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.
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”
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
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
Comment
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
Feature
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"
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 Le Salvator Mundi" publication that was withdrawn from sale
'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