Paintings depict the emotions of the painter and the social impacts present within the era the painter lives in. With the added bonus of the painting done by a famous painter, the value of the painting goes up.
A painting of Christ by the Renaissance master Leonardo da Vinci sold for a record $450 million (380 million euros) at auction on November 15th, obliterating previous records for artworks sold at auction or privately.
The painting title as ‘Salvator Mundi,’ Italian for ‘Savior of the World’, is a rare painting recently discovered to be an original Leonardo da Vinci. The “Savior of the World” depicts Jesus Christ holding an Earth-like glass orb — was nearly forgotten forever during its 500-year journey from Italy to New York.
Leonardo is believed to have produced the work — painted in particularly expensive oil pigments on a walnut panel — sometime around 1500, most likely for then-King of France Louis XII, according to Dr. Robert Simon of Robert Simon Fine Art, who helped authenticate the work.
The whopping price of the Da Vinci painting dwarfed the previous record for the most expensive piece of art sold at auction, set at $179.4 million for Pablo Picasso’s “The Women of Algiers (Version O)” by Christie’s in 2015.
A backer of the ‘Salvator Mundi’ auction had guaranteed a bid of at least $100 million (85 million euros), the opening bid of the auction, which ran for 19 minutes. The price hit $300 million about halfway through the bidding.
People in the auction house gallery applauded and cheered when the bidding reached $300 million and when the hammer came down on the final bid, $400 million. The record sale price of $450 million includes the buyer’s premium, a fee paid by the winner to the auction house.
The winning bidder had not been identified as of late Wednesday night.
When ‘Salvator Mundi’ reappeared at auction in 1958, it was dismissed as a copy and sold for £45 ($59). Acquired by a group of art dealers for less than $10,000 in 2005, the painting — which was in poor condition and had been heavily overpainted — was painstakingly restored and subsequently authenticated.
The record-breaking price tag will come as a relief to previous owner Dmitry Rybolovlev, a Russian businessman, who bought the painting for $127.5 million in 2013.
‘Salvator Mundi’ is set to be the biggest lot at this year’s fall auction season, during which Christie’s and Sotheby’s can expect to achieve total sales of more than $1 billion.
Christie’s said pre-sale that the painting’s rarity was difficult to overstate. For years it was presumed to have been destroyed, emerging only in 2005 when it was purchased from a US estate.
“For auction specialists, this is pretty much the Holy Grail,” Loic Gouzer, co-chairman of Christie’s Americas post-war and contemporary art department, has said. “It doesn’t really get better than that.”
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