The London art dealer Philip Mould called the idea of including Salvator Mundi in a contemporary sale inspired. Nonetheless, the exhibition went a long way toward legitimising a shaky attribution. In this period, he painted very little and instead focused on his scientific activity, specifically his study of anatomy. "I'm absolutely sure that six months down the road or a year, there's going to be some kind of new information, whether true or not, that's going to blow up everywhere in the news media," Dalsgaard says. TINDERA: Simon shared with us his own process for how he estimated the fair market value in the appraisal he put together nearly 30 years ago. Fifty-five hundred to start. But one tries to lay out in a rational way, why one has a higher value than the other, why one has a lesser market appeal, and then try from that to come up with a single value. 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. There are all sorts of factors that come into play: condition, provenance. According to the provenance in the auction catalogue, a few Italian artists own the Codex after da Vinci's death, including a painter named Giuseppe Ghezzi, who apparently sold it in 1717 to Thomas Coke, a man who eventually became England's Earl of Leicester. Amidst all these delightfully tangled histories, nothing rivals the Salvator Mundi. 1503-1519). Early Life: Verrocchio's Pupil. The alleged vandalism attempt on Sunday left the painting's glass covered in cake frosting. According to some sources, the painting had been sold by Argentinian art collector Nelly Arrieta de Blaquier for $300 million,[9] but the price was not confirmed by any of the parties involved.[10]. Christie's billed the painting as an original work by Leonardo da Vinci himself. 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. She is a captivating, elegant presence on screen, with a whispery voice and wide eyes behind signature black or red-framed glasses. He currently resides in Vinci, Italy. Soon, the painting was on its way to Christie's. 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. I'm an art dealer in New York. 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. His shares were of limited value when he was given them, but by the time of Facebook's IPO they were valued at around $200 million. As late as the press preview of the show, there was an empty space on the wall waiting for the Salvator Mundi, but it never arrived. In this room, inon the telephone rather, at $28 million. What Gouzer may have meant is that buyers prepared to spend in excess of $100m on artwork exist in the modern and contemporary fields. 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. 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. Veiled in layers of mystery and international intrigue, the story of the Salvator Mundi is an ongoing, endlessly fascinating saga, told in two new documentaries, The Lost Leonardo and Saviour for Sale: Da Vinci's Lost Masterpiece?, which play out with all the drama and suspense of a detective story. And it was, you know, a thrilling project to be involved with. The painting sold for $119,922,500, Picassos Nude, Green Leaves and Bust (1932) sold at Christie's in New York for $106,482,500, Lhomme qui Marche I (1961) by Alberto Giacometti sold for 65,001,250 ($105,182,398) at Sothebys in London, Picassos Boy With a Pipe (1905) sold at Sotheby's in New York for $104,168,000, Gustav Klimts Portrait of Adele Bloch-Bauer II (1912)went under the hammer at Christies New York and sold for $87,936,000, Francis Bacons Triptych (1976) sold for $85.9m to oligarch Roman Abramovich, A Chinese 18th century Qianlong dynasty porcelain vase sold for 53,100,000 ($85,921,461) at Bainbridges auction house in London, Dora Maar au Chat (1941) by Pablo Picasso sold for 51,560,080 ($83,429,503) at Sotheby's in London, Portrait of Dr Paul Gachet (1890) by Vincent van Gogh sold for $82,500,000 (50,985,692) at Christies in New York, Thank you all for your bidding, said Pylkknen. SIMON: What it does is make you realize how important the fact that the Codex has survived intact is. Highly esteemed, he was constantly kept busy as a painter and sculptor and as a designer of court festivals. I'll give everyone time. Whoever cut it up would be pilloried forever. Record private sales are believed to include $250m for a painting by Paul Czanne and $300m for a Paul Gauguin. The sale of Vincent van Gogh's Sunflowers was the first time a "modern" (in this case 1888) painting became the record holder, as opposed to the old master paintings which previously had dominated the market. TINDERA: I'm Michela Tindera, and this is Priceless. And so, the first place we looked were the auction records for the Codex from the 1980 and the 1994 sales. The figure more than doubles the existing record for an artwork sold at auction: a $179.4 million bid for a Picasso in 2015. It's now been determined that his painting is not, in fact, a da Vinci. Many factors seem to have converged to create this flourishing moment for true art crime. 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. But no one thought it was still worth the $30.8 million Gates paid for it. During this first Milanese period he also made one of his most famous works, the monumental wall painting Last Supper (149598) in the refectory of the monastery of Santa Maria delle Grazie (for more analysis of this work, see below Last Supper). 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.. Son of Daniel (conductor & cellist) and Eleanore Saidenberg who were Picasso's New York dealers from 1955 to 1973. Leonardo spent 17 years in Milan, until Ludovicos fall from power in 1499. Since the museums rarely sell them, they are considered priceless. The Louvre very much wanted to include it in its grand exhibition to celebrate Leonardo's 500th anniversary in 2019. 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.". The series is full of conspiracy theories about the never-solved robbery. It may have been that the rather sophisticated spirit of Neoplatonism prevailing in the Florence of the Medici went against the grain of Leonardos experience-oriented mind and that the more strict, academic atmosphere of Milan attracted him. 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. A Belgian banker and collector who bought it in 1939 for $18,000. And to put into perspective, how much less art sold for 40 years ago, the sale of the Codex was the fifth-highest price for any piece of art sold at auction ever. 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. The painting was sold in November 2017,[1][2] through the auction house Christie's in New York City. In The Lost Leonardo, a grinning Bouvier says his exploits are just business as usual: "you buy low and you sell high." The saleroom erupted in cheers and applause. And we're going to show you how we narrowed that range to settle on one number. Leonardo da Vinci, (Italian: Leonardo from Vinci) (born April 15, 1452, Anchiano, near Vinci, Republic of Florence [Italy]died May 2, 1519, Cloux [now Clos-Luc], France), Italian painter, draftsman, sculptor, architect, and engineer whose skill and intelligence, perhaps more than that of any other figure, epitomized the Renaissance humanist ideal. His Last Supper (149598) and Mona Lisa (c. 150319) are among the most widely popular and influential paintings of the Renaissance. In 1993, Simon was hired by the trustees of the Armand Hammer Museum to do an appraisal of the Codex back when it was known as the Codex Hammer. But he went even beyond that. PETERSON-WITHORN: Thanks for listening to Priceless. SIMON: And if you look at the illuminated manuscripts that are from, you know, missiles, and you know, these are Renaissance manuscripts, many of them have been broken apart. In both films, Luke Syson, the curator of the show, stands by his decision. We know quite a bit about Leonardo's life from a mini-biography by Giorgio Vasari, a Leonardo fanboy and the world's first art historian.Born a nobody, Leonardo was a charismatic and complicated man self confident and not, driven and not, distracted and not. The Salvator Mundi can be exhibited, and if it goes to a museum in Saudi Arabia, and people travel there and go to see it, I mean, it would have in terms of that income value I was talking about, it would have, you know, a phenomenal one, you know, perhaps quite in excess of the $450 million that it brought at auction. Life of Leonardo da Vinci, a Short Biography 1. It suffers from not having Modestini or some other compelling central figure. Get a Britannica Premium subscription and gain access to exclusive content. The US art critic Jerry Saltz rails in The Lost Leonardo that "it's not even a good painting", much less a great Leonardo, while true believers gush that seeing it in person is a transcendent experience. Self Portrait by Leonardo da Vinci. He had just gotten married to Melinda Gates on New Year's Day of that year and was in the middle of building his multi-million-dollar mega mansion, Xanadu 2.0. But when I saw it, it didn't sit comfortably with me as an autograph Leonardo." In the film, the art historian Frank Zllner, who has compiled a catalogue raisonn of Leonardo's paintings, wryly calls the Salvator Mundi "a masterpiece by Dianne Modestini," who made it "more Leonardesque than Leonardo had done." Before the auction opened, the 500-year-old Leonardo da Vinci painting was estimated to sell for $100 million. On the last telephone, 18 million. In cases like these, that's why we have to turn to the experts who know more about this than us. [6] Though the Louvre Museum had turned down the opportunity to purchase it for 100 million,[7] the painting was estimated to sell for $110 to $170 million. PETERSON-WITHORN: And in fact, that fall he had just appeared atop our Forbes 400 ranking of the richest Americans, with an estimated net worth of $9.35 billion. Why do bad things happen to He was the auctioneer at the 1994 Christie's sale. In contrast, there are currently only nine pre-1875 paintings among the listed top 89, and none created between 1635 and 1874. His was the last name on the 1988 provenance list; painting came from "a private collection in Arizona". The piece is sold.. According to the Christie's auction catalogue for the 1994 sale, the Codex was described as being in good and stable condition. TINDERA: Now the audience in the room doesnt know this, but a representative for Microsoft cofounder Bill Gates is bidding on the phone. The ensuing war left the clay model a heap of ruins. Here are 20 of Leonardo da Vinci's most famous paintings: Mona Lisa by Leonardo da Vinci. Nineteen million on the telephone. To him, it was just his collection of scientific observations and illustrations and writings, mostly focused on the study of water. That he gave up both projects seems to indicate that he had deeper reasons for leaving Florence. PETERSON-WITHORN: And in fact, that fall he had just appeared atop our Forbes 400 ranking of the richest Americans, with an estimated net worth of $9.35 billion. And it was a challenge. PETERSON-WITHORN: Exactly. What was Leonardo da Vincis family like? Since the painting first arrived at the Louvre in 1815, "Mona Lisa" has received plenty of love letters and flowers from admirers. Taking inflation into account, the 1962 value would be around US$900 million in 2021. But many experts think she did a drastic over-restoration. CLIP OF BILL GATES: So here, you're just seeing the page exactly as it looked to da Vinci. There was a bit of an odd snag with the purchase, and Forbes reported on it in 1994. TINDERA: So how much is the Codex worth today? This time, though, it sold for three times that in the battle we heard about at the beginning of the episode between Gates and the Italian bank. But as it turned out, he also had his own personal connection to the Codex. Madonna and Child with the Infant Saint John the Baptist by Leonardo da Vinci. It is Oil on wood and measures 168 x 130 cm (5 1/2 x 4 1/2 ft.). All episodes of the Art Bust podcast are available now. A scene from Saviour for Sale, a second documentary about the Salvator Mundi, by French journalist Antoine Vitkine (Credit: Zadig Productions). Because the Louvre cannot comment on privately-owned works it has not displayed, the book can't be published, and at first, Cole says, the museum denied its existence. Leonardo da Vinci not only developed his skill in drawing, painting and sculpting during his apprenticeship, but through others working in and around the studio, he picked up knowledge in such diverse fields as mechanics, carpentry, metallurgy, architectural drafting and chemistry. 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. But uncertainty is key to the appeal of every version of the story, as Lewis tells BBC Culture: "Nobody knows if it is a Leonardo, so you too can play the game, you can do your own Da Vinci Code on the Salvator Mundi. The film doesn't take a stand on the painting's attribution, but makes it clear that museums, dealers and potential buyers had millions to gain along with incalculable prestige by choosing to believe it is a true Leonardo. And that was the process. 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. Later in 2002, Thomson donated his private collection, including the Rubens, to the. His drawing of the Vitruvian Man (c. 1490) has also become a cultural icon. At $28 million. "A Botticelli Portrait Sells for $92 Million at Sotheby's Auction", "Christie's 'Secret Weapon' in Rockefeller's 'Sale of the Century' | Auctions News | THE VALUE | Art News", "Claude Monet (18401926), Nymphas en fleur", Greatest German Renaissance Madonna sold by prince, Vincent van Gogh (18531890) Laboureur dans un champ, U.K. Buys Titian Diana Painting for 50 Million Pounds, Titian deal paves way for next acquisition, "Mark Rothko: No. Therell never be another painting that I shall sell for more than this painting tonight.. Hence, every phenomenon perceived became an object of knowledge, and saper vedere (knowing how to see) became the great theme of his studies. She even has her own mailbox. Mona Lisa. TINDERA: So keeping all of those things in mind and knowing what he does about the Codex today. On July 12, 2011, $75M was equivalent to 53M. No one in the art world knows for sure where the painting is. So Gates sort of went out and bought the ultimate book. Steve Wynn, who bid on the painting at auction, privately acquired the work several months later from the unidentified buyer for an undisclosed, supposedly lower price. TINDERA: Slicing up and selling off a beautiful manuscript or book is not without precedent, though, Robert explained to us. Omissions? She was universally considered to be the painter's sitter. And trying to balance them And of course, one of the things in doing an appraisal like this is you just don't put them in a mix, whatever. It's worth at least what Gates paid for it. On permanent display at the Louvre in Paris, the Mona Lisa was assessed at US$100 million on 14 December 1962. 1. I've worked as well as an art appraiser. Edvard Munch "The Scream" (1895): $135.2 million 9. In Verrocchios renowned workshop Leonardo received a multifaceted training that included painting and sculpture as well as the technical-mechanical arts. 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. Most art world observers thought the Salvator Mundi would be the centrepiece of a new museum or art centre in the region, but the painting has not been glimpsed in public since. And flipping through this copy, I have to say, I cant read a word of this. [13][14], Among the listed top 89, only six are paintings by non-Western artists. Saviour for Sale opens in the US on 17 September. A tempera and oil mural on plaster, "The Last Supper" was created for the refectory . However, other critics have disagreed with the truth of that claim. But now the Salvator Mundi has become the poster boy for the volatile mix of money, power and geopolitics that defines the art world today. 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. He decided that the Codex's fair market value was $50 million. A jump to $400m. Leonardo is sometimes credited as the inventor of the tank, helicopter, parachute, and flying machine, among other vehicles and devices, but later scholarship has disputed such claims. Antique Heliogravure on wove paper after t.. 620: 1893 Leonardo da Vinci Bust of an Old Man in Roman Costume print signed Est: $ 500 - $ 700 View sold prices Feb. 05, 2023 KCM Galleries Cape Coral, FL, US (or simply Leonardo) (Leonardo diser Piero ser da Vinci) (Italian, 1452-1519). [11][12] Prices realised for just his nine paintings listed below, when adjusted for inflation to 2017, add up to over US$900million. So, I think we could legitimately set the floor at that price. The Met has since returned the coffin to Egypt. This portrait was painted in Florence from 1474 to 1478. Fifty-fivefive-point-five million dollars to start it. And my enjoyment in owning these wonderful works of art. But Christie's declined to comment, and a spokesperson for Gates never responded to our questions. [8] The actual purchase price was not disclosed, because of a confidentiality agreement attached to the private sale. But, it makes up only about 0.1% of Gates' $134 billion fortune, which we estimated for the Forbes 400 this year. (According to contemporary sources, Leonardo was commissioned to create three more pictures, but these works have since disappeared or were never done.) Here's how much the artwork is worth! In the days leading up the the sale, Christies produced a video of celebrities viewing the work, among them Leonardo DiCaprio and Patti Smith. TINDERA: I'm looking through a copy of whats now called the Codex Leicester, which I purchased online for about $30. What was Leonardo da Vincis personality like? It would not draw more than the Salvator Mundi, which sold for $450 million. [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. Six million dollars, thank you. [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]. The abrupt $20m and $30m jumps in price were indeed unusual, Cerutti confirmed. Head of anApostle. The Louvre and the National Gallery refused to comment for either film. 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." 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. And Lewis points out that as the art market has enlarged, our world view itself has changed. Portrait of Ginevra de' Benci by Leonardo da Vinci. I expected to pay much more. He used his superb intellect, unusual powers of observation, and mastery of the art of drawing to study nature itself, a line of inquiry that allowed his dual pursuits of art and science to flourish. That is still a question. TINDERA: Simon also included another work by da Vinci: a sheet of studies including sketches of a child embracing a lamb. 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). 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. She tells BBC Culture, "Since then, Dianne Modestini continued to work on it. PETERSON-WITHORN: Yeah, when I heard about that $12 million sale, I remembered that the Codex had about 360 illustrations inside of it. Using monthly averages gives slightly different numbers, most significantly for paintings sold early or late in a year with significant inflation. Two new documentaries delve into the ongoing saga of Leonardo da Vinci's Salvator Mundi in a moment when true art crime stories are at their peak, writes Caryn James. On Sunday, May 29, a man disguised as an old woman in a wheelchair threw a cake at the Mona Lisa, Leonardo Da Vinci's legendary painting at Louvre, Paris. 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. This possibly-Leonardo treasure's route to fame began when it surfaced at an obscure New Orleans auction house in 2005 and was bought by two New York dealers for a measly $1,175. PETERSON-WITHORN: The person who ended up winning the auction was Armand Hammer, the 82-year-old multimillionaire chairman of oil and gas giant Occidental Petroleum. He needed to do that because in order to pay the inheritance taxes on a previous Earl of Leicester, who died in 1976, they needed to sell off some stuff. The source says he advised the government that "exhibiting under the Saudi conditions would be like laundering a piece that cost $450 million". Christies CEO, Guillaume Cerutti, said he did not know whether the buyer would reveal themselves. So I thought, "What if Gates cut up all the drawings into individual little works of art and sold them off that way? But there would, there are people in the world that would probably do that. It stayed with the Earl of Leicesters estate until 1980, when it finally went up for auction. 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 . 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. And if you liked this story,sign up for the weekly bbc.com features newsletter, called The Essential List. [3] Twenty-eight million. 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. SIMON: He spent much more time as a writer, a scientist, a draftsman than he did as a painter. As everyone who does not live in utter isolation knows, a painting of Christ known as the "Salvator Mundi" ("Savior of the World") by the Italian Renaissance artist Leonardo da Vinci was. 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. The general attitude toward art crime, he says, used to be shrugged off as "it's billionaires spending money, crooking each other", but today there is a realisation that "no, you can't loot that country's entire cultural heritage". 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. 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. Everyone spoke with the caveat that we could never really know what the Codex is worth unless it actually goes up for auction. The Christie's sale itself was a highly staged drama, beginning with a marketing video that showed not the painting but the faces of observers most are ordinary people but one of them is Leonardo DiCaprio looking reverently at the image as if they were seeing Christ himself. Following the French Revolution it was moved to the Louvre. - The world's greatest art detective, - The men who Leonardo da Vinci loved, - The detail that unlocks the Mona Lisa. 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.. Paintings are listed only once, i.e. Encyclopaedia Britannica's editors oversee subject areas in which they have extensive knowledge, whether from years of experience gained by working on that content or via study for an advanced degree. He was described in our Forbes 400 issue of the magazine that year as both a hard worker and brutally candid.. 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.