It is a phantom catalog dedicated to the most expensive painting in the world, Leonardo da Vinci's “Salvator Mundi”, bought for 450 million by the Saudi Arabian Ministry of Culture in 2017. The Louvre refuses to comment on this little book that should never have leaked into the press.
The museum, via its specialist in Italian painting and researchers from C2RM, the laboratory of the museums of France which analyzed the painting, wrote it, made it but not sold it.
Strangely, after a supposed bug, the book of which we were able to read all the texts had been available for an hour or two at the Librairie du Louvre in December 2019, before being removed from the shelves.
An English art critic had been able to obtain it, had published a few quotes from it, but without much echo.
Today, its circulation in several media has the effect of a bomb.
Here's why.
In October 2019, at the opening of the Leonardo da Vinci retrospective at the Louvre, for the 500th anniversary of the death of the Renaissance giant, everyone hoped to discover the “Salvator Mundi”, this painting lost then found, sold as a copy for 1175 dollars in 2005, before becoming, in November 2017, the most expensive painting in the world and by far, when it was acquired by Saudi Arabia and the sulphurous Crown Prince Mohamed Ben Salman.
But since 2017, this painting of a Christ “Savior of the World” has never been exhibited.
This damaged table was discussed even in its attribution.
A documentary broadcast this Tuesday evening on France 5, "Salvator Mundi, the astonishing affair of the last Vinci" (at 8:50 p.m.), develops a thesis according to which, for the Louvre, the painting at the astronomical price would certainly have been produced in part by Leonardo, but also by his assistants.
The museum would have liked to present it with a “Leonardo da Vinci and workshop” cartel, which was unacceptable to Saudi Arabia.
Saudi Arabia absolutely wanted to make her the star of the exhibition
But this phantom catalog, written following a long scientific expertise, infrared and X-fluorescence analyzes which make it possible to radiograph and map all the pictorial layers, says something quite different: he is a pure Leonardo, without the slightest doubt.
For Jean-Luc Martinez, president of the Louvre, who signs the preface, “the results of the historical and scientific study presented in this work make it possible to confirm the attribution to the work of Leonardo da Vinci, a seductive hypothesis proposed to the early 2010s and which has sometimes been contested.
The exhibition of the painting near the other original works of the master kept by the Louvre is therefore a major event for Leonardo's studies and in the history of our museum ”.
We couldn't be more clear and definitive!
But why was the painting not there, if it is so important?
SALVATOR MUNDI THE AMAZING CASE OF THE LAST VINCI
The Saudi monarchy, very proud of its 450 million masterpiece, absolutely wanted to display it next to "The Mona Lisa".
VCG Wilson / Corbis via Getty Images / FTV Fine Art
A first response emerges in the very complicated negotiations between France and Saudi Arabia for his arrival.
The monarchy, very proud of its 450 million masterpiece, absolutely wanted to make it the star of the exhibition, by displaying it next to "The Mona Lisa".
But the latter was not there!
The Mona Lisa, also very damaged behind her divine smile, never leaves her floor while the exhibition was held in the Hall Napoleon, in the basement of the museum.
Prince MBS probably tried to twist the arm of the Louvre a bit, with a weighty argument: just before the exhibition, the Mona Lisa had been moved inside the museum for two months due to modernization work on the Salle of the States, his usual home.
Moving it was therefore, in reality, not impossible.
The Louvre, at the time, explained to us that it did not wish to include Mona Lisa in the exhibition because of the too dense flow of visitors it would have caused.
It's an oddity: the largest museum in the world, a former labyrinthine royal palace, does not really have the exhibition spaces it deserves… The same problem arose during the Vermeer exhibition, where he had was very complicated to manage the flow of curious people.
The Saudis did not give in
But negotiations on the Salvator Mundi's arrival continued after the exhibition launched.
The Louvre has hoped to have it for at least the last two months, after some ups and downs in the tug-of-war.
This is also why there is an bis, phantom catalog.
The complete record of the work could not be integrated into the official catalog without certainty about its arrival.
The museum believed in it even after the opening, like a final bouquet, the surprise of the chef, it is written in black and white in this booklet: "This text completes that of the catalog, remained reserved and general in the absence of the work
(Editor's note: the Salvator Mundi)
at the opening of the exhibition.
On the occasion of the presentation of the work at the Louvre, it was possible for us to make public the results of the analyzes which renew the material knowledge of this painting.
»An incredible sentence that takes for granted the presence of the most expensive painting in the world, which ultimately will not come.
VIDEO.
"Salvator Mundi": where has the most expensive painting in the world gone?
The Saudis did not give in.
A valuation at the level of the Mona Lisa or nothing.
For 450 million, all the same… One can also think that the Louvre, which carried out a retrospective of great scientific exigency, sometimes criticized for its austerity, hesitated.
To give in was to prepare for a huge Mona Lisa vs Salvator Mundi show.
Without a doubt, the exhibition would not have been the same at all.
It was a bit Messi against Mbappé, and too bad for the others.
A sick masterpiece
And, on closer inspection, this booklet does not really invalidate the thesis of Antoine Vitkine's film presented this Tuesday evening on France 5. At least not completely.
The C2RMF researchers admittedly attribute the painting to Leonardo, and to him alone, after having updated his unique approach: its very slow preparation, by modifying the position of Christ's thumb, which a student would not have done, but which Leonardo, who painted endlessly, was used to.
The use of crushed glass, his signature, as well as the virtuoso use of vermilion in shadows and hair.
So much for the positives.
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However, admit the experts, it lacks "an impression of life" on the face of Christ, that which radiates on the faces of Mona Lisa or of Saint John the Baptist.
This life peculiar to Leonardo, to his famous sfumato, this very gentle transition from shadow to light, was certainly there at the origin, but "old restorations no doubt too brutal" make this work in its originality. current state a real Leonardo, but not a great Vinci.
A sick masterpiece.
A painting blessed with its price, but a cursed Salvator, which has lost its luster.
It is also this Tuesday, April 13, that the President of the Republic must announce, either the renewal of Jean-Luc Martinez, boss of the Louvre since 2013, for a final term of three years, or his replacement after two terms.
Emmanuel Macron's decision could be postponed for a few days due to the pandemic.
The Louvre is closed, but in the palace, we hold our breath.
It is intriguing that this ghost catalog comes out at that time.
The laboratory of the Louvre and the museums of France, by analyzing the “Salvator Mundi”, worked for a foreign state.
There was a confidentiality agreement for this expertise, the results of which belong, just like the table, to Saudi Arabia.
Its disclosure is one more mystery, not the last, in the tormented history of the world's most expensive painting.