Priceless Art : Capricious Ownership

At a time when European art masters looked for patronage to the church, producing sacred art to satisfy their financial benefactors, the greatest artist of all time, the 16th Century genius who mastered every manifestation of science, art, invention, military strategy used his extraordinary talents to produce a mind-boggling array of sketches, scientific formula, mechanical devices, treatises on the earth's elements and a paltry twenty paintings, most of which hang in prestigious public art galleries throughout the world.

One of his paintings depicts the Christ figure, the "Saviour of the World", titled Salvator Mundi in Latin. And while the painting languished in obscurity for centuries with little-to-no care given to its preservation its presence eventually rose to be recognized by the art world and finally authenticated as a work by the Great Master. It went to auction a year ago, the winning bidder paying far more for this work of art than any other lavish expenditure for any of the world's other outstanding artists, yet none could approach the stature of Leonardo da Vinci.

Record sum … excitement at Christie’s New York as bidding neared its end on 15 November last year. Photograph: Peter Foley/EPA-EFE/Rex/Shutterstock

"Nobody outside the immediate Arab hierarchy knows where it [the restored and authenticated and auctioned painting] is."
"The mystery of its location is, of course, disturbing."
Martin Kemp, art  historian, authenticator

"It was a very intense picture and I felt a whole slipstream of artistry and genius and some sort of otherworldliness that I'll never experience again."
Dianne Dwyer Modestini, art restoration specialist

"[Salvator Mundi is] a painting of the most iconic figure in the world by the most important artist of all time."
Loic Gouzer, Christie's auctioneer

"[The painting known as the male Mona Lisa represents the] Holy Grail of Old Master Paintings."
"[Its sale is] as close as I've come to an art world miracle."
Alan Wintermute, Christie's auctioneer

Quite the art world miracle that is. That the greatest of all Western European artists' rendition of his vision of Christ is  hidden from the public, hidden from the world of art, spirited away by a ruler of one of the most fundamentalist Islamist countries of the world, to enjoy an unparalleled masterpiece depicting Christ, the most sacred figure in Christianity, depriving a Christian audience of ever contemplating its message as well as the splendour of that Old Master's superb genius.

The painting itself took a mysterious, circuitous, almost anonymous route to its current notoriety. It was said to have been owned by the 17th century English King Charles I, from its earlier presence in the French royal court. In a private collection since 1900 in England, it made its way to the ownership of a Catholic choir master in Baton Rouge, La.., Basil Clovis Hendry, who inherited it from his aunt and uncle who had bought it for $45 in 1958, to complement their collection of European paintings.

Salvator Mundi before it was sold at Christie’s in 2017   GETTY IMAGES    Salvator Mundi vanished after it was sold last year for $450 million. There are fears for its safety

They had thought the painting was executed by a minor follower of the Master da Vinci, Giovanni Voltraffio. Hendry's daughter, after her father's death in 2004 sold it for a few thousand dollars; no one ever suspecting it might actually be an authentic da Vinci painting. The painting was bought by two art dealers for less than $10,000 at the estate sale in New Orleans featuring Hendry's possessions. The art dealers, Robert Simon and Alexander Parrish, commissioned art restorer Dianne Dwyer Modestini to work on the badly neglected painting (a controversy all of its own).

Later, experts in London were shown the painting and "signs of Leonardo's magic asserted themselves", as the painting gained recognition as a genuine work from the hand of the master.  England's National Gallery, after authenticating the painting, showed it there in 2011. Following which the two art dealers sold the painting to a Russian billionaire, Dmitry Ryboloviev through a Swiss art dealer When Ryboloviev decided to put the painting up for auction in New York, the bidding was fierce with Christie's announcing a sale price of $400 million and an additional $50 million in fees.

The successful bidder was a Saudi prince acting for Mohammed bin Salmon, Saudi Arabia's Crown Prince who later elevated the bidder to head the Saudi culture ministry. Yet another Saudi prince, MOhammed Bin Zayed, Crown Prince of Abu Dhabi had been competing for the painting, though each never knew the identity of the leading bidders. Their bidding rivalry succeeded in driving up the price well beyond its estimated high bid, one tenth of the successful bid.

So this iconic painting by the most famous artist of all-time recorded history, who had executed a superb image of the most celebrated, honoured and venerated religious figure of all time is now in the hands of an Islamist Kingdom, out of eyesight, much less knowledge of the whereabouts of this priceless sacred icon.

Excessive restoration? … how the work looked at auction, when it became the world’s most expensive painting.

Photograph: Reuters