A 500-year-old painting of Christ believed to have been painted by Leonardo da Vinci has been sold in New York for a record $450m (£341m).
The painting is known as Salvator Mundi (Saviour of the World).
It is the highest auction price for any work of art and brought cheers and applause at the packed Christie’s auction room.
Leonardo da Vinci died in 1519 and there are fewer than 20 of his paintings in existence.
Just one is thought to be in private hands – the Salvator Mundi, believed to have been painted sometime after 1505.
The final bid for the work was $400m, with fees bringing the full price up to $450.3m. The unidentified buyer was involved in a bidding contest, via telephone, that lasted nearly 20 minutes.
The painting shows Christ with one hand raised, the other holding a glass sphere.
In 1958 it was sold at auction in London for $60. By then the painting was generally reckoned to be the work of a follower of Leonardo and not the work of Leonardo himself.
Salvator Mundi – da Vinci’s ‘mysterious masterpiece’
- The painting is being sold by the family trust of the Russian billionaire collector Dmitry E Rybolovlev, who is reported to have bought it in May 2013
- It apparently once belonged to King Charles I of England in the 1500s and was “rediscovered” in 2005
- Dr Tim Hunter, who is a specialist in Old Master and 19th Century paintings, says it is “the biggest discovery of the 21st Century”
- The painting has had major cosmetic surgery – its walnut panel base has been described as “worm-tunnelled” and at some point it seems to have been split in half – and efforts to restore it resulted in abrasions
- The previous top painting sale was Picasso’s Women of Algiers, which sold for $160m
Source: BBC
