Leonardo Da Vinci's 'Male Mona Lisa' Sold for $450 Million

 

Last November 15, after 19 minutes of bidding at Christie's in New York City, a record was broken when a painting by Leonardo da Vinci, called Salvator Mundi, sold for $450 million.

It is believed that da Vinci created fewer than 30 works in his lifetime, and Christie's called this painting "the last da Vinci".

The painting is of Jesus with long golden brown hair, wearing blue robes and raising his right hand in blessing. In his other hand, Jesus holds a clear sphere of glass or crystal.

The amount paid for the Salvator Mundi, $450,312,500 to be exact, is the highest price ever paid for an artwork. The previous record price for Peter Paul Rubens' 'Massacre of the Innocents' was $76.7 million.

The identity of Leonardo's buyer has not been disclosed, but the media had their own guesses - from Amazon owner Jeff Bezos to Chinese billionaire Liu Yiqian, who paid $170 million for Modigliani for his new museum in Shanghai.

However, there is still some doubt in the art world regarding the painting. For a long time, it was accepted not as a painting by Leonardo da Vinci but by someone in his workshop. In fact, this artwork sold for just $10,000 at an estate sale last 2005. It was then believed to be a copy of the lost Leonardo.

The Salvator Mundi was extensively restored in New York City by conservator Diane Dwyer Modestini. At a certain point respected authenticators, aware of what lay beneath, announced that the painting was actually painted by the Old Master himself – a long-lost da Vinci masterpiece.

The painting – which was last bought by Russian billionaire Dmitry Rybolovlev for $127 million – was put up for auction with an estimated price of $100 million. The auction house promoted it as "the greatest and most unexpected artistic rediscovery of the 21st century."

The consensus history of Salvator Mundi is that it was painted around 1500, at which time Leonardo's patron was King Louis XII of France.

This painting was of Charles I of England in the 17th century but then disappeared until the 20th century. In 1958, when it was auctioned by Sotheby's in London, it was actually first attributed to Boltraffio, who worked in Leonardo's studio.

Charles Hope of the Warburg Institute, University of London, who was one of the skeptics, wrote in the New York Review of Books, "Even allowing for its extremely poor state of preservation, it is a surprisingly unimpressive work and It is hard to believe that Leonardo himself was responsible for anything so dull."

In The New York Times, critic Jason Fargo wrote that in London, he saw "a skillful but not particularly distinguished religious picture from 16th-century Lombardy, which has undergone a series of restorations."

Skeptics say that where the Mona Lisa's expression has a depth of mystery that astonishes any observer, the eyes of Jesus in the Salvator Mundi are empty.

However, headlines have swirled that the painting is the "male Mona Lisa."

However, other art experts are certain that the painting came from the brush of Leonardo da Vinci alone. One said that "it was given extraordinary approval by Leonardo.