Discovery and restoration: Alexander Parish, an American art dealer (and "sleeper hunter") who found the painting in 2005. Robert Simon, an American art historian and art dealer who bought the painting with Parish.
“[Salvator Mundi] is in Saudi Arabia and the country is constructing an art gallery, which is to be finished in 2024, I think,” art historian and noted Leonardo scholar Martin Kemp said at last week's Cheltenham Literary Festival in the U.K., as reported by the Art Newspaper.
Christie's made history by auctioning a newly discovered painting by Leonardo da Vinci for $450 million. Five years since the auction, not all critics believe the portrait was painted by the polymath. Every argument for why Salvator Mundi is a real Leonardo easily can be construed as an argument for why it is not.
As well as becoming the most expensive painting in history, going for $450m (£326m) at auction, Salvator Mundi was denounced by many as a fake and subsequently vanished from view. The painting is now the subject of The Lost Leonardo, a documentary by Andreas Koefoed that opens in cinemas this week.
We now know that the winning bidder being applauded at Christie's in 2017 was Mohammed bin Salman, crown prince of Saudi Arabia.
According to court papers, Bouvier bought "Salvator Mundi" for $83 million in 2013 and quickly sold it to Rybolovlev for $127.5 million. Rybolovlev went on to sell "Salvator Mundi" at Christie's in 2017 for $450.3 million, a record price for a painting.
Mona Lisa's Record Valuation
In 1962, The Mona Lisa received a valuation of $100m. If you account for inflation, she's worth over $834m in today's money. This is almost double the $450m paid for the Salvator Mundi in November 2017.
Da Vinci's descendants still live in the Tuscan region of his birth and include farmers, office workers, an upholsterer and an artist. While the family name was originally rooted in its place of origin, the "da" was discarded over time.
In the gardens of the Château d'Amboise overlooking the Loire, a small, intricate chapel houses the tomb of the “Renaissance Man,” Leonardo da Vinci. In Leonardo's final years, the Italian painter, inventor, intellectual and all-around genius spent his time working for the French rulers controlling Milan.
Da Vinci, one of the world's most celebrated painters, had intermittent exotropia, a type of eye misalignment in which one eye turns outward, according to a study published Thursday in the journal JAMA Ophthalmology.
In 1994, he purchased Leonardo da Vinci's "Codex Leicester," a manuscript that dates back to the 16th century. He paid $30.8 million for the journal at auction, a price that made it the most expensive book ever sold.
The Mona Lisa is priceless. Any speculative price (some say over a billion dollars!) would probably be so high that not one person would be able or willing to purchase and maintain the painting. Moreover, the Louvre Museum would probably never sell it.
Leonardo was most of the time employed at noble courts and got there between 1000 and 2000 gold ducats per year (3.5-7kg gold). That corresponds to a today's purchasing power of approx. 1.7 - 3.3 million euro.
Martin Kemp, Emeritus Research Professor in the History of Art at Oxford University and a leading expert on Leonardo da Vinci, gives the careful estimate that there are probably no more than 20 paintings by the master in the world, which suggests there could be five more to be discovered.
Though we often think of da Vinci as a painter, he actually only produced about 20 paintings in his lifetime – which is one reason why they are so famous and highly valued. In fact, da Vinci seems to have felt most at home in his role as an inventor and engineer.
The largest art theft in world history occurred in Boston on March 18, 1990, when thieves stole 13 pieces, collectively valued at $500 million, from the Isabella Stewart Gardner Museum. Among the pieces stolen was Vermeer's The Concert, which is considered to be the most valuable stolen painting in the world.
The Château du Clos Lucé (or simply Clos Lucé) is a small château in the city of Amboise, France. The place is famous for being the official residence of Leonardo da Vinci between 1516 and 1519, when Leonardo died.
Leonardo da Vinci was buried in Amboise, France on 12 August 1519 in the church of St. Florentin, though he died on May 2. His remains were supposedly later transferred to the St. Hubert chapel on the grounds of Amboise Château, where Leonardo spent the last years of his life in the service of the French king.
Da Vinci, best known for painting "The Last Supper" and "The Mona Lisa," had no children, but his blood relatives include 22 half siblings.
He died in 1519 due to an acute cardiovascular event. Italians are set to mark the 500th anniversary of Leonardo da Vinci's death on Thursday.
The notion of a direct bloodline from Jesus and Mary Magdalene and its supposed relationship to the Merovingians, as well as to their alleged modern descendants, is strongly dismissed as pseudohistorical by a qualified majority of Christian and secular historians such as Darrell Bock and Bart D.
The most expensive painting ever sold is the Salvator Mundi, the Saviour of the World in English, attributed to Leonardo da Vinci. It was painted in the 1500s and sold for $450.3 million in 2017. The painting was acquired by Mohamed bin Salman, the crown prince of Saudi Arabia.
Truly priceless, the painting cannot be bought or sold according to French heritage law. As part of the Louvre collection, "Mona Lisa" belongs to the public, and by popular agreement, their hearts belong to her.
On the 21st of August 1911, a man named Vincenzo Peruggia committed an infamous art crime that made history. He stole what is now the most famous painting in the world, Leonardo da Vinci's Mona Lisa, 1503, from the Louvre in Paris.