"The Last da Vinci" Inside a high-end New York auction house called
Christie's, a Renaissance painting sat on display.
At first glance, the painting didn't look all that spectacular.
Nevertheless, the auction house opened the bidding at $10 million.
By the time the auctioneer brought the gavel down, that $10 million had gone up to $450
million.
The exorbitant price shocked the world, especially considering the controversy surrounding this
particular piece: some experts think it's a fake.
The painting in question is Salvator Mundi, Latin for "savior of the world."
At Christie's auction, the display information said Renaissance master Leonardo da Vinci
created the painting.
The description also said three English kings previously owned the piece.
And—as if by fate—the buyer of Salvator Mundi was Saudi Prince Mohammad Bin Salman,
also known as MBS.
The auction house's marketing strategy lured the prince among other mega-wealthy individuals.
Besides noting that three English kings owned the piece, Christie's billed Salvator Mundi
as "the last da Vinci."
The campaign created plenty of buzz.
Alongside the hype came a great sense of urgency, fueling each bid until the last da Vinci,
which previously sold for $127 million, surpassed expectations.
In 2005, Salvator Mundi sold for $10,000 to an art dealer.
However, in 2005, the 500-year-old divine portrait looked very different.
As you can see, the piece here looks bland, dirty, and not all that extraordinary—almost
like a cheap copy.
The people who bought it sent the painting off to be restored in New York by esteemed
art restorer Diane Dwyer Modestini.
After making the necessary restorations, Modestini sent the painting back to the art dealers
after believing the image to be an original Leonardo—claiming, in her professional opinion,
that no other artist could have painted this piece.
So, in 2013, the art dealers officially verified the painting's authenticity and sold it for
an upgraded price of $75 million to Swiss businessman Yves Bouvier, who quickly sold
it to Russian oligarch Dmitry Rybolovlev for $127 million.
Dmitry did the same.
He sold Salvator Mundi to MBS for a hefty profit.
Salvator Mundi was eventually shipped off to Saudi Arabia.
The Saudi Royal family planned on exhibiting the so-called last da Vinci in their world-class
fine arts museum: the Louvre Abu Dhabi.
The blockbuster exhibit was set to open sometime in 2018.
However, in September 2018, Abu Dhabi's department of culture and tourism canceled the exhibition
altogether.
Why?
Salvator Mundi was missing.
Rumors In 2019, over a year after the initial purchase,
nobody could find any trace of the painting.
Of course, there were rumors.
One popular rumor said Salvator Mundi was aboard the crown prince's yacht, which has
more than enough room to store the 27-by-19-inch frame.
The $500 million yacht is approximately 78 meters long and features a 13 seat cinema,
a 1,000 bottle cellar, and can house up to 12 guests and 26 crew members.
But does it also house a da Vinci?
No one is sure whether or not Salvator Mundi ever hung on the walls of Pegasus VIII, the
official name of MBS' luxurious vessel.
If the rumor was true, experts feared the salty and uncontrolled conditions of the yacht
could damage the painting.
Many wondered, did the prince not care about his $400 million da Vinci?
While spending 9 figures on an art piece sounds like a lot of money, even to the wealthiest
individuals, it's less than a drop in the bucket for MBS.
Trillion Dollar Man Experts estimate the personal wealth of the
Saudi Royal Family at $100 billion.
Overall, there are around 2,000 extended members of the family who are directly involved in
running the Saudi Arabian government, with King Salman and his son, Prince Salman at
the top.
Compared to entrepreneurs like Jeff Bezos and Elon Musk, the Saudi Royal family's net
worth doesn't seem all that impressive—until you add context.
Saudi Arabia is an absolute monarchy, meaning the House of Saud owns the government, and
the Saudi government owns Saudi Aramco.
Founded in 1933, Saudi Aramco is a state-run oil company.
Recently, their market cap reached $2 trillion.
Even though the Saudi Royal family doesn't own Aramco personally, they do bureaucratically.
That's why some people claim the family is worth trillions of dollars, because, in a
way, they are.
The company allows the House of Saud to build skyscrapers, fancy museums, and buy half a
billion-dollar yachts and works of art like a middle-class family would buy a new TV or
an Xbox.
In addition to the purchases mentioned before, prince bin Salman has bought a fleet of gold
cars, one of the most expensive chateaus in France, and rented a private island.
But the crown prince isn't the only Saudi royal family member who spends his money lavishly.
The prince's cousin, Al Waleed bin Talal Al Saud, has an expensive taste, and he can afford
it too.
Al Waleed was, at one time, worth $39 billion, making him the 7th richest man in the world
in 2017.
Though prince Salman took a chunk of his fortune during an anti-corruption campaign, Al Waleed,
the so-called Arabian Warren Buffet, still bought some outrageous stuff.
He reportedly owns $700 million in jewelry and owned a $500 million yacht that appeared
in a James Bond movie.
He also owns a $500 million dollar Airbus private plane with three floors, including
a Turkish bath on one of them.
Al Waleed also owns a $200 million dollar 747, and allegedly—like a medieval king
in Europe—hires people to entertain him.
Needless to say, the House of Saud has a lot of money.
But despite the wealth, many think it was strange for the crown prince to keep Salvator
Mundi hidden away.
Perhaps there was a reason for the secrecy.
Though many art experts who have seen the painting claim Da Vinci painted it, there
are other experts and scientists who say otherwise.
Attribution vs Partial Attribution In June of 2018, around a year before the
painting went missing, Salvator Mundi was carefully examined by a lab in the Louvre.
Every inch of the painting was scanned using X fluorescence technology, leaving no painted
layer or brushstroke up to chance.
After analyzing the painting, the Louvre confirmed the piece as an authentic Da Vinci.
They copied their study at the museum in the form of a 46-page booklet available for purchase
in the gift shop.
The booklet went unpublished since Salvator Mundi never showed up.
Inside the booklet, even the Louvre admitted that Da Vinci probably painted certain parts
of the painting but was reluctant to confirm the claim—meaning that someone else possibly
painted those parts.
So if Da Vinci didn't paint them, who did?
The answer is partial attribution.
Salvator Mundi—and other paintings like it—were massive undertakings for painters,
requiring months, sometimes years to complete.
They weren't doodles from a paint and sip gallery.
And more often than not, an artist of Da Vinci's caliber worked in a studio with other artists,
some of whom were under the famous painter's wing.
One research study conducted by art historian Andrea Frank and computer scientist Steven
Frank sought to use technology to determine who painted Salvator Mundi.
They used CNNs, or convolutional neural networks, to analyze the image.
The AI network recognized patterns in certain sections of Salvator Mundi, eventually concluding
that Da Vinci only painted some parts.
Specifically, the head and upper portion of Salvator.
But his right hand and arm appeared to be painted by someone else.
Art historian Matthew Landrus from Oxford agreed with the findings.
He believes Bernardino Luigi, a famous pupil of Da Vinci's, painted some parts of Salvador
Mundi, a claim the Louvre does not necessarily agree with.
But the Louvre isn't the only highly esteemed institution that published a conclusion on
Salvator Mundi's authenticity.
Prado Downgrade The Prado museum of art classifies Da Vinci's
paintings into two distinct categories: those by Leonardo and those attributed to him.
The first category is exclusively for pieces the museum believes were created by Da Vinci
and only Da Vinci.
On the other hand, the second category is used to classify pieces merely attributed
to him but not fully confirmed to be his, or, as mentioned earlier, a partial attribution.
The downgrade from a "by Leonardo" to an attributed could be a huge blow to Salvator Mundi's value.
After selling for nearly half a billion dollars, Salvator Mundi's high value is a bubble ready
to burst.
And the fact that experts are divided on whether or not Da Vinci painted it is a reason to
doubt the legitimacy of the painting's enormous price tag.
Restoration Another value issue with Salvator Mundi is
how much it was restored.
There's a reason items like Star Wars action figures in their original packaging are more
valuable than ones that got played with.
Original will always be worth more than restored parts.
Apparently, the Saudi princes weren't aware of just how much Salvator Mundi had been restored.
When Modestini began the restoration, she immediately removed the first few layers of
paint.
While this may seem counterintuitive, she was actually removing what they call overpaint,
which are added layers of paint brushed on by restorers.
But when Modestini removed the overpaint, she discovered why someone had painted over
the original.
The painting Modestini found was torn, ripped, and chipped, with whole sections of his hair
and face missing completely.
After hours and hours of restoration and reconstruction, Salvator Mundi took its most recent form,
the $400 million form fit for a prince.
Or was it?
As Much As Possible The New York auction house did some unusual
things to prepare the auction of Salvador Mundi.
Instead of selling the painting in their Old Masters section, they put Salvator Mundi in
their Post-War and contemporary auction, the most popular auction at Christie's.
They changed that and many other aspects of the auction for one very important reason:
to sell Salvator Mundi for as much money as possible.
And they succeeded.
Without a definite authentication, Salvator Mundi and its Royal owner may never recover
from the embarrassment of buying a potentially fake painting.
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Let us know in the comment section whether or not you think the painting is real or fake?