‘Salvator Mundi,’ an ethereal portrait of Jesus Christ which dates to about 1500, the last privately owned Leonardo da Vinci painting, is on display for the media at Christie’s auction in New York. — Reuters photo
NEW YORK: A 500-year-old painting believed to be by Leonardo da Vinci sold for US$450.3 million in New York, blazing a new world record for the most expensive work of art sold at auction, Christie’s said.
“‘Salvator Mundi’ or ‘Savior of the World,’ which depicts Jesus Christ, more than doubled the previous record of US$179.4 million paid for Pablo Picasso’s ‘The Women of Algiers (Version O)’ in New York in 2015.
Lost for years only to resurface at a regional auction in 2005, it is one of fewer than 20 Da Vinci paintings generally accepted as being from the Renaissance master’s own hand, according to Christie’s.
All the others are held in museum or institutional collections. The price was all the more extraordinary given that the oil on panel fetched only £45 in 1958, at the time believed to have been a copy, before subsequently disappearing for years.
Dated to around 1500, the work sold after 19 minutes of frenzied bidding – an incongruous Old Master in Christie’s evening postwar and contemporary sale, which attracts the biggest spenders in the high-octane world of international billionaire art collectors.
Christie’s declined to identify the buyer, other than to confirm that bids came from ‘every part of the world.’ The price could call into question a legal suit lodged by its Russian seller, who accused a Swiss art dealer in Monaco of allegedly overcharging him when he bought the work for US$127.5 million in 2013.
The value of private sales are rarely known, but a Willem de Kooning and a Gauguin were previously thought the most expensive, sold in 2015 separately for US$300 million each, according to US media reports.
Auctioneer Jussi Pylkkanen opened bidding at US$75 million, pulling in 45 bids from clients on the phone and in the room.
Whoops and applause rippled through the packed room as bids quickly escalated into unchartered territory, coming down to two head-to-head rivals on the telephone. Pylkkanen eventually hammered the painting at US$450 million. The final price came to US$450.3 million including the buyer’s premium. — AFP