French curators worked for a decade to prepare a grand exhibition to celebrate the 500th anniversary of the death of Leonardo da Vinci. When it opened, the most talked about painting they planned to show – ‘Salvator Mundi’, the most expensive work ever sold at auction, was nowhere to be seen.
The painting was picked from a bad darkness during an estate sale in New Orleans. The painting was sold in 2017 as a rediscovered “lost” Leonardo and received more than $ 450 million from an anonymous bidder who hid it. The chance to see it at the Louvre Museum’s birthday show two years later created a sensation in the international art world, and its absence sparked a storm of new questions.
Did the Louvre conclude that the painting was not really the work of Leonardo, as a vocal handful of scholars insisted? According to Saudi Arabia’s Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman, would the buyer – although he has never admitted it – have refused to include it in the show for fear of public scrutiny? The provocative idea that the tumultuous Saudi prince would have risked a fortune on fraud inspired a cottage industry of books, documentaries, gossip columns from the art world and even a proposed Broadway musical.
None of that was true.
In fact, the Crown Prince had secretly sent the ‘Salvator Mundi’ to the Louvre more than a year earlier in 2018, according to several French officials and a confidential French report on its authenticity obtained by The New York Times. The report also states that the painting belongs to the Saudi Ministry of Culture – something the Saudis have never acknowledged.
A team of French scientists subjected the unframed canvas to a week-long forensic investigation using some of the most advanced technology available in the art world, and in their unknown report they spoke with more authority than any previous assessment that the painting appears to be the work to be. of Leonardo’s own hand.
Yet the Saudis withheld it for completely different reasons: a disagreement over a Saudi claim that their painting of Jesus should hang next to the ‘Mona Lisa’, several French officials said last week, on condition of anonymity because the talks were confidential.
Instead of a dispute over art science, it seems that the withdrawal of the painting rather raised questions about power and ego.
Some skeptics of the art world say that they suspect that the Saudis were never serious about including the painting in the French show, and that they wanted to supervise the work to see the commercial potential for it later on in a planned tourist spot in the to install, increase kingdom. However, current and former French officials say the Saudis were eager to hang their newly acquired trophy at the Louvre, as long as it was placed next to the most famous painting in the world.
By rejecting the claims as irrational and unworkable, the French in turn refused to disclose their own positive assessment of its authenticity unless the Saudis allowed the “Salvator Mundi” in the exhibition at the Louvre, after which the French government oversight.
And the resulting diplomatic disagreement between the French and the Saudis kept the painting out of sight as the cloud of intrigue around it still swelled.
“Honestly, I think all the taradiddle would have evaporated,” said Luke Syson, director of the Fitzwilliam Museum in Cambridge, England, a curator who oversaw a 2011 Leonardo exhibition at the National Gallery. in London containing the ‘Salvator Mundi’.
If the only painting is displayed, he explains, “people can decide for themselves to experience the picture.”
It is believed to have been painted around 1500, and ‘Salvator Mundi’ was one of two similar works listed in his inventory of the collection of King Charles I of England after his execution in 1649. But the historical record of its possession ends in the late 18th century. .
Then, around 2005, a few New York art dealers looking through an estate sale in New Orleans saw a poorly restored and partially painted picture that they thought would be worth a closer look. They acquired it for less than $ 10,000 and brought it to an expert specialist to remove the later varnishes and restore the original.
It has since changed hands several times and hung like a Leonardo in the 2011 exhibition at the National Gallery in London. But it was the record offer in 2017 – for $ 450 million – that changed the ‘Salvator Mundi’ headlines, especially after The New York Times reported that the anonymous buyer was a replacement for the crown prince of Saudi Arabia.
Now the controversy has once again made headlines with the release of a new French documentary last week in which it is alleged that the Louvre came to the conclusion that Leonardo ‘merely’ contributed to the ‘Salvator Mundi’. ‘The documentary airs on French television on Tuesday and features two disguised figures, identified as French government officials, claiming that Crown Prince Mohammed would not lend the painting to the commemorative exhibition because the Louvre refused to fully attribute the work to Leonardo.
In a telephone interview, the director of the documentary, Antoine Vitkine, said he stood by his allegations and said the president of the Louvre had refused to comment on the museum’s judgment on the ‘Salvator Mundi’.
The Louvre insisted that the report on the authenticity of the painting ‘does not exist’, said Mr. Viktine said.
Despite their denial, the Louvre curators secretly prepared a 46-page summary with a glossy magazine style of the conclusions of their forensic investigation into the painting. Its existence was first reported in March 2020 by Alison Cole of The Art Newspaper. Scanned copies of the confidential report became popular possessions among prominent Leonardo experts around the world, and The New York Times received several copies.
Experts from the Center for Research and Restoration of the Museums of France, an independent institute for cultural ministry, used fluorescent X-rays, infrared scans and digital cameras aimed at the details of the materials and art techniques in the microscopes. “Salvator Mundi” with the Louvre’s other Leonardo masterpieces.
The thin wooden pan on which the “Salvator Mundi” was painted was the same kind of walnut from Lombardy that Leonardo used in other works. The artist mixed fine powder glass into the paint, as Leonardo did in his later years.
Traces of hidden paintings beneath the visible layers, details in the locks of Christ’s hair and the shadow of bright million used in the shadows all pointed to Leonardo’s hand, the report concluded.
“All these arguments tend to favor the idea of a fully ‘signed’ work,” Vincent Delieuvin, one of the two curators of the commemorative exhibition, wrote in a lengthy essay describing the investigation and pointing out that the painting “unfortunately damaged by bad things. preservation ”and by“ old, undeniably cruel restorations. ”
Louvre president Jean-Luc Martinez was even more definite. “The results of the historical and scientific study presented in this publication enable us to confirm the attribution of the work to Leonardo da Vinci,” he wrote in the preface. (His current term will end this month, with French President Emmanuel Macron announcing too late whether to extend Mr Martinez’s term or appoint a new leader.)
The Louvre was so eager to include the “Salvator Mundi” in its anniversary exhibition that the curators planned to use an image of the painting at the front of its catalog, officials said.
But the Saudis are insisting that the ‘Salvator Mundi’ also cooperate with the ‘Mona Lisa’, asking too much, French officials said.
Extraordinary security measures around the “Mona Lisa” make the painting extremely difficult to move from its place on a special partition in the middle of the Salle des États, a large gallery on the top floor. The French officials would have protested to put a painting on it.
Franck Riester, the then French Minister of Culture, tried for weeks to mediate and suggested that the ‘Salvator Mundi’ could move as a compromise after a period in the commemorative show near the ‘Mona Lisa’, French officials said. .
And even after the exhibition opened in October 2019 without the “Salvator Mundi”, French officials tried.
Prince Bader bin Farhan al-Saud, an old friend of Crown Prince Mohammed, who acted as his replacement for the ‘Salvator Mundi’, was later appointed Saudi minister. When he happened to be visiting Paris, the French Minister of Culture and the Louvre president took him on a private tour of the museum and exhibition to try to persuade him to lend the painting, French officials said.
A spokesman for the Saudi embassy in Washington declined to comment.
A planned portion of the catalog outlining the verification was removed prior to publication and the museum ordered that all copies of the report be locked in storage.
Sophie Grange, a Louvre spokeswoman, said museum officials would be banned from discussing such documents because French rules prohibit disclosing any evaluation or verification of works that do not appear in the museum.
Corinne Hershkovitch, a leading French art lawyer, said that these ‘traditional traditions’ were formalized by law in 2013 in a decision to establish the status of heritage custodians. ‘
But because the French refuse to talk about the painting and the Saudis refuse to show it, the growing questions about the painting have taken a toll, said Robert Simon, a New York art dealer who was involved in the rediscovery of the painting. “Salvator Mundi,” he said.
“It’s kind of dirty,” he said, “because of all this unfounded speculation.”