Christie's employees take bids for Leonardo da Vinci’s "Salvator Mundi" at Christie's New York on November 15, 2017.A 500-year-old work of art depicting Jesus Christ, believed to be the work of Renaissance master Leonardo da Vinci, sold in New York on Wednesday for $450.3 million setting a new art auction record, Christie's said "Salvator Mundi," which the auction house dates back to around 1500, sold after 18 minutes of frenzied bidding in a historic sale, the star lot of the November art season in the US financial capital
(AFP)
"Salvator
Mundi" or "Savior of the World," which depicts Jesus Christ, more than
doubled the previous record of $179.4 million paid for Pablo Picasso's
"The Women of Algiers (Version O)" in New York in 2015.
Lost
for years only to resurface at a regional auction in 2005, it is one of
fewer than 20 Da Vinci paintings generally accepted as being from the
Renaissance master's own hand, according to Christie's.
All the others are held in museum or institutional collections.
Wednesday's
price was all the more extraordinary given that the oil on panel
fetched only 45 British pounds in 1958, at the time believed to have
been a copy, before subsequently disappearing for years.
Dated
to around 1500, the work sold after 19 minutes of frenzied bidding --
an incongruous Old Master in Christie's evening postwar and contemporary
sale, which attracts the biggest spenders in the high-octane world of
international billionaire art collectors.
Christie's declined to identify the buyer, other than to confirm that bids came from "every part of the world."
The
price could call into question a legal suit lodged by its Russian
seller, who accused a Swiss art dealer in Monaco of allegedly
overcharging him when he bought the work for $127.5 million in 2013.
The
value of private sales are rarely known, but a Willem de Kooning and a
Gauguin were previously thought the most expensive, sold in 2015
separately for $300 million each, according to US media reports.
Controversy
Auctioneer Jussi Pylkkanen opened bidding at $75 million, pulling in 45 bids from clients on the phone and in the room.
Whoops
and applause rippled through the packed room as bids quickly escalated
into unchartered territory, coming down to two head-to-head rivals on
the telephone.
Pylkkanen eventually
hammered the painting at $450 million. The final price came to $450.3
million including the buyer's premium.
Even
discounting any commission, that is a tidy profit for Dmitry
Rybolovlev, the boss of soccer club AS Monaco, who last bought the
painting in 2013.
The oligarch has
accused Yves Bouvier of conning him out of hundreds of million dollars
by overcharging him on a string of deals, including on the Da Vinci, and
pocketing the difference.
Bouvier bought
the work at Sotheby's for $80 million in 2013. He resold it within days
to the Russian tycoon, for $127.5 million.
He has denied any wrongdoing.
Christie's declined to comment on the controversy and had valued the painting pre-sale at $100 million.
'Holy Grail'
So
huge was interest that nearly 30,000 people flocked to see the painting
at Christie's showrooms in Hong Kong, London, San Francisco and New
York, the auction house said.
The work
was exhibited at The National Gallery in London in 2011, after years of
research trying to document its authenticity after it was found,
mistaken for a copy, in a US auction in 2005.
Christie's experts said the painting's rarity was difficult to overstate, calling it the "Holy Grail" for auction specialists.
For years it was presumed to have been destroyed, emerging only in 2005 when it was purchased from a US estate.
"It's
an extraordinary price for an extraordinary painting. Leonardo inspired
generations and continues to inspire today," said Francois de Poortere,
head of the Old Masters department at Christie's.
"He
was a genius of his time and people still see him as that. It's an
extraordinary feeling to see the magnetism around this painting."
The
painting depicts a half-length figure of Jesus, holding a crystal orb
in his left hand as he raises his right in benediction.
Christie's
says it belonged to Charles I, after possibly being made for the French
royal family and taken to England by Queen Henrietta Maria when she
married the English monarch in 1625.
Of
the roughly 20 known contemporary copies of the Mundi, some by pupils or
followers of the artist, none is of sufficient quality to support an
attribution to the master himself, the auction house says.
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