News The Caravaggio withdrawn from the Madrid auction had an international offer of 20 million euros
Historic night Leonardo da Vinci's 'Salvator Mundi' breaks records and is auctioned for $ 450 million
Dmitry Rybolovlev The businessman who sold Leonardo Da Vinci's 'Salvator Mundi'
The "Salvator Mundi", the painting for which 450 million dollars (about 377 million euros) were paid at auction, which made it
the most expensive in history
, was not painted by
Leonardo Da Vinci
, but probably by his assistants, according to the French journalist Antoine Vitkine, who has made a documentary following the trace.
The magazine "L'Obs", which reveals some of the main evidence provided in this documentary that will be broadcast on television on the 13th, highlights that
the French authorities have known this since 2018
, after Saudi Arabia commissioned an expert opinion.
The reason is that the purchase of the canvas, a representation of Jesus Christ, although it has not been explicitly recognized, was a commission from the Saudi crown prince, Mohamed bin Salmán (MBS), in whose name the aforementioned 450 million dollars were paid in an auction organized in November 2017 by Christie's, which in its catalog was presented as entirely painted by Da Vinci.
For MBS, this painting supposedly from the hands of one of the artists with the greatest universal prestige was to serve as the starting point of a prestigious collection in Saudi Arabia, the publication recalls.
But before the controversy of experts about the authorship of the work, on the occasion of a visit by the crown prince to the Elysee where he was received by French President
Emmanuel Macron
, the Saudis requested that it be examined in Paris.
The painting spent three months in the analysis laboratory of the Louvre Museum and the conclusion was that the work came from Leonardo Da Vinci's workshop but he only made a partial contribution.
MBS wanted to lend it for a
large exhibition organized by the Louvre
on the figure of Leonardo Da Vinci at the end of 2019 but to be presented next to the Mona Lisa, so that it would appear as another work of his.
France did not accept these conditions and the "Salvator Mundi" did not appear in the exhibition.
The canvas, which is supposed to have been made around 1490-1500,
had been rediscovered in 2005
in very poor condition when it was purchased for $ 1,175 (about 986 euros) by a New York art dealer who restored it in the United States. .
EFE
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