Leonardo da Vinci’s portrait of Christ, Salvator Mundi, on Wednesday sold for a record-breaking US$450.3 million at Christie’s in New York, more than double the old price for any work of art at auction.
The painting, only recently rediscovered, was the last Da Vinci left in private hands and fetched more than four times the presale estimate of about US$100 million.
It beat a record set in May 2015 by Pablo Picasso’s Les Femmes D’Alger, which sold for US$179.4 million and constituted more than half the sale’s total of US$785.9 million, which came in well above the roughly US$450 million presale estimate.
Photo: AP
Salvator Mundi (Savior of the World) was purchased by an unidentified buyer bidding via telephone after a protracted contest of nearly 20 minutes at the New York auction house.
With at least six bidders and increments coming in at more than US$15 million, sustained whoops and cheers broke out in the packed salesroom as the hammer came down.
“It was a moment when all the stars were aligned and I think Leonardo would be very pleased,” Christie’s global president Jussi Pylkkanen said after the sale.
“It’s a painting beyond anything I’ve ever handled,” said Pylkkanen, the auctioneer. “I should hang up my gavel.”
The restored portrait, an ethereal depiction of Jesus Christ which dates to about 1500, is one of fewer than 20 paintings by the Renaissance artist known to still exist.
First recorded in the private collection of Britain’s King Charles I, the work was auctioned in 1763 before vanishing until 1900, by which time Christ’s face and hair had been painted over — once a “quite common” practice, Christie’s senior specialist for Old Master paintings Alan Wintermute said.
Sold at Sotheby’s in London to a US collector in 1958 for only ￡45, it again sold in 2005 as an overpainted copy of the masterwork.
The new owner started the restoration process and after six years of research it was authenticated as Da Vinci’s more than 500-year-old masterpiece, which culminated in a high-profile exhibition at London’s National Gallery in 2011.
Christie’s did not identify the seller, other than to say it was a European private collector who acquired the work after its rediscovery in 2005 and lengthy restoration.
Media identified him as Russian billionaire Dmitry Rybolovlev, who paid US$127.5 million in 2013 in a private sale.
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