Salvator Mundi: Five years
Five years ago, on 15 November 2017, Leonardo’s Salvator Mundi achieved the mind-boggling price of $450.3m at auction—a record that still stands. To mark the occasion we cast a journalistic eye on the picture's chequered fortunes and the controversies that still engulf it.
Five years since the $450m Salvator Mundi sale: a first-hand account of the nonsensical auction
At the record-breaking sale at Christie's New York on 15 November 2017, the audience gasped and whooped as if they were at a very exclusive firework display
The five year warranty on the Salvator Mundi by Leonardo is about to run out—could the buyer have asked for their money back?
Warranties of authenticity offered to buyers can be hard to enforce when auctioneers can fall back on the “generally accepted opinion of scholars and experts”
Damaged Salvator Mundi copy by unknown artist sells for €1m at Christie's
Dated to a century after Leonardo's death, the work does not come from the artist's studio
First international conference on Salvator Mundi: What was the role of Leonardo's workshop—and why is Christ wearing women's clothes?
There was an "open-minded and collegiate atmosphere" during scholarly proceedings in Leipzig, notably untouched by Leonardo "politics"
They seek him here, they seek him there, us journos seek him everywhere. Where the heck is the Salvator Mundi?
A timeline of the $450m Salvator Mundi: centuries of deals, disputes and drama
The Art Newspaper charts the existence of the world's most expensive work of art, from 1478 to today
'The Leonardo and the Carpet Dealer': the secretive first campaign to sell the Salvator Mundi
Respected textiles scholar and dealer Michael Franses was employed in 2009, by one of the syndicate who owned the painting, to offer it for sale to a handful of the world's leading museums
Did Leonardo da Vinci's studio produce two Salvator Mundis in parallel?
Martin Clayton, the Royal Collection Trust's head of prints and drawings presented his research at a major conference in Leipzig
Revealed: the first photograph of the Louvre's Leonardo book that was spiked over Salvator Mundi fiasco
The story of the "Léonard de Vinci. Le Salvator Mundi" publication that was withdrawn from sale
Leonardo review: Salvator Mundi hovers in the wings, but Louvre show is still magnificent without it
With a mass of the artist’s greatest works on its walls, the exhibition is a huge hit despite the non-appearance—so far—of the controversial painting