SAVIOUR OF THE WORLD

canvas, oil, 64.5x44.7 cm
Saviour of the World, Vinci Leonardo da, Private collection paintings to artist of ArtRussia
view to scale

The Artwork Description

The painting depicts Christ in a blue robe holding a crystal orb, which represents the Earth, and is one of fewer than 20 paintings by the grand master known still to exist.
Leonardo, who died in 1519, is thought to have painted Salvator Mundi sometime after 1500, during the same period that he produced the Mona Lisa, and it made its way into the Royal collection of Charles I in the early Seventeenth Century.
It then disappeared in 1763 until 1900, when it was acquired by Sir Charles Robinson, an art collector, for the Cook Collection at Doughty House in Richmond, Surrey. At the time, the painting was thought to have been by Leonardo's follower, Bernardino Luini, and Christ's face and hair had been painted over.
In 1958 the painting was sold by Sotheby's for just £45 and dropped off the grid once again until it showed up in Louisiana in 2005.
It was acquired, badly damaged and partly painted-over, by a consortium of American art dealers who paid less than £7,600 ($10,000) for it.
They restored it extensively and documented its authenticity as a work by Leonardo. Dmitry Rybolovlev, a Russian billionaire, bought it in 2013 for $127.5 million (£97 million) in a private sale that became the subject of a continuing lawsuit.


Leonardo da Vinci's Salvator Mundi (Saviour of the World) was bought for $450 million (£342 million) in New York on 2017 November, 17, shattering the record for the most expensive artwork ever sold.

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