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 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. When Bill Gates bought the manuscript, rather than naming it the Codex Gates after himself, he decided to rename it the Codex Leicester after an earlier owner. 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. Still, it was a record-breaking event. It's not exactly known why he did that. Also of note is the decorative ceiling painting (1498) he made for the Sala delle Asse in the Milan Castello Sforzesco. Paintings are listed only once, i.e. TINDERA: That's Darren Winston. It then disappeared again until it was bought at a small U.S. auction house in 2005. 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. Top 10 most expensive works of art sold at auction - in pictures, Original reporting and incisive analysis, direct from the Guardian every morning, Moment Leonardo da Vinci's Salvator Mundi sells for record-breaking $400m - video, Salvator Mundi painting by Leonardo Da Vinci before and after restoration, Leonardo's Vitruvian Man can go to the Louvre, court rules, Leonardo and Raphael art swap marks end of France-Italy spat, Short of imagination: Germaine Greer scorns Leonardo da Vincis art, Leonardo da Vinci events marred by Italy and France row, Rare Leonardo da Vinci notebook to go on show at British Library, World's most expensive painting is authentic Leonardo, insists expert, Louvre Abu Dhabi postpones display of Leonardo's Salvator Mundi, Leonardo scholar challenges attribution of $450m painting, Leonardo's earliest surviving work? The piece is sold.. A Leonardo, even one as dulled as this, could prove an amusing conversation piece. 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. 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." 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. It stayed with the Earl of Leicesters estate until 1980, when it finally went up for auction. A Malevich Suprematist Composition sold for $85.8 million at Christies, breaking the record for a work of Russian art. Art restorer Dianne Modestini in a scene from The Lost Leonardo, one of two new documentaries about the Salvator Mundi (Credit: Sony Pictures Classics/Entertainment Pictures). Leonardo da Vincis parents were unmarried at the time of his birth near a small village named Vinci in Tuscany. PETERSON-WITHORN: Thanks for listening to Priceless. Soon, the painting was on its way to Christie's. 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. PETERSON-WITHORN: After the auction, he told the press, I'm very happy with the price. But he went even beyond that. 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. In cases like these, that's why we have to turn to the experts who know more about this than us. However, other critics have disagreed with the truth of that claim. 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. 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. Four hundred million selling here at Christies. Privately resold for ca. 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. Son of Daniel (conductor & cellist) and Eleanore Saidenberg who were Picasso's New York dealers from 1955 to 1973. Like we did earlier in this episode, he considered the price that it sold for in 1980. [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. So I thought, "What if Gates cut up all the drawings into individual little works of art and sold them off that way? It's now been determined that his painting is not, in fact, a da Vinci. At the same time, Bouvier was negotiating and eventually succeeded to buy the painting for $112 million from Ursula Ucicky, widow of, Some fear existed, that Portrait of Dr. Gachet had been cremated with the owner in 1996, but Gachet's portrait was privately resold to. That included footing the bill for not only the Codex he purchased for the $5 million in 1980, but also the tens of millions of dollars spent creating his own art museum in Los Angeles. Alan Wintermute, a senior specialist in old master paintings at Christies in London, called it the holy grail of old masters. 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. 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. Robert Simon told us that he thought it would not sell for less than $150 million. That's because da Vinci wrote it backwards, which is what he did for much of what he wrote. This wall painting in the Dominican monastery of Santa Maria delle Grazie, Milan, allowed Leonardo to explore how the body communicates inner states of being. Please refer to the appropriate style manual or other sources if you have any questions. Fifty-fivefive-point-five million dollars to start it. Five hundred years later, the Codex is in such good condition, in part because it hasn't changed hands many times. SIMON: This is the clipping that I had taken out of the New York Times in 1980, when it was to be auctioned when Armand Hammer bought it. I've worked as well as an art appraiser. The first question we're asking, but we're going to ask it again is, What are we actually looking at? If it's a first edition of Moby Dick, that's a great thing to have. Rybolovlevs spokesman, Brian Cattell, told the Wall Street Journal the family hoped the sale will finally bring to an end a very painful chapter. When asked whether Salvator Mundis involvement in the Rybolovlev-Bouvier case might overshadow its sale, Christies postwar and contemporary chairman, Loc Gouzer, who secured the work with a $100m guarantee, said: We cannot comment about sellers, but it has every passport, every visa.. Here are 20 of Leonardo da Vinci's most famous paintings: Mona Lisa by Leonardo da Vinci. A list in another currency may be in a slightly different order due to exchange-rate fluctuations. On June 11, 2017, Ms. Gund revealed that she intended to use the proceeds from the sale of the painting for a specific purpose: to create a fund that supports criminal justice reform and seeks to reduce mass incarceration in the United States. 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. Let us know if you have suggestions to improve this article (requires login). So Gates buying Leonardo da Vinci's notebook is the equivalent of a typical 66-year-old splurging ona new iPad. TINDERA: Simon talked about how there have been a certain subset of book dealers called "breakers," who made it their job to buy books and then tear them apart, selling their illustrated pages piece by piece. 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. 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. 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. 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. ARCHIVAL CLIP OF ARMAND HAMMER: I guess I'm wearing a great many hats. With its sleek narrative and a wide range of voices from dealers to art historians to investigative journalists, The Lost Leonardo is the better of the two films, and benefits greatly from using Modestini as its main character. I think it's the greatest acquisition I ever made. Whereas Picasso and Warhol became wealthy men, van Gogh is known to have sold only one painting in his lifetime, The Red Vineyard, for 400 French francs (approximately $2,000 in 2018 dollars) in 1890, to the Belgian impressionist painter and heiress Anna Boch. PETERSON-WITHORN: And the fifth was a drawing by Michelangelo called The Holy Family with the Infant St. John the Baptist, which also sold to the Getty Museum in 1993, for $6.3 million. According to a CNBC report, the median net worth of someone who is 66 years old, which is Gates' age is about $266,000. 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. This sale tripled the previous record, and introduced a new era in top art sales. As of 2023, Leonardo da Vinci's net worth is $320 million. MASSEY: Nineteen-million five hundred thousand I'll be happy to take. How many Leonardo da Vinci paintings are there? DARREN WINSTON: Once we've decided that the book is worth looking at for its condition, for its provenance. Using monthly averages gives slightly different numbers, most significantly for paintings sold early or late in a year with significant inflation. 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. In The Lost Leonardo, a grinning Bouvier says his exploits are just business as usual: "you buy low and you sell high." The Return to Italy - the Mona Lisa disappeared from the Louvre Museum in 1911. $50 million through Sothebys in 1997. [6] Another example is a 2019 sale of The Seated Zouave by Vincent van Gogh. A major turning point came when the painting was controversially displayed as an authentic Leonardo at a 2011 exhibition at the National Gallery in London. Author of. Before Rybolovlev, Salvator Mundi had been owned by a consortium of dealers including Alexander Parish, who had picked it up for $10,000 at an estate sale in the US in 2005, and had had it restored and authenticated. I'm an art dealer in New York. Leonardos gracious but reserved personality and elegant bearing were well-received in court circles. There is so much information in the public sphere that everyone can have the illusion of being an insider. And then amid. In the days leading up the the sale, Christies produced a video of celebrities viewing the work, among them Leonardo DiCaprio and Patti Smith. The saleroom erupted in cheers and applause. We asked Robert, if the Codex if it went up for sale again, could it compete with the Mundi's price? 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. They arrive in the wake of Ben Lewis's high-profile 2019 book, The Last Leonardo, and dozens of articles. PETERSON-WITHORN: Exactly. 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 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. ", Auction Records Fall at Phillipss Sale of Contemporary Masters, "Fernand Lger (18811955), Contraste de formes", "Warmer Response at Sotheby's 2nd Night of Auctions", "Hong Kong Billionaire Lau Sets Two Records in 24 Hours", Led by $66M Van Gogh, Sotheby's Impressionist and Modern Sale Robustly Kicks Off Season, "Willem de Kooning (19041997), Untitled XXV", "Wang Meng painting auction for $62 million", "A Petite $69 Million Picasso Leads Sotheby's Solid $189 Million Impressionist Sale in London", "Property from a Distinguished Private Collection Pablo Picasso Femme Au Bret Et La Robe Quadrille (Marie-Thrse Walter)", Getty breaks record with $65.1-million purchase of Manet's 'Spring', As Stocks Fall, Art Surges at a $315.8 Million Sale, Claude Monet's "Le Bassin aux nymphas" auction results, A Zao Wou-Ki painting sold for $65 million, breaking records for a work by an Asian artist, Zao Wou-Ki's "Juin-Octobre 1985" auction results, The Most Expensive Paintings ever sold list by theartwolf, Oeuvres d'art les plus dispendieuses au monde, https://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=List_of_most_expensive_paintings&oldid=1140779647, Private Collection, New York, United States, This page was last edited on 21 February 2023, at 19:17. $450 million That price more than doubled the. July 8, 2021. He's the head of the Books, Maps and Manuscripts department at Freeman's Auction House in Philadelphia. 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. In this room, inon the telephone rather, at $28 million. That sold for $3.6 million at Sotheby's in New York in 1986. [13][14], Among the listed top 89, only six are paintings by non-Western artists. Ludovicos fall in 1499 sealed the fate of this abortive undertaking, which was perhaps the grandest concept of a monument in the 15th century. She was universally considered to be the painter's sitter. [note 1] Where necessary, the price is first converted to dollars using the exchange rate at the time the painting was sold. And one of the other, one of the principles and differences between, say an auction estimate and an appraisaland this is for what we call fair market value appraisalis that we come up with a single value, understanding that it's very rare that we kind of hit the bull's eye, but that is the opinion of the appraiser. 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.. 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. 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. ARCHIVAL CLIP-STEPHEN MASSEY, CHRISTIES: The Leonardo da Vinci Codex Hammer. So it doesn't really look like a notebook anymore. So it's difficult to get much better than someone who has actually appraised an item. Leonardo da Vinci (1452-1519) is one of the most intriguing personalities in the history of Western art. a 2011 exhibition at the National Gallery in London, Art Bust: Scandalous Stories of the Art World, Kim Kardashian was photographed next to it. The artwork alone garners thousands of visitors from around the world to the famous gallery it is placed in - the . Christies CEO, Guillaume Cerutti, said he did not know whether the buyer would reveal themselves. MASSEY: Twenty-seven million. I'll give everyone time. So first, we looked to experts in the world of rare books and manuscripts to learn about the qualities that make a book valuable. Christies sells long-lost Salvator Mundi, artwork billed as biggest discovery of the 21st century, for $400m plus auction house premium. Here's how much the artwork is worth! And we're going to show you how we narrowed that range to settle on one number. (Swiss authorities investigated him for defrauding Rybolovlev over several artworks, but this year closed the case without charging him.)
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