Leonardo Da Vinci’s Salvator Mundi Sold For More Than $450 Million, Breaking World Record

Touted as the last painting attributed to Leonardo Da Vinci still in private hands, Salvator Mundi (Saviour of the World) hit the astronomical price of $450,312,500 (including buyer's premium) Wednesday night in New York, becoming the most expensive work of art ever sold at auction.

Starting at $100 million and steeped in epic-level hype, Salvator Mundi was sold by Christie’s as “a rapt audience of nearly 1,000 art collectors, dealers, advisors, journalists and onlookers packed into the main auction room at Rockefeller Center, with many thousands more tuning in via a live stream ,” Christie’s reported in its website.

” Jussi Pylkkänen, Christie's Global President, brought the hammer down on Lot 9 after an extraordinary bidding battle that lasted just under 20 minutes. The contest boiled down to two bidders, with the increments jumping at one point from $332 million to $350 million in one bid and then, at barely 18 minutes, from $370 million to $400 million. Gasps were heard in the sales room, which gave way to applause when Christie's co-chairman Alex Rotter made the winning bid for a client on the phone.”

The possibility that a museum could afford to buy the haunting, 500-year-old painting of Jesus Christ, known in the art world as the "male Mona Lisa " because of its unreadable expression, the delicately placed hands and the intricacy of the curls of his hair, all characteristic of Da Vinci's style, was for months the subject of  international speculation.

Still now the attribution of the work to Leonardo is not universally accepted in the art world. "One critic has described the surface of the painting to be 'inert, varnished, lurid, scrubbed over and repainted so many times that it looks simultaneously new and old,' reported the BBC.

For the New York Times critic Jason Farago , it was "a proficient but not especially distinguished religious picture from turn-of-the-16th-century Lombardy, put through a wringer of restorations."

Christie’s , has insisted that the painting is authentic and presented it as 'the greatest artistic rediscovery of the 20th century.'

The masterpiece was long lost and then rediscovered in a story "as fascinating as any best-selling thriller," according to Christie’s . It’s one of only 20 surviving paintings accepted as originating from the artist's own hand, and was auctioned as the star of Christie’s Post-War and Contemporary Evening Sale , "a testament to the enduring relevance of this picture.”

The previous holder of the record price for an Old Master painting was Massacre of the Innocents by Peter Paul Rubens, which sold for $76.7 million (£49.5 million) in 2002. The previous auction record for Leonardo da Vinci was set at Christie's in 2001 when Horse and Rider , a work on paper, sold for $11,481,865. The previous record for the most expensive work of art at auction was set in the same Christie's saleroom, when Picasso's Les Femmes d’Alger (Version 'O') achieved $179,364,992.

The New York sale Wednesday evening "of the most iconic figure in the world by the most important artist of all times," offered the world’s richest collectors a once-in-a-lifetime opportunity, given that all other surviving paintings by Da Vinci, who died in 1519, are owned by museums.

It was sold by the family trust of Russian billionaire Dmitry Rybolovlev , who owns the French football club AS Monaco  and who had bought it in 2013 for $127.5 million from Swiss art dealer Yves Bouvier .

Salvator Mundi was originally commissioned by Louis XII of France around  1505 and later sold to Charles I of England , where it’s recorded in the inventory of the Royal Collection.

It changed hands a number of times among English aristocrats, first disappearing from 1763 to 1900, when it apparently was purchased as a work by Leonardo's follower, Bernardino Luini, for the Cook Collection, Doughty House, Richmond . Its attribution to Leonardo, as well as its origins and illustrious history had  by then been forgotten.

“By this time, Christ's face and hair were extensively repainted. A photograph taken in 1912 records the work's altered appearance,” Christie’s reports.

“After the dispersal of the Cook Collection, the work was ultimately consigned to auction in 1958, where it fetched £45.” After that it disappeared once again for nearly 50 years.”

Jesus's portrait reappeared again in 2005, when art experts bought it at a regional auction in Louisiana, hidden under  heavy amateur retouches including a crude beard and gnawed by worms to the point of being unrecognizable.

"Not much is known about how Salvator Mundi, which depicts Jesus holding a clear orb and raising his right hand in blessing, came to be in Louisiana. At the time it was thought to have been painted by a member of Leonardo's school," writes The New Orleans Advocate .

Identification of Salvator Mundi, the first of Leonardo's painting to be discovered since 1909 and hailed as the most important artistic find of the last 50 years, was possible after a lengthy restoration revealed traces of Da Vinci's trademark techniques.[/tweet_quote]

It was unveiled to the world in 2011 at London's National Gallery 's exhibition Leonardo da Vinci: Painter at the Court of Milan . Two years later it was sold to Yves Bouvier for $80 million. He then sold it a short time later to Rybolovlev for $127.5 million.

That transaction sparked a well-publicized legal battle between the two men that involved Sotheby's and the previous sellers, who claimed to have been cheated.

“Its inclusion in the National Gallery's landmark exhibition of 2011-12 — the most complete display of Leonardo's rare surviving paintings ever held — came after more than six years of painstaking research and inquiry to document the painting's authenticity,” Christie’s writes in the presentation of the portrait.

'It is every auctioneer's ambition to sell a Leonardo and likely the only chance I will ever have,' said Pylkkänen after the record sale. 'It's the pinnacle of my career so far. It is also wonderful for an Old Master to be at the centre of such attention. The excitement from the public for this work of art has been overwhelming and hugely heartening.'