Christies sells long-lost Salvator Mundi, artwork billed as biggest discovery of the 21st century, for $400m plus auction house premium. a 2011 exhibition at the National Gallery in London, Art Bust: Scandalous Stories of the Art World, Kim Kardashian was photographed next to it. Bin Salman himself visited President Emmanuel Macron in Paris while the loan was dangling in the balance. Simon has said that it took a couple of years after they bought the painting to become convinced himself that he was dealing with an original work by Leonardo. PETERSON-WITHORN: So I thought this was super fascinating that you could actually consider a work of art as something that could not only hold value and appreciate in value, but could also be a business, generating income for its owner over time. She is a captivating, elegant presence on screen, with a whispery voice and wide eyes behind signature black or red-framed glasses. 1 (Royal Red and Blue)", "Claude Monet (18401926), Odalisque couche aux magnolias", "Basquiat Tops Phillips Contemporary Sale at $85 Million", "Titian masterpiece Diana and Callisto saved for nation", "No. "As long as this painting is hidden from the world and the future and fate of this painting is unknown, it's going to be clouded in a realm of mystery and the world will be ready to read anything new. In 1472 Leonardo was accepted into the painters guild of Florence, but he remained in his teachers workshop for five more years, after which time he worked independently in Florence until 1481. But he went even beyond that. And my enjoyment in owning these wonderful works of art. SIMON: He spent much more time as a writer, a scientist, a draftsman than he did as a painter. The quality of the painting itself divides people. In the end, the picture was placed in Christies postwar and contemporary evening sale, wedged between lots of work by Cy Twombly, John Currin, Keith Haring and Jean-Michel Basquiat. The saleroom erupted in cheers and applause. JoinBBC Culture Film and TV Clubon Facebook, a community for cinephiles all over the world. Fifty-fivefive-point-five million dollars to start it. It came close. According to a CNBC report, the median net worth of someone who is 66 years old, which is Gates' age is about $266,000. TINDERA: Robert Simon is perhaps best known in the art world for having a very close connection to a painting that is synonymous with money, power and controversy: the Salvator Mundi. For those who don't know it, it's a painting of Christ that sold at a Christie's auction in 2017 for $450 million, which is by far the most expensive work of art that's ever sold at auction. That these tales can work in a podcast, where no one can even see the work being described, suggests how much the allure of today's art-crime stories is in the skulduggery and mystery, not aesthetics. Salvator Mundi, the long-lost Leonardo da Vinci painting of Jesus Christ commissioned by King Louis XII of France more than 500 years ago, has sold at Christies in New York for $450.3m, including auction house premium, shattering the world record for any work of art sold at auction. - The world's greatest art detective, - The men who Leonardo da Vinci loved, - The detail that unlocks the Mona Lisa. Leonardos parents were unmarried at the time of his birth. Omissions? How many Leonardo da Vinci paintings are there? One of the most famous paintings in the world, the Last Supper was commissioned by Ludovico Sforza, duke of Milan and Leonardo's patron during his first stay in that city, for the Dominican monastery of Santa Maria delle Grazie. In fact, it was also noted in the Codexs 1994 auction catalogue written by late da Vinci scholar Carlo Pedretti, that the Mona Lisa is, "indeed a visual synthesis of Leonardo's scientific knowledge as summed up in the Codex.". Hi, Chase. [5], The list is incomplete with respect to sales between private parties, as these are not always reported and, even if they are, details like the purchase price may remain secret. The image of Christ as The Saviour of the World was billed as The Last da Vinci at Christie's 2017 auction, where it sold for a record $450 million (342 million) to a proxy for bin Salman (yes, that bin Salman, whom the CIA found responsible for ordering the murder of the journalist Jamal Khashoggi). The writings in his notebooks suggest that he may have been a vegetarian, and there is also some speculation that he may have been gay. That estimate sort of got you thinking in another direction, though, right Chase? Five hundred years later, the Codex is in such good condition, in part because it hasn't changed hands many times. TINDERA: That's right. TINDERA: Right. It's not exactly known why he did that. Leonardo da Vinci was described as having a gracious but reserved personality and an elegant bearing. Saviour for Sale opens in the US on 17 September. The paintings transferred to the dealers include a late, Alan Bond could not pay off the painting, and. CBS CLIP, CONNIE CHUNG: You know, you may be the richest man in America, or at least the second-richest man in America. But many experts think she did a drastic over-restoration. TINDERA: Slicing up and selling off a beautiful manuscript or book is not without precedent, though, Robert explained to us. So if Saudi Arabia decides that culture is going to be the way it opens up and the Salvator Mundi is going to be a key player in that strategy and the Louvre is offering to exhibit it, then all those things are tied up together.". TINDERA: That's right. Bouviers mark-up led to Rybolovlevs criminal complaint in a Mongasque court, alleging a scheme for overcharging him. Everyone spoke with the caveat that we could never really know what the Codex is worth unless it actually goes up for auction. While every effort has been made to follow citation style rules, there may be some discrepancies. Quiz: Ancient Illustrations Showing Us the Way, https://www.britannica.com/biography/Leonardo-da-Vinci, Social Studies for Kids - Biography of Leonardo da Vinci, Humanities LibreTexts - Leonardo da Vinci, Art Encyclopedia - Biography of Leonardo Da Vinci, University of California Museum of Paleontology - Biography of Leonardo da Vinci, Web Gallery of Art - Biography of Leonardo da Vinci, Leonardo da Vinci - Children's Encyclopedia (Ages 8-11), Leonardo da Vinci - Student Encyclopedia (Ages 11 and up), Art and accomplishment: Leonardo as artist-scientist, Art and accomplishment: Painting and drawing. And we're going to show you how we narrowed that range to settle on one number. I'm an art dealer in New York. But we ended up contacting others who we thought might know the work well, too. During this period Leonardo worked on a grandiose sculptural project that seems to have been the real reason he was invited to Milan: a monumental equestrian statue in bronze to be erected in honour of Francesco Sforza, the founder of the Sforza dynasty. In 1482 Leonardo moved to Milan to work in the service of the citys dukea surprising step when one realizes that the 30-year-old artist had just received his first substantial commissions from his native city of Florence: the unfinished panel painting Adoration of the Magi for the monastery of San Donato a Scopeto and an altar painting for the St. Bernard Chapel in the Palazzo della Signoria, which was never begun. This list is ordered by consumer price index inflation-adjusted value (in bold) in millions of United States dollars in 2021. So, we reached out to Martin Kemp, who is another da Vinci scholar, and an Oxford University emeritus professor. An attempt to psychoanalyze the buyer of Leonardo da Vinci's 'Salvator Mundi.' Tim Schneider , November 17, 2017 The scene at Christie's New York on November 15. Both sold at Sotheby's in Monaco on the same date in 1989. PETERSON-WITHORN: Exactly. His drawing of the Vitruvian Man (c. 1490) has also become a cultural icon. And if Gates himself had the Codex appraised since he bought it. Nonetheless, Leonardos notebooks reveal a sharp intellect, and his contributions to art, including methods of representing space, three-dimensional objects, and the human figure, cannot be overstated. In the days leading up the the sale, Christies produced a video of celebrities viewing the work, among them Leonardo DiCaprio and Patti Smith. 9. Rybolovlev resold Gauguin's Otahi before 2017 for less than $50 million. Despite the excitement over the sale of the only Leonardo in private hands queues of people had formed around Rockefeller Center in New York to see the canvas many in the art world had wondered if the piece would find a buyer. Leonardo grew up on his fathers familys estate, where he was treated as a legitimate son and received the usual elementary education of the day: reading, writing, and arithmetic. While Hammer was alive, we reported that Oxy shareholders sued three times asking to be reimbursed for what Hammer spent on art and the museum. Knowingly or not? Six million dollars, thank you. Ludovicos fall in 1499 sealed the fate of this abortive undertaking, which was perhaps the grandest concept of a monument in the 15th century. On November 20, 2014 at Sotheby's, the Crystal Bridges Museum of American Art bought her 1932 painting Jimson Weed/White Flower No. The work of Leonardo is just as influential to the art that is being created today as it was in the 15th and 16th centuries, he said. And then amid. "When we chose the title," Andreas Dalsgaard, a producer and a writer of The Lost Leonardo, tells BBC Culture, "the inspiration was partly that the painting is lost right now and the truth is lost, but it was also inspired by movies like the Indiana Jones movies that are full of treasures and treasure hunts.". What was Leonardo da Vincis personality like? The most famous paintings, especially old master works created before 1803, are generally owned or held at museums, for viewing by patrons. As of 2023, Leonardo da Vinci's net worth is $320 million. I'm going to show it all over the world.. But some have said that's because he was left-handed, and he didnt want his ink to smear. Is it even a Leonardo at all? Taking inflation into account, the 1962 value would be around US$900 million in 2021.[3]. An artist by disposition and endowment, he considered his eyes to be his main avenue to knowledge; to Leonardo, sight was mans highest sense because it alone conveyed the facts of experience immediately, correctly, and with certainty. TINDERA: So back in November 1994, Microsoft cofounder Bill Gates was 39 years old and pretty much at the top of his game. Back in 1980 according to an Associated Press report, the man who was the Earl of Leicester at the time decided to sell the Codex, which had been part of the Earl's estate for more than 250 years. Kenneth Griffin acquired it in 2004 from Wynn. I'll give everyone time. ARCHIVAL CLIP OF ARMAND HAMMER: Another hat is my hobby for collecting art. He Died in May 2, 1519 in Amboise, Kingdom of France.His Famous works includes Mona Lisa, The Last Supper, The Vitruvian Man Style/Period: High Renaissance Biography. The sale places Salvator Mundi as the highest-priced work sold privately or at auction, including Pablo Picassos 1955 Women of Algiers (Version O), sold for $179.4m, and Amedeo Modiglianis 1917-18 Reclining Nude, sold for $170.4m. The auction house would not reveal the identity of the buyer or even the region from which they came. At 18 million in this room. And so, the first place we looked were the auction records for the Codex from the 1980 and the 1994 sales. Before the auction opened, the 500-year-old Leonardo da Vinci painting was estimated to sell for $100 million. He was also frequently consulted as a technical adviser in the fields of architecture, fortifications, and military matters, and he served as a hydraulic and mechanical engineer. Earlier this summer, very fittingly, as the country's oldest auction house, they sold a copy of the Declaration of Independence for $4.4 million. Probably, they knew there was room before the end of the competition., They wanted to get the job done quicker, but it still took a long time.. A jump to $370. TINDERA: So keeping all of those things in mind and knowing what he does about the Codex today. As a master artist, Leonardo maintained an extensive workshop in Milan, employing apprentices and students. Contemporary art, Mould told the Guardian, is where all the big money is. Whoever cut it up would be pilloried forever. But one key difference between my version and the one Bill Gates owns is that while my version is bound in the middle, like any typical hardcover book, every page of the original Codex Leicester is held in glass to make it easier to view all the pages. MASSEY: Twenty-five million, twenty-six million. The Last Supper by Leonardo da Vinci. What was Leonardo da Vincis family like? To him, it was just his collection of scientific observations and illustrations and writings, mostly focused on the study of water. It's now been determined that his painting is not, in fact, a da Vinci. Oprah Winfrey had bought the painting in November 2006 at Christie's for nearly $88 million. This portrait was painted in Florence from 1474 to 1478. The alleged vandalism attempt on Sunday left the painting's glass covered in cake frosting. What Gouzer may have meant is that buyers prepared to spend in excess of $100m on artwork exist in the modern and contemporary fields. Please select which sections you would like to print: Director, Central Institute for the History of Art, Munich, 194770. It then disappeared again until it was bought at a small U.S. auction house in 2005. Here's how much the artwork is worth! This stands as the most expensive painting by a living artist. CBS CLIP, BILL GATES: Well, that's simply based on taking the stock I own in Microsoft and doing some type of multiplication. It's with you at $28 million. At $28 million it's away from the room now and on the telephone at $28 million. All episodes of the Art Bust podcast are available now. Qi Baishi "Twelve Landscape Screens" (1925): $148.7 million 7. MICHELA TINDERA: So its 1994, and were listening to an auction in a salesroom at Christie's in Manhattan. Salvator Mundi, the long-lost Leonardo da Vinci painting of Jesus Christ commissioned by King Louis XII of France more than 500 years ago, has sold at Christie's in New York for $450.3m . The Burlington House Cartoon by Leonardo da Vinci. ", Leonardo da Vinci's Salvator Mundi was sold by Christie's in 2017 for a record-breaking $450 million (Credit: Photo by Ilya S Savenok/Getty Images for Christie's Auction House). Amid all of that the Codex went back to Christie's in 1994, where it was once again expected to bring $10 million. PETERSON-WITHORN: Armand placed the winning bid and paid about $5.6 million for the Codex, which was less than the roughly $10 million that it was reported experts thought it might sell for. It was first unveiled to the public at the National Gallery in London in 2011. Most observers agree that it is likely stashed in the Middle East, but some have speculated that it is stored in a tax-free zone in Geneva or even on the Prince's half-a-billion-dollar yacht. It would not draw more than the Salvator Mundi, which sold for $450 million. Previewing the lot last month, Christies described the painting of Christ holding a crystal orb in his left hand and raising his right in benediction as the biggest discovery of the 21st century. The source says he advised the government that "exhibiting under the Saudi conditions would be like laundering a piece that cost $450 million". Five-point-five million dollars to start. [8] The actual purchase price was not disclosed, because of a confidentiality agreement attached to the private sale. 1503-1519). Leonardo did not seriously study Latin, the key language of traditional learning, until much later, when he acquired a working knowledge of it on his own. He's gone to extra lengths to make this work as a whole more accessible to the public. So Gates sort of went out and bought the ultimate book. SIMON: These went into the mix. Hence, every phenomenon perceived became an object of knowledge, and saper vedere (knowing how to see) became the great theme of his studies. And then, how do we rationalize the difference in the kind of object it is? In this episode of Priceless, staff writer Michela Tindera and deputy wealth editor Chase Peterson-Withorn explain how Forbes determines the value of a one-of-a-kind Leonardo da Vinci manuscript that Bill Gates purchased in 1994. The Nahmad family bought Suprematist Composition in 2008 at Sotheby's, New York, for $60,002,500 ($76million in 2021 dollars) from the heirs of Kazimir Malevich. She tells BBC Culture, "Since then, Dianne Modestini continued to work on it. But there would, there are people in the world that would probably do that. The triptych had probably been reassembled by the Italian collector Francesco De Simone Niquesa, but were resold to a person in the US before 2013, This is the small version of the painting; the large version is at the. Leonardo da Vinci (1452-1519) is one of the most intriguing personalities in the history of Western art. Source: pinterest.com. If all we do is adjust the $30.8 million that Gates paid for it for inflation, that gets us to somewhere around $50 million today. [13][14], Among the listed top 89, only six are paintings by non-Western artists. This is a list of the highest known prices paid for paintings. I wana write a poem about it. Christie's billed the painting as an original work by Leonardo da Vinci himself. Last Supper, Italian Cenacolo, one of the most famous artworks in the world, painted by Leonardo da Vinci probably between 1495 and 1498 for the Dominican monastery Santa Maria delle Grazie in Milan. While dozens of manuscripts like the Codex have managed to survive the centuries intact, the Codex Leicester is the only da Vinci notebook that is still in private hands. That he gave up both projects seems to indicate that he had deeper reasons for leaving Florence. After his death, Hammer's estate became tied up in a series of new lawsuits that began with the niece of Hammer's late wife suing for a piece of his art collection and other assets. That's because da Vinci wrote it backwards, which is what he did for much of what he wrote. The first is da Vinci's "The Last Supper," painted during his time in Milan, from about 1495 to 1498. Well, as we mentioned, the most expensive painting ever sold at auction was the Salvator Mundi for $450 million. During his second period in Florence (1500-1508), he painted his most famous work, the Mona Lisa (ca. Cole was the first to report, in March 2020, the existence of a 46-page booklet the Louvre prepared for publication but never released, which asserts that the piece is an authentic Leonardo. In this episode, we're taking you inside the world of rare books, manuscripts, and Old Masters works to tell you about how we've estimated the value of one very special notebook, with ties to the world's most expensive painting ever sold at auction: the Salvator Mundi. For this notebook, we considered values ranging from $50 million, all the way up to $4 billion. Renaissance artist, inventor, polymath, musician, and architect who painted the Mona Lisa and The Last Supper and drew the iconic Vitruvian Man. He also worked in the next-door workshop of artist Antonio Pollaiuolo. TINDERA: But admittedly, Darren told us that he wasn't a da Vinci, or Codex expert and was hesitant to put a value on it out of the gate. The buyer was anonymous, but the New York Times soon revealed him to be acting for bin Salman, a discovery that catapulted the painting into the geopolitical realm. TINDERA: I'm looking through a copy of whats now called the Codex Leicester, which I purchased online for about $30. Mona Lisa is not only Leonardo da Vinci's most famous painting but the entire world's most famous painting. But many experts on camera and elsewhere in the press think he leapt to an early conclusion. The London art dealer Philip Mould called the idea of including Salvator Mundi in a contemporary sale inspired. He currently resides in Vinci, Italy. The painting, which dates to around 1500, was lost to history for more than 200 years, was damaged and badly restored, and was sold and resold as a minor work, probably by a Leonardo acolyte. In 1982, he appeared on our list with an estimated net worth of $150 million. That's why these valuations can be so tricky. This Leonardo da Vinci's portrait paintings are of Ginevra de' Benci, who was a rather popular Florentine woman. However, we should probably note that it seems unlikely that as the owner of the Codex, Gates would actually do this. This is the mirror where we flip it around, and now here it is in English. A Belgian banker and collector who bought it in 1939 for $18,000. See a gallery of the world's most expensive paintings, Leonardo da Vincis Salvator Mundi sold for $400 million at Christies ($450.3m, including auction house premium), One of four versions of The Scream created by Munch and the only one that is privately owned. The documentary covers much of the same ground as The Lost Leonardo, but less stylishly, with too many stock establishing shots of cities. A Leonardo da Vinci painting has sold for a record-breaking $450 million this week, at Christie's auction house in New York. A Leonardo, even one as dulled as this, could prove an amusing conversation piece. The painting disappeared from 1763 until 1900, when it was bought by Sir Charles Robinson as a work by Bernardino Luini, a follower of Leonardo. Christies CEO, Guillaume Cerutti, said he did not know whether the buyer would reveal themselves. Madonna and Child with the Infant Saint John the Baptist by Leonardo da Vinci. Then we look at the condition, and we base the condition on what's in our hands, and how you look at a book thats 150, 170 years old. It is Oil on wood and measures 168 x 130 cm (5 1/2 x 4 1/2 ft.). He also pulled together a list of artwork that he found it to be similar to. And so I think it's, you know, not so much, Let's look at it and see what would happen if we took scissors to it and divided it up. But just to say, Here we have something of such significance, partly because it has survived 500 years without, you know, being destroyed.. Leonardo grew up on his fathers familys estate, where he was treated as a legitimate son and received the usual elementary education of that day: reading, writing, and arithmetic. A list in another currency may be in a slightly different order due to exchange-rate fluctuations. There are Leonardo's drawings of the head and bust of Leda; a famous drawing was done in 1506 by Raphael; a red chalk drawing which may have been done by an assistant to Leonardo; a picture by Bugiardini which was based upon Leonardo's original cartoon (done in 1504); another copy probably by Francesco Melzi and based on Leonardo's second cartoon [note 1] Where necessary, the price is first converted to dollars using the exchange rate at the time the painting was sold. And so, you've got the painting itself is you know, much more of a rare object. He had an exceedingly inquisitive mind and made strenuous efforts to become erudite in languages, natural science, mathematics, philosophy, and history, among other subjects. for the highest price sold. In total, Christies said, 27,000 people had seen the work on a pre-sale tour with stops in Hong Kong, London and San Francisco. The Annunciation by Leonardo da Vinci. Highly esteemed, he was constantly kept busy as a painter and sculptor and as a designer of court festivals. [3] This means the Codex is certainly one of the world's most valuable pieces of art. Head of anApostle. The Met has since returned the coffin to Egypt. Finding a new one is rarer than finding a new planet, he said. We should note here that we did reach out to Christie's, as well as Bill Gates to ask if they had any comments on the value of the Codex today. In The Lost Leonardo, a grinning Bouvier says his exploits are just business as usual: "you buy low and you sell high." The unique fame that Leonardo enjoyed in his lifetime and that, filtered by historical criticism, has remained undimmed to the present day rests largely on his unlimited desire for knowledge, which guided all his thinking and behaviour. Later in 2002, Thomson donated his private collection, including the Rubens, to the. A lost painting by Leonardo da Vinci may have been found in a Scottish farmhouse, reported The Daily Mail. The final winning bid? In The Lost Leonardo, Evan Beard, a Bank of America executive who deals with art as investment, talks about the common buyers' motive of using artworks as collateral for other financial manoeuvres. They reflected the importance of the painting and that some of the bidders were conscious that the price would go higher than their bids. Following the French Revolution it was moved to the Louvre. The collector acquired it from Bouvier for $127m, who had in turn acquired it from Sothebys in a private sale in 2013 for about $50m less. And Lewis points out that as the art market has enlarged, our world view itself has changed. Everyone agreed, like Robert Simon said, that were it to go up for auction today. So, in discussing what the Codex might be worth today, Robert Simon brought up a recent sale of a da Vinci, which was of a teeny, tiny three-inch by three-inch drawing of a bear's head, which sold in July of this year for $12 million. PETERSON-WITHORN: In the end, we decided to take the average of all the recommendations we got from our expert sources. The original one is now located at Muse du Louvre, Paris. He decided that the Codex's fair market value was $50 million. TINDERA: Simon also included another work by da Vinci: a sheet of studies including sketches of a child embracing a lamb. The work, thought to be a 500-year-old portait of Madonna and child, is potentially worth over $150 million (100 million) if experts are able to prove its authenticity. We reported that same year that Gates envied his friend Warren Buffett, because he had more time to spend reading than Gates did. They arrive in the wake of Ben Lewis's high-profile 2019 book, The Last Leonardo, and dozens of articles. Explore the life of Italian painter, architect, engineer, and humanist Leonardo da Vinci. And we can go into the auction record and look at previous copies of that exact same book, when it sold, where it sold, what its estimate was, what it brought. His father, Ser Piero, was a Florentine notary and landlord, and his mother, Caterina, was a young peasant woman who shortly thereafter married an artisan. [15] Not listed here in this list is Chinese painter Wang Shaofei's The High Sun, which was appraised for $74 million in 2017.[16]. Love film and TV? And Lewis has a new eight-episode podcast, Art Bust: Scandalous Stories of the Art World, which promises stories of "the ugliest crimes, the biggest scandals and the murky in-between." (or simply Leonardo) (Leonardo diser Piero ser da Vinci) (Italian, 1452-1519). ", https://www.telegraph.co.uk/luxury/art/art-sales-russian-buyers-inject-confidence-into-old-master-marke/, Picasso piece sets record for art sold at auction, qatar may have purchased Warhol's 'Eight Elvises', "Nahmads confirm Picasso's $115m flower girl will go to Paris", "Rockefeller Picasso sells for $115 million including feesauthor=Robert Frank", "DIC Sells 'Anna's Light' Painting For Y10.3bn Gain", "Regarding extraordinary profit associated with the sale of a certain painting owned by the company and revision of its consolidated operating result forecast", "How Basquiat Became the $60 Million Man", "A Basquiat Sells for 'Mind-Blowing' $110.5 Million at Auction", A Monet Sells for $110.7 Million, an Auction High for an Impressionist Work, "Qatar bought Ford House's $100-million Cezanne", "$100M for Czanne painting?