoring. So they took the painting to one of America’s foremost restorers Dianne Modestini to weave her magic. After removing all the overpainting the picture appeared as above. A large crack that leads down to a knot appears in the painting and this is another argument used by those who question the painting’s authenticity. Although Leonardo painted on board, he was thought to be a perfectionist and would never paint on a board containing a knot, due to the possibility that it would make the board unstable. But during the restoration process, which took roughly six years, Modestini formed the view that it was a genuine Leonardo.
As Lewis points out, the problem with restorations is that there are no guidelines or limits on how far a restorer can go to repair a work of art. Therefore auction houses such as Christies are not required to warrant the condition of an artwork, or its restoration. All they have to do is warrant that the painting is by, say, Leonardo.
The Salvator Mundi first came to the public’s attention in 2011 when it was included in a major Leonardo exhibition held at the National Gallery in London, having been touted as a genuine Leonardo. Afterwards, Simon and Parish decide it’s time to sell.
Enter the Swiss art dealer Yves Bouvier. For a decade, Bouvier had acted as an agent for the Russian oligarch Dmitry Rybolovlev, selling him $2 billion dollars worth of art. What Rybolovlev didn’t realise was that these purchases included a $1 billion dollar markup. Bouvier’s negotiations with Sothebys for the purchase of Salvator Mundi on behalf of Rybolovlev in 2013 was a sham. He purchased the painting for himself for $83 million and sold it the next day to Rybolovlev for $127.5 million. He claims to have warned Rybolovlev not to buy the painting as he didn’t consider it a sound investment, but Rybolovlev insisted he wanted the painting.
Bouvier developed the concept of the ‘freeport’, which are armoured warehouses located usually within the perimeter of an airport or shipping terminal where people can store valuable items free from import duties. These items can be bought and sold through the freeport system without any taxes being paid because the items are considered to be in transit. It’s thought that billions of dollars of art are stored in these freeports as financial assets only.
In 2014 Rybolovlev saw an article in the New York Times which stated the true price that was paid for the Salvator Mundi. Feeling that he’d been taken advantage by Bouvier, Rybolovlev directs Bouvier to sell all his paintings by Christmas 2014, or face the consequences. This directive was given on 22nd November. As a result of the actions taken against him, Bouvier claims to have lost everything.
And this brings us to the auction of Rybolovlev’s collection (which include works by Gauguin, Rothko, Magritte, Picasso) at Christies in 2017 and that record $450 million dollar sale of the Salvator Mundi, considered to be the black sheep in the collection. Christies embarked on an outrageous advertising campaign to generate the necessary hype surrounding the painting. They promoted it as the male Mona Lisa and produced a video which contains very little footage of the painting. Instead we see people seemingly gobsmacked whilst looking at it - the cast includes Leonardo DiCaprio.
Crown Prince Mohammad bin Salman & his yacht. (The Times)
These art auctions are pure theatre, and once the bidding on the Salvator Mundi reached $180 million, it had exceeded the previous record price for an artwork, anywhere. The buyer turned out to be the ruler of Saudi Arabia, Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman. And now, the whereabouts of the painting is unknown. It was a no-show at a major exhibition of Leonardo’s work that was held at the Louvre to commemorate the 500th anniversary of his death in 1519. There was to have been an official unveiling of the painting in Abu Dhabi in 2018, but it was canceled 2 weeks prior. It’s thought that the painting is stored on the Prince’s private super yacht.
According to one critic, after drugs and prostitution, the art market is the most unregulated market in the world; a totally opaque world in which no one knows the true value of a work, who’s buying it and who’s selling it.
References;
‘The Last Leonardo - With Ben Lewis’, the Art Law Podcast, 2019
‘The Lost Leonardo’, 2021 documentary directed by Andreas Koefoed