In the days leading up the the sale, Christies produced a video of celebrities viewing the work, among them Leonardo DiCaprio and Patti Smith. Leonardo da Vinci Biography, Paintings, Family, Early Life Christies had also found placing the work, despite its celebrity, hard to fathom. ARCHIVAL CLIP OF ARMAND HAMMER: I guess I'm wearing a great many hats. Leonardo da Vinci was an artist and engineer who is best known for his paintings, notably the Mona Lisa (c. 150319) and the Last Supper (149598). His curiosity and insatiable hunger for knowledge never left him. It was first unveiled to the public at the National Gallery in London in 2011. 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. In The Lost Leonardo, a grinning Bouvier says his exploits are just business as usual: "you buy low and you sell high." The triptych had probably been reassembled by the Italian collector Francesco De Simone Niquesa, but were resold to a person in the US before 2013, This is the small version of the painting; the large version is at the. Leonardos gracious but reserved personality and elegant bearing were well-received in court circles. Taking inflation into account, the 1962 value would be around US$900 million in 2021.[3]. That these tales can work in a podcast, where no one can even see the work being described, suggests how much the allure of today's art-crime stories is in the skulduggery and mystery, not aesthetics. Portrait of a Man in Red Chalk Drawing by Leonardo da Vinci. Why Would Anyone Pay $450 Million for the 'Salvator Mundi'? Because I've worked as well as an art appraiser. PETERSON-WITHORN: Exactly. Saviour for Sale opens in the US on 17 September. 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. [4] In constant dollars, the highest price paid before 1987 was by the National Gallery of Art when in February 1967 they acquired Leonardo da Vinci's Ginevra de' Benci for around $5 million ($41million in 2021 dollars) from the Princely Family of Liechtenstein. But some have said that's because he was left-handed, and he didnt want his ink to smear. It next appeared at a Sotheby's in England in 1958 where it sold for 45 - about $125 at the time. MICHELA TINDERA: So its 1994, and were listening to an auction in a salesroom at Christie's in Manhattan. One of my hats I wearI'm a capitalist. There was a bit of an odd snag with the purchase, and Forbes reported on it in 1994. A Leonardo da Vinci painting has sold for a record-breaking $450 million this week, at Christie's auction house in New York. 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. As late as the press preview of the show, there was an empty space on the wall waiting for the Salvator Mundi, but it never arrived. A Belgian banker and collector who bought it in 1939 for $18,000. ", 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. Leonardo da Vinci was a Renaissance painter, sculptor, architect, inventor, military engineer and draftsman the epitome of a true Renaissance man. Our 1994 story said Hammer was a master at litigation, and the aggrieved shareholders had to settle to keep building costs at $60 million. Therell never be another painting that I shall sell for more than this painting tonight.. He was listed in the register of the royal household as pictor et ingeniarius ducalis (painter and engineer of the duke). From about 1483 to 1486, he worked on the altar painting The Virgin of the Rocks, a project that led to 10 years of litigation between the Confraternity of the Immaculate Conception, which commissioned it, and Leonardo; for uncertain purposes, this legal dispute led Leonardo to create another version of the work in about 1508. His was the last name on the 1988 provenance list; painting came from "a private collection in Arizona". Well, as we mentioned, the most expensive painting ever sold at auction was the Salvator Mundi for $450 million. Months earlier, he had appeared on the cover of Forbes, and he was a member of our very first Forbes 400 ranking. Leonardo spent 17 years in Milan, until Ludovicos fall from power in 1499. I think it's the greatest acquisition I ever made. So, I think we could legitimately set the floor at that price. In 1493 the clay model of the horse was put on public display on the occasion of the marriage of Emperor Maximilian to Bianca Maria Sforza, and preparations were made to cast the colossal figure, which was to be 16 feet (5 metres) high. And my enjoyment in owning these wonderful works of art. All the Leonardo Da Vincis in the world: rated | Leonardo da Vinci Guinness World Records lists Leonardo da Vinci's Mona Lisa as having the highest ever insurance value for a painting. Since the painting first arrived at the Louvre in 1815, "Mona Lisa" has received plenty of love letters and flowers from admirers. So it doesn't really look like a notebook anymore. The Wikipedia template uses a yearly average inflation. At $28 million it's away from the room now and on the telephone at $28 million. Georgia O'Keeffe holds the record for the highest price paid for a painting by a woman. Leonardos parents were unmarried at the time of his birth. Leonardo da Vinci. In the end, the picture was placed in Christies postwar and contemporary evening sale, wedged between lots of work by Cy Twombly, John Currin, Keith Haring and Jean-Michel Basquiat. At $28 million. During this period Leonardo worked on a grandiose sculptural project that seems to have been the real reason he was invited to Milan: a monumental equestrian statue in bronze to be erected in honour of Francesco Sforza, the founder of the Sforza dynasty. 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. It came close. PETERSON-WITHORN: So I thought this was super fascinating that you could actually consider a work of art as something that could not only hold value and appreciate in value, but could also be a business, generating income for its owner over time. TINDERA: Okay, so our $4 billion estimate isn't all that realistic. Madonna and Child with the Infant Saint John the Baptist by Leonardo da Vinci. 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. In cases like these, that's why we have to turn to the experts who know more about this than us. [15] Not listed here in this list is Chinese painter Wang Shaofei's The High Sun, which was appraised for $74 million in 2017.[16]. This possibly-Leonardo treasure's route to fame began when it surfaced at an obscure New Orleans auction house in 2005 and was bought by two New York dealers for a measly $1,175. ARCHIVAL CLIP OF ARMAND HAMMER: Another hat is my hobby for collecting art. Scholars have been unable to agree in their attributions of these works. He also did not apply himself to higher mathematicsadvanced geometry and arithmeticuntil he was 30 years old, when he began to study it with diligent tenacity. The Nahmad family bought Suprematist Composition in 2008 at Sotheby's, New York, for $60,002,500 ($76million in 2021 dollars) from the heirs of Kazimir Malevich. So I thought, "What if Gates cut up all the drawings into individual little works of art and sold them off that way? Whoever cut it up would be pilloried forever. But even then, many Leonardo experts were dubious that the painting had more than a few brush strokes by him, and those doubts have ramped up ever since. While every effort has been made to follow citation style rules, there may be some discrepancies. 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. I'm an art dealer in New York. In this room, inon the telephone rather, at $28 million. But there would, there are people in the world that would probably do that. Portrait of Ginevra de' Benci by Leonardo da Vinci. Alan Wintermute, a senior specialist in old master paintings at Christies in London, called it the holy grail of old masters. The Virgin and Child with St Anne was painted by Leonardo Da Vinci in 1510. Antoine Vitkine's film Saviour for Sale is most notable for some explosive additions about what might have happened behind the scenes at the Louvre. Oil tycoon Armand Hammer bought it that year, and 14 years later, Gates bought it at another auction. Then we look at the condition, and we base the condition on what's in our hands, and how you look at a book thats 150, 170 years old. All episodes of the Art Bust podcast are available now. So, they decided to hold an auction through Christie's, and it took place in London in December 1980. Both sold at Sotheby's in Monaco on the same date in 1989. That is still a question. But if our maximum value isn't $4 billion, then what is it? TINDERA: So how much is the Codex worth today? The Last Supper by Leonardo da Vinci. 10 Famous Artworks by Leonardo da Vinci | Britannica July 8, 2021. And then amid all of this, he buys this one-of-a-kind Leonardo da Vinci manuscript at a Christie's auction for $28 million. I cannot say if he or she will want to be public.. Oprah Winfrey had bought the painting in November 2006 at Christie's for nearly $88 million. One of the sources says the Louvre concluded that Leonardo merely "contributed to the painting," but that bin Salman would only approve the loan if the Salvator Mundi were labelled an authentic Leonardo. CBS CLIP, CONNIE CHUNG: You know, you may be the richest man in America, or at least the second-richest man in America. He was also frequently consulted as a technical adviser in the fields of architecture, fortifications, and military matters, and he served as a hydraulic and mechanical engineer. His notebooks reveal a spirit of scientific inquiry and a mechanical inventiveness that were centuries ahead of their time. ", https://www.telegraph.co.uk/luxury/art/art-sales-russian-buyers-inject-confidence-into-old-master-marke/, Picasso piece sets record for art sold at auction, qatar may have purchased Warhol's 'Eight Elvises', "Nahmads confirm Picasso's $115m flower girl will go to Paris", "Rockefeller Picasso sells for $115 million including feesauthor=Robert Frank", "DIC Sells 'Anna's Light' Painting For Y10.3bn Gain", "Regarding extraordinary profit associated with the sale of a certain painting owned by the company and revision of its consolidated operating result forecast", "How Basquiat Became the $60 Million Man", "A Basquiat Sells for 'Mind-Blowing' $110.5 Million at Auction", A Monet Sells for $110.7 Million, an Auction High for an Impressionist Work, "Qatar bought Ford House's $100-million Cezanne", "$100M for Czanne painting? A list in another currency may be in a slightly different order due to exchange-rate fluctuations. Still, it was a record-breaking event. Pablo Picasso "Garon la pipe" (1905): $142.7 million 8. One sold for nearly $6 million, and the other for $5.2 million. He's the head of the Books, Maps and Manuscripts department at Freeman's Auction House in Philadelphia. It depicts the dramatic scene described in several closely connected moments in the Gospels, including Matthew 26: . She is a captivating, elegant presence on screen, with a whispery voice and wide eyes behind signature black or red-framed glasses. Corrections? [note 1] Where necessary, the price is first converted to dollars using the exchange rate at the time the painting was sold. When Leonardo was about 15, his father, who enjoyed a high reputation in the Florentine community, apprenticed him to artist Andrea del Verrocchio. He decided that the Codex's fair market value was $50 million. It then disappeared again until it was bought at a small U.S. auction house in 2005. At one point, Pylkknen remarked: Historic moment, well wait as the the bidding went back and forth, pausing at just over $200m as it rose to break the auction record. With closing fees from the auction house, it came out to $30.8 million. An exceptional case is graffiti artist David Choe, who accepted payment in shares for painting graffiti art in the headquarters of a fledgling Facebook. Christies sells long-lost Salvator Mundi, artwork billed as biggest discovery of the 21st century, for $400m plus auction house premium. 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. Last Supper | History, Technique, Location, & Facts | Britannica Simon's connection to the painting is that back in 2005, he and a colleague actually sort of rediscovered the painting, which was in terrible condition. After his death, Hammer's estate became tied up in a series of new lawsuits that began with the niece of Hammer's late wife suing for a piece of his art collection and other assets. CLIP OF BILL GATES: So here, you're just seeing the page exactly as it looked to da Vinci. And we're going to show you how we narrowed that range to settle on one number. SIMON: He spent much more time as a writer, a scientist, a draftsman than he did as a painter. 10 Secrets of The Mona Lisa by Leonardo da Vinci He had an exceedingly inquisitive mind and made strenuous efforts to become erudite in languages, natural science, mathematics, philosophy, and history, among other subjects. TINDERA: Gates is up against a group from a bank in Milan thats sitting in the front of the Christie's salesroom. Many factors seem to have converged to create this flourishing moment for true art crime. Most experts today agree the painting was probably produced by assistants in Leonardo's workshop, where he added some finishing touches a common practice. 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. So of course, da Vinci never called it the Codex Leicester or the Codex Hammer. PETERSON-WITHORN: In the end, we decided to take the average of all the recommendations we got from our expert sources. A lost painting by Leonardo da Vinci may have been found in a Scottish farmhouse, reported The Daily Mail. The source says he advised the government that "exhibiting under the Saudi conditions would be like laundering a piece that cost $450 million". He also worked in the next-door workshop of artist Antonio del Pollaiuolo, a sculptor, painter, engraver, and goldsmith, who frequently worked with his brother, Piero. In this period, he painted very little and instead focused on his scientific activity, specifically his study of anatomy. The Burlington House Cartoon by Leonardo da Vinci. If you would like to comment on this story or anything else you have seen on BBC Culture, head over to ourFacebookpage or message us onTwitter. But one key difference between my version and the one Bill Gates owns is that while my version is bound in the middle, like any typical hardcover book, every page of the original Codex Leicester is held in glass to make it easier to view all the pages. According to some sources, the painting had been sold by Argentinian art collector Nelly Arrieta de Blaquier for $300 million,[9] but the price was not confirmed by any of the parties involved.[10]. PETERSON-WITHORN: Given Simon's connections to the Salvator Mundi, and his experience running a gallery of Old Masters works, he seemed like an excellent source to speak with for this valuation. So first, we looked to experts in the world of rare books and manuscripts to learn about the qualities that make a book valuable. Thanks for joining me. The Battle of Anghiari by Leonardo da Vinci. See a gallery of the world's most expensive paintings, Leonardo da Vincis Salvator Mundi sold for $400 million at Christies ($450.3m, including auction house premium), One of four versions of The Scream created by Munch and the only one that is privately owned. Edvard Munch "The Scream" (1895): $135.2 million 9. The Lost Leonardo is now playing in the US and opens in the UK on 10 September. Because at the end of the day, it's an entertaining story.". Fifty-five hundred to start. The Netflix series This Is a Robbery delves into the 1990 theft of masterworks including a Rembrandt from the Isabella Stewart Gardner Museum in Boston. The two documentaries arrive at a time when films, podcasts and pop culture itself seem fascinated by art crimes, mysteries and forgeries. However, other critics have disagreed with the truth of that claim. The alleged vandalism attempt on Sunday left the painting's glass covered in cake frosting. One of the most famous paintings in the world, the Last Supper was commissioned by Ludovico Sforza, duke of Milan and Leonardo's patron during his first stay in that city, for the Dominican monastery of Santa Maria delle Grazie.
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