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Salvator Mundi by Leonardo: a sheikh, an oligarch and a few cunning art dealers

2021-04-09T19:16:31.800Z


No Hollywood director could have imagined this story better: A documentary film is dedicated to the most expensive picture in the world, Leonardo's »Salvator Mundi« - and shows how crazy the art world is.


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Auction of the "Salvator Mundi" 2017: 450 million dollars as a bet on the future

Photo: 

mk2 films

This film about an old painting seems, at least in places, like a crook comedy.

The view of the museums, of yachts and, from high above, of the desert, plus lively music.

And only the participants, no Hollywood director could have chosen these characters, some of whom seem overdrawn, better.

This is a documentary and the protagonists are not actors, but themselves. The dealers, the experts, the oligarch, the sheikh.

They are real, but is the image that drives them all crazy too authentic?

With this one and a half hour contribution, the French journalist and documentary filmmaker Antoine Vitkine himself created a masterpiece that is entertaining, elegant, revealing.

Of course, it draws mainly from the fact that the reality is so incredible: a picture that cost 1,175 dollars in 2005 was transfigured into a myth that twelve years later was worth an incredible 450 million dollars.

Many had their part in it, and the hubris of one benefited the business acumen of the other.

Third rate auction house in New Orleans

Incidentally, Vitkine does not claim to reveal everything.

Like Leonardo once (and it's about Leonardo), he leaves some things in the vague.

At the end of the day, as a viewer, you ask yourself a few questions, and that achieves a lot.

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Documentary filmmaker Antoine Vitkine: Elegant exposure of a secret science

Photo: Benjamin Boccas / mk2 films

One thing is certain: the aforementioned oil painting shows Christ as Redeemer, as "Salvator Mundi".

What is also certain is that the price at which it was auctioned was a world record and remains unbroken to this day.

Everything else is no longer quite so certain.

And it is precisely from this - that some things are so inexplicable to incomprehensible - that the film lives.

Many traders and experts replace the search for truth with wishful thinking.

Filmmaker Vitkine got some talking who may regret it.

The US dealer who bought the picture in a third-rate auction house in New Orleans in 2005 because he saw "potential", some of whom he had the painting restored for a lot of money, is still quite good, in any case not so clever at all say, however, that he actually had it painted new and »flashy«.

Because suddenly the work looked very much like more, as if it could come from Leonardo da Vinci himself, from the most famous painter in history.

At some point a Russian living in Monaco came into play

But then there are the professionals who are so surprisingly easy to impress.

There is Luke Syson, the then curator of the immensely venerable London National Gallery, who brought the painting and a few experts in.

The elderly Renaissance connoisseur Martin Kemp also appeared with his hair that was too darkly tinted, who did not consider himself a savior, but a higher authority in his field.

Both museum man Syson and art historian god Kemp were impressed by the "presence" of the painting.

A presence that only Leonardo could have created himself.

And that is perhaps the most important insight that the film enables: works can occasionally cost huge sums of money, they can acquire a significance and popularity that can influence an entire nation - what would France be without the Mona Lisa?

But the history of art, which today contributes to the formation of new icons, is practiced like a medieval secret science, even the most famous experts rely above all on one method of analysis: on their eyes, on their intuition.

Whoever looks at this picture recognizes Leonardo, who says, "I can see the face of Christ", as curator Syson put it.

Art historian Kemp felt reminded of the Mona Lisa when he looked at the soft lips of the Savior.

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Bids for the "Salvator Mundi": From $ 1,175 to $ 450 million in twelve years.

Photo: mk2 films

Syson then even showed - and refined - the work in his Leonardo show in the National Gallery in 2011, turning a possible picture from the area or Leonardo's workshop into a handwritten original, a masterpiece without compromises, without a minus sign.

But strangely enough, there were no museums afterwards, no established collectors who wanted to buy this sensation.

At some point, a Russian oligarch living in Monaco came into play and wanted to acquire this savior.

There is little doubt that it could be the Saudi crown prince

His middleman also appeared on the scene (and in the film documentation), who arranged and processed the deal - but in such a way that the oligarch later felt himself cheated out of 44 million euros.

When the duped Russian wanted to sell the picture, which had only been mothballed in a bonded warehouse anyway, Christie's came into play.

PR experts hired by the auction house staged the work as the "last da Vinci", filmed people who burst into tears, and the house's top auctioneer auctioned the work, which was now almost an icon, for $ 450 million in 2017.

With that, the story and the film could have been over, a happy ending for everyone involved, even the humiliated oligarch had now made an excellent cut.

But first of all, half the world wanted to know who had bought the picture for this magical (or crazy) sum - a sheikh?

- and secondly, the whispering simply did not want to silence, according to which the work was only partially or perhaps not at all created by Leonardo.

The Louvre was also planning an exhibition on Leonardo, on the 500th anniversary of his death in 2019. Hardly anyone doubted that the new owner came from the Gulf region, that it could be the Saudi crown prince, that oil money was used safely.

That was also obvious to the German art historian Frank Zöllner at the time, he spoke in SPIEGEL of "desperate money", of a "bet on the future" in which the Emirates could no longer live from oil and on tourism and therefore also on art history magnets put.

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Saudi Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman: embarrassed or the winner in the end?

Photo: mk2 films

Whoever owned the work wanted on the one hand to remain anonymous in 2019, but on the other hand wanted to accommodate the painting in the Louvre exhibition - if it had been labeled as the master’s handwritten and exclusive work, that might have silenced all doubters.

Only this blessing would have turned the purchase into a coup.

The film claims that the picture was even sent to Paris and examined in detail in the Louvre, but that they (unlike the National Gallery in London) did not want to display and label it as one that was created by genius alone.

Because Leonardo did not have that, he only participated - this is how the film presents the opinion of the Louvre.

The Louvre, however, is ultimately the ultimate authority, even higher than the British Kemp.

more on the subject

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  • Virtual tour of the Louvre: Mona Lisa without bulletproof glassBy Ulrike Knöfel

Vincent Delieuvin, one of the curators of the Louvre, also appears briefly in the film; he co-curated the exhibition on Leonardo.

In February 2019, months before the opening, he took a lot of time for SPIEGEL, invited people to the museum, saying he would have liked to borrow “Salvator Mundi” for his show.

In fact, despite his polite manner, he did not seem to be someone who would be told how to label the exhibit.

There was no doubt about that after the conversation.

After the 2017 auction, Eike Schmidt, director of the Uffizi Gallery in Florence, told SPIEGEL that the seemingly unimaginably high price of $ 450 million had already taken into account that the work was controversial.

An undisputed Leonardo would have brought much more, this sum was a so-called "Hope Value", the auctioneers did not sell an original, but the mere possibility that the picture could be recognized as an original in the future.

Now perhaps the hope lies in the fact that the picture was still worth the money, should it come up again at some point, perhaps everyone wanted to see the "male Mona Lisa" for which someone has spent so many millions.

It also happens in the film that the unimaginable can only be imagined in the world of art, that it really happens there.

Source: spiegel

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