And how does that help us come up with a number for today? The Burlington House Cartoon by Leonardo da Vinci. Mona Lisa is not only Leonardo da Vinci's most famous painting but the entire world's most famous painting. Six million dollars, thank you. Despite the excitement over the sale of the only Leonardo in private hands queues of people had formed around Rockefeller Center in New York to see the canvas many in the art world had wondered if the piece would find a buyer. SIMON: He spent much more time as a writer, a scientist, a draftsman than he did as a painter. Five-point-five million dollars to start. But no one thought it was still worth the $30.8 million Gates paid for it. But we need a lot more information than that before we make our estimate. 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. Amidst all these delightfully tangled histories, nothing rivals the Salvator Mundi. 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. Price excludes sales commission and other costs. Moreover, he was no doubt enticed by Duke Ludovico Sforzas brilliant court and the meaningful projects awaiting him there. (Swiss authorities investigated him for defrauding Rybolovlev over several artworks, but this year closed the case without charging him.) Ludovicos fall in 1499 sealed the fate of this abortive undertaking, which was perhaps the grandest concept of a monument in the 15th century. Saviour for Sale opens in the US on 17 September. 9. An attempt to psychoanalyze the buyer of Leonardo da Vinci's 'Salvator Mundi.' Tim Schneider , November 17, 2017 The scene at Christie's New York on November 15. TINDERA: That's right. The film doesn't take a stand on the painting's attribution, but makes it clear that museums, dealers and potential buyers had millions to gain along with incalculable prestige by choosing to believe it is a true Leonardo. Leonardo da Vinci was described as having a gracious but reserved personality and an elegant bearing. Additional audio credits: AP, CBS, GatesNotes-The Blog of Bill Gates. CLIP OF BILL GATES: So here, you're just seeing the page exactly as it looked to da Vinci. Highly esteemed, he was constantly kept busy as a painter and sculptor and as a designer of court festivals. Son of Daniel (conductor & cellist) and Eleanore Saidenberg who were Picasso's New York dealers from 1955 to 1973. At $28 million it's away from the room now and on the telephone at $28 million. And my background is as an art historian. Kenneth Griffin acquired it in 2004 from Wynn. ROBERT SIMON: My name is Robert Simon. And if you liked this story,sign up for the weekly bbc.com features newsletter, called The Essential List. Two of his most important worksthe Battle of Anghiari and the Leda, neither of them completedhave survived only in copies. Later in 2002, Thomson donated his private collection, including the Rubens, to the. The sale of Salvator Mundi, which was painted around 1500 and presumed lost until early this century, was Rybolovlevs largest to date. The sale generated a sustained 20 minutes of tense telephone bidding as the auctioneer Jussi Pylkknen juggled rival suitors before a packed crowd of excited onlookers in the salesroom. The earliest sale on the list below (Vase with Fifteen Sunflowers by Vincent van Gogh) is from March 1987; with a price of 24.75 million (74.1 million in 2021 currency). 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. Christies sells long-lost Salvator Mundi, artwork billed as biggest discovery of the 21st century, for $400m plus auction house premium. The final winning bid? You can't really show it offwhether it's to your best friends or in a museum if you're a public institution. Thanks for having me. Fifty-fivefive-point-five million dollars to start it. The quality of the painting itself divides people. A handpicked selection of stories from BBC Future, Culture, Worklife and Travel, delivered to your inbox every Friday. Rybolovlev resold Gauguin's Otahi before 2017 for less than $50 million. Self-portrait as Archangel Gabriel unveiled, Queen's Leonardo da Vinci drawings to be shown across UK cities, Salvator Mundi by Leonardo Da Vinci before and after restoration. Gifted with a curious mind and a brilliant. ", 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. He had an exceedingly inquisitive mind and made strenuous efforts to become erudite in languages, natural science, mathematics, philosophy, and history, among other subjects. With closing fees from the auction house, it came out to $30.8 million. 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. Leonardo da Vinci was a Renaissance painter, sculptor, architect, inventor, military engineer and draftsman the epitome of a true Renaissance man. Please refer to the appropriate style manual or other sources if you have any questions. Two new documentaries delve into the ongoing saga of Leonardo da Vinci's Salvator Mundi in a moment when true art crime stories are at their peak, writes Caryn James. Leonardo da Vinci. In the past year two documentaries, the engaging Made You Look and the pedestrian Driven to Abstraction, tackled the case of the Knoedler Gallery in New York, which for nearly two decades sold forgeries supposedly by 20th-Century masters including Mark Rothko and Jackson Pollock. By 1508, Leonardo returned to Milan, working for the French rulers of the city. 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. In this room, inon the telephone rather, at $28 million. So, we reached out to Martin Kemp, who is another da Vinci scholar, and an Oxford University emeritus professor. Read about our approach to external linking. The rest are owned by museums around the world. So, they decided to hold an auction through Christie's, and it took place in London in December 1980. Not everyone is a fan. Edvard Munch "The Scream" (1895): $135.2 million 9. Is it even a Leonardo at all? 1. French President Emmanuel Macron pictured in 2018 with the owner of the Leonardo, Crown Prince Mohammad bin Salman (Credit: Photo by Bandar Algaloud/Getty Images), "The Louvre is supported by the government, the ministry of culture and ultimately Macron," Cole tells BBC Culture. The Met has since returned the coffin to Egypt. Robert Simon told us that he thought it would not sell for less than $150 million. PETERSON-WITHORN: Two were da Vinci drawings of draperies. $450 million That price more than doubled the. And so I think it's, you know, not so much, Let's look at it and see what would happen if we took scissors to it and divided it up. But just to say, Here we have something of such significance, partly because it has survived 500 years without, you know, being destroyed.. His Last Supper (149598) and Mona Lisa (c. 150319) are among the most widely popular and influential paintings of the Renaissance. Leonardo da Vincis parents were unmarried at the time of his birth near a small village named Vinci in Tuscany. And then amid. The artwork alone garners thousands of visitors from around the world to the famous gallery it is placed in - the . It may have been that the rather sophisticated spirit of Neoplatonism prevailing in the Florence of the Medici went against the grain of Leonardos experience-oriented mind and that the more strict, academic atmosphere of Milan attracted him. Alan Wintermute, a senior specialist in old master paintings at Christies in London, called it the holy grail of old masters. But there would, there are people in the world that would probably do that. An artist by disposition and endowment, he considered his eyes to be his main avenue to knowledge; to Leonardo, sight was mans highest sense because it alone conveyed the facts of experience immediately, correctly, and with certainty. This is the mirror where we flip it around, and now here it is in English. In 1472 Leonardo was accepted into the painters guild of Florence, but he remained in his teachers workshop for five more years, after which time he worked independently in Florence until 1481. Finding a new one is rarer than finding a new planet, he said. And flipping through this copy, I have to say, I cant read a word of this. A jump to $400m. The bidding then resumed: $353m, $355m. Head of anApostle. A lost painting by Leonardo da Vinci may have been found in a Scottish farmhouse, reported The Daily Mail. So of course, da Vinci never called it the Codex Leicester or the Codex Hammer. Back in 1980 according to an Associated Press report, the man who was the Earl of Leicester at the time decided to sell the Codex, which had been part of the Earl's estate for more than 250 years. The work, thought to be a 500-year-old portait of Madonna and child, is potentially worth over $150 million (100 million) if experts are able to prove its authenticity. The Salvator Mundi can be exhibited, and if it goes to a museum in Saudi Arabia, and people travel there and go to see it, I mean, it would have in terms of that income value I was talking about, it would have, you know, a phenomenal one, you know, perhaps quite in excess of the $450 million that it brought at auction. The Virgin and Child with St Anne was painted by Leonardo Da Vinci in 1510. But when I saw it, it didn't sit comfortably with me as an autograph Leonardo." The general attitude toward art crime, he says, used to be shrugged off as "it's billionaires spending money, crooking each other", but today there is a realisation that "no, you can't loot that country's entire cultural heritage". TINDERA: That's Darren Winston. Here are 20 of Leonardo da Vinci's most famous paintings: Mona Lisa by Leonardo da Vinci. 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. JoinBBC Culture Film and TV Clubon Facebook, a community for cinephiles all over the world. Why do bad things happen to Author of. This stands as the most expensive painting by a living artist. Life of Leonardo da Vinci, a Short Biography 1. In this episode, we're taking you inside the world of rare books, manuscripts, and Old Masters works to tell you about how we've estimated the value of one very special notebook, with ties to the world's most expensive painting ever sold at auction: the Salvator Mundi. For this notebook, we considered values ranging from $50 million, all the way up to $4 billion. It's on the last telephone at $28 million. Re-sold for 12m to Stavros Niarchos in 1993. 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. "A Botticelli Portrait Sells for $92 Million at Sotheby's Auction", "Christie's 'Secret Weapon' in Rockefeller's 'Sale of the Century' | Auctions News | THE VALUE | Art News", "Claude Monet (18401926), Nymphas en fleur", Greatest German Renaissance Madonna sold by prince, Vincent van Gogh (18531890) Laboureur dans un champ, U.K. Buys Titian Diana Painting for 50 Million Pounds, Titian deal paves way for next acquisition, "Mark Rothko: No. Leonardo grew up on his fathers familys estate, where he was treated as a legitimate son and received the usual elementary education of the day: reading, writing, and arithmetic. He's the head of the Books, Maps and Manuscripts department at Freeman's Auction House in Philadelphia. At the time bin Salman was trying to burnish Saudi Arabia's image by loosening a few restrictions. Salvator Mundi, the long-lost Leonardo da Vinci painting of Jesus Christ commissioned by King Louis XII of France more than 500 years ago, has sold at Christies in New York for $450.3m, including auction house premium, shattering the world record for any work of art sold at auction. And Lewis has a new eight-episode podcast, Art Bust: Scandalous Stories of the Art World, which promises stories of "the ugliest crimes, the biggest scandals and the murky in-between." So Gates sort of went out and bought the ultimate book. Steve Wynn, who bid on the painting at auction, privately acquired the work several months later from the unidentified buyer for an undisclosed, supposedly lower price. That's why these valuations can be so tricky. The Louvre very much wanted to include it in its grand exhibition to celebrate Leonardo's 500th anniversary in 2019. But we ended up contacting others who we thought might know the work well, too. The image of Christ as The Saviour of the World was billed as The Last da Vinci at Christie's 2017 auction, where it sold for a record $450 million (342 million) to a proxy for bin Salman (yes, that bin Salman, whom the CIA found responsible for ordering the murder of the journalist Jamal Khashoggi). His drawing of the Vitruvian Man (c. 1490) has also become a cultural icon. For example, on June 25, 2019, the American hedge fund manager J. Tomilson Hill bought a recently rediscovered Judith and Holofernes (1607) attributed to Caravaggio, two days before it would have been auctioned in Toulouse. At the same time, Bouvier was negotiating and eventually succeeded to buy the painting for $112 million from Ursula Ucicky, widow of, Some fear existed, that Portrait of Dr. Gachet had been cremated with the owner in 1996, but Gachet's portrait was privately resold to. [note 1] Where necessary, the price is first converted to dollars using the exchange rate at the time the painting was sold. 1 (Royal Red and Blue)", "Claude Monet (18401926), Odalisque couche aux magnolias", "Basquiat Tops Phillips Contemporary Sale at $85 Million", "Titian masterpiece Diana and Callisto saved for nation", "No. The painting was sold in November 2017,[1][2] through the auction house Christie's in New York City. What is Leonardo da Vinci best known for? In The Lost Leonardo, Evan Beard, a Bank of America executive who deals with art as investment, talks about the common buyers' motive of using artworks as collateral for other financial manoeuvres. The 16th-century writer Giorgio Vasari indicated that Leonardo cared little for money but was very generous toward his friends and assistants. Exact price (even the currency of sale) is not known, with estimates from $250 million to $300 million, Within weeks after a private viewing in Vienna in September 2012, Rybolovlev agreed to pay $183.8 million via his dealer Bouvier. He decided that the Codex's fair market value was $50 million. TINDERA: Gates is up against a group from a bank in Milan thats sitting in the front of the Christie's salesroom. TINDERA: I'm looking through a copy of whats now called the Codex Leicester, which I purchased online for about $30. But now the Salvator Mundi has become the poster boy for the volatile mix of money, power and geopolitics that defines the art world today. Yves Bouvier, a Swiss art dealer, bought the painting from the New York dealers for $83 million, reportedly on behalf of his client, a Russian oligarch named Dmitry Rybolovlev, though this is disputed by Mr Bouvier. As everyone who does not live in utter isolation knows, a painting of Christ known as the "Salvator Mundi" ("Savior of the World") by the Italian Renaissance artist Leonardo da Vinci was. In 1472 Leonardo was accepted into the painters guild of Florence, but he remained in his teachers workshop for five more years, after which time he worked independently in Florence until 1481. St John the Baptist by Leonardo da Vinci. He was described in our Forbes 400 issue of the magazine that year as both a hard worker and brutally candid.. And trying to balance them And of course, one of the things in doing an appraisal like this is you just don't put them in a mix, whatever. Christies CEO, Guillaume Cerutti, said he did not know whether the buyer would reveal themselves. Corrections? It would not draw more than the Salvator Mundi, which sold for $450 million. Qi Baishi "Twelve Landscape Screens" (1925): $148.7 million 7. MASSEY: Twenty-five million, twenty-six million. MASSEY: At 16 million, 17 million. PETERSON-WITHORN: Yeah, when I heard about that $12 million sale, I remembered that the Codex had about 360 illustrations inside of it. 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. TINDERA: Right. As of 2023, Leonardo da Vinci's net worth is $320 million. It is believed to have been compiled between 1506 and 1510. In fact, it was also noted in the Codexs 1994 auction catalogue written by late da Vinci scholar Carlo Pedretti, that the Mona Lisa is, "indeed a visual synthesis of Leonardo's scientific knowledge as summed up in the Codex.". It's now been determined that his painting is not, in fact, a da Vinci. Twenty-eight million. He applied his creativity to every realm in which graphic representation is used: he was a painter, sculptor, architect, and engineer. TINDERA: Slicing up and selling off a beautiful manuscript or book is not without precedent, though, Robert explained to us. This means the Codex is certainly one of the world's most valuable pieces of art. Encyclopaedia Britannica's editors oversee subject areas in which they have extensive knowledge, whether from years of experience gained by working on that content or via study for an advanced degree. Using monthly averages gives slightly different numbers, most significantly for paintings sold early or late in a year with significant inflation. His father, Ser Piero, was a Florentine notary and landlord, and his mother, Caterina, was a young peasant woman who shortly thereafter married an artisan. a 2011 exhibition at the National Gallery in London, Art Bust: Scandalous Stories of the Art World, Kim Kardashian was photographed next to it. (crowd laughs) Good start. He said that he would guess that if the Codex were to go up for auction again, the auction estimate for the item might be $150 million. The figure more than doubles the existing record for an artwork sold at auction: a $179.4 million bid for a Picasso in 2015. A New York Times story on the sale remarked that it was the highest price ever paid at auction for a manuscript. PETERSON-WITHORN: Exactly. So, you know, it's something I've sort of been following for, you know, a good part of my life. It stayed with the Earl of Leicesters estate until 1980, when it finally went up for auction. Soon, the painting was on its way to Christie's. The only non-Western modern artwork listed is that of the Chinese-French painter Zao Wouki's oil painting Juin-Octobre 1985, which was sold for $65 million in 2018. (Maybe so, but in the films and other reproduced images it does have a more cloying look). Inside besides da Vinci's writings, there are also about 360 drawings and diagrams throughout the manuscript. I wana write a poem about it. ARCHIVAL CLIP-STEPHEN MASSEY, CHRISTIES: The Leonardo da Vinci Codex Hammer. In 1482 Leonardo moved to Milan to work in the service of the citys dukea surprising step when one realizes that the 30-year-old artist had just received his first substantial commissions from his native city of Florence: the unfinished panel painting Adoration of the Magi for the monastery of San Donato a Scopeto and an altar painting for the St. Bernard Chapel in the Palazzo della Signoria, which was never begun. TINDERA: That average of every expert opinion worked out to about $130 million. Rybolovlev resold Te Fare in February 2017 at Christie's in London for $25 million. Apparently, Hammer had made a habit of buying things with Occidental Petroleum money. 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. The role of most of these associates is unclear, leading to the question of Leonardos so-called apocryphal works, on which the master collaborated with his assistants. And that was the process. A scene from Saviour for Sale, a second documentary about the Salvator Mundi, by French journalist Antoine Vitkine (Credit: Zadig Productions). I think it's the greatest acquisition I ever made. So it's difficult to get much better than someone who has actually appraised an item. She tells BBC Culture, "Since then, Dianne Modestini continued to work on it. MASSEY: Twenty-seven million. Leonardo devoted 12 yearswith interruptionsto this task. The disciples, devastated by Christ stating one of them would cause his death, convey their feelings dramatically through their body language. Leonardo Da Vinci 1503 It was kept it at the Palace at Fontainebleau, where it remained until King Louis XIV moved the painting to the Palace of Versailles. ", Leonardo da Vinci's Salvator Mundi was sold by Christie's in 2017 for a record-breaking $450 million (Credit: Photo by Ilya S Savenok/Getty Images for Christie's Auction House). The paintings transferred to the dealers include a late, Alan Bond could not pay off the painting, and. SIMON: And if you look at the illuminated manuscripts that are from, you know, missiles, and you know, these are Renaissance manuscripts, many of them have been broken apart. In this episode of Priceless, staff writer Michela Tindera and deputy wealth editor Chase Peterson-Withorn explain how Forbes determines the value of a one-of-a-kind Leonardo da Vinci manuscript that Bill Gates purchased in 1994. TINDERA: Hammer is also the great-grandfather of Hollywood actor Armie Hammer. PETERSON-WITHORN: And the fifth was a drawing by Michelangelo called The Holy Family with the Infant St. John the Baptist, which also sold to the Getty Museum in 1993, for $6.3 million. A major turning point came when the painting was controversially displayed as an authentic Leonardo at a 2011 exhibition at the National Gallery in London. Previewing the lot last month, Christies described the painting of Christ holding a crystal orb in his left hand and raising his right in benediction as the biggest discovery of the 21st century. Leonardo da Vinci (1452-1519) is one of the most intriguing personalities in the history of Western art. Its the zenith of my career as an auctioneer. He was listed in the register of the royal household as pictor et ingeniarius ducalis (painter and engineer of the duke). Omissions? Among Leonardos pupils at this time were Giovanni Antonio Boltraffio, Ambrogio de Predis, Bernardino de Conti, Francesco Napoletano, Andrea Solari, Marco dOggiono, and Salai. The subjects range from Inigo Philbrick, criminally charged with defrauding clients by selling more than 100% of shares in artworks, to a golden Egyptian coffin whose smuggled past came to light after Kim Kardashian was photographed next to it at the Metropolitan Museum's Costume Institute gala. TINDERA: But admittedly, Darren told us that he wasn't a da Vinci, or Codex expert and was hesitant to put a value on it out of the gate. He currently resides in Vinci, Italy. - The world's greatest art detective, - The men who Leonardo da Vinci loved, - The detail that unlocks the Mona Lisa. CLIP OF BILL GATES: Taking Leonardo's notebook and translating them so everybody can understand the way that da Vinci thought a little better than before is very important. [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. At $28 million. When Leonardo was about 15, his father, who enjoyed a high reputation in the Florentine community, apprenticed him to artist Andrea del Verrocchio.