A masterpiece bidding war over an exceptional painting that depicts Jesus Christ with his right hand raised was a huge moment for the art world. Leonardo da Vinci’s ‘Salvator Mundi’ (Italian for ‘Saviour of the World’) was created circa 1500, but was sold for the hefty sum of £45million in November 2017 at a New York auction.
The sale set a new record for being the most pricey masterpiece ever sold at auction, an excitable bidding war played out for nearly 20 minutes at Christie’s Rockefeller Center headquarters – and was described as a ‘landmark moment in the art world’ by ARTnews. Previously, the same painting once sold for just $1,175 in 2005, but it was then ‘attributed to a follower’ of Leonardo reports ARTnews, however, it then went on to be ‘restored and re-attributed to the master himself’. The High Renaissance era artist and engineer Leonardo da Vinci is also famous for his paintings of the Mona Lisa (c. 1503) and the Last Supper (c. 1495–98).
The 45m sale broke records in the art world and the auction house, the buyer was Saudi Arabian Crown Prince Mohammed Bin Salman (in November 2017).
The Salvator Mundi artwork is one of few remaining paintings by the Renaissance artist Leonardo da Vinci – and the Crown Prince is rumoured to have plans to display it in Saudi Arabia when a Louvre Museum in Riyadh opens, showcasing art worth millions.
The world-famous ‘Salvator Mundi’ will take pride of place in the museum’s collection, but the masterpiece has been stored in a Geneva vault for the past eight years since the auction, reports suggest.
Jesus Christ is depicted in blue High Renaissance clothing in the Salvator Mundi painting, while making a blessing with his right hand – and in Islam, the right hand is ‘more noble’ and therefore honoured by Muslims.
The ‘Salvator Mundi’ Jesus Christ holds a crystal orb in his left hand, said to represent the ‘celestial sphere’ of the heavens – and the ‘watery hair’ of Jesus in the famous work was one of the clues that led to the painting being correctly attributed to Leonardo himself.
Professor Martin Kemp FBA explained the scrutiny of the most expensive painting in the world, including the watery-like hair, on The British Academy website.
He wrote: “Leonardo was a great studier of why things looked like they did, and he had a theory about ‘the physics of hair’, he compared it with water.
“Leonardo knows the physics of hair. If we look at some of the copies (not Leonardo’s works), they don’t really show an understanding of how hair curls, how it works.
“Leonardo being Leonardo has to classify the spirals: a convex one, a flat one, a concave one, or muddled up ones. This is very typical of Leonardo’s work. Nobody else did that, they just didn’t think it was worth that kind of level of investment.”