Leonardo da Vinci: Salvator Mundi
oil on panel. 25 7/8 x 18 in. (65.7 x 45.7 cm.)
Christie’s to auction Leonardo da Vinci’s Salvator Mundi Christie’s will auction Leonardo da Vinci’s ‘Salvator Mundi’ on its Sale of Post-War and Contemporary Art on November 15, 2017 in Rockefeller Plaza, New York.]]>
October 10, 2017, source: Christie’s
Dating from around 1500, the haunting oil on panel painting depicts a half-length figure of Christ as Savior of the World, facing frontally and dressed in flowing robes of lapis and crimson. He holds a crystal orb in his left hand as he raises his right hand in benediction. Leonardo’s painting of Salvator Mundi was long believed to have existed but was generally presumed to have been destroyed until it was rediscovered in 2005.
The painting was first recorded in the Royal collection of King Charles I (1600-1649), and thought to have hung in the private chambers of Henrietta Maria – the wife of King Charles I – in her palace in Greenwich, and was later in the collection of Charles II. “Salvator Mundi” is next recorded in a 1763 sale by Charles Herbert Sheffield, the illegitimate son of the Duke of Buckingham, who put it into auction following the sale of what is now Buckingham Palace to the king.
It then disappeared until 1900 when it was acquired by Sir Charles Robinson as a work by Leonardo’s follower, Bernardino Luini, for the Cook Collection, Doughty House, Richmond. By this time, its authorship by Leonardo, origins and illustrious royal history had been forgotten, and Christ’s face and hair were overpainted. In the dispersal of the Cook Collection, it was ultimately consigned to a sale at Sotheby’s in 1958 where it sold for £45. It disappeared once again for nearly 50 years, emerging in 2005 when it was purchased from an American estate at a small regional auction house. Its rediscovery was followed by six years of painstaking research and inquiry to document its authenticity with the world’s leading authorities on the works and career of da Vinci.
In 2011, the dramatic public unveiling of “Salvator Mundi” (‘Savior of the World’) in the exhibition “Leonardo da Vinci: Painter at the Court of Milan” at The National Gallery, London, caused a worldwide media sensation.
Related content
The ‘Salvator Mundi’: a long lost Leonardo da Vinci? (article by theartwolf published after the rediscovery of this work in 2011)
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