Posted on 11/14/2017 10:38:43 PM PST by Oshkalaboomboom
It watched as its then-owner, King Charles I, was beheaded in 1649.
It was hanging in Buckingham Palace back when it was still called Buckingham House in 1703.
It survived the Nazis’ 1940 London Blitz when its keepers abandoned it in their basement.
By 1958, its origins had become so lost in time that it was sold for a paltry $90 to a collector from Louisiana.
The long, strange journey of Leonardo da Vinci’s masterwork “Salvator Mundi” takes its next turn Wednesday at Christie’s, when it goes under the hammer for a hoped-for $100 million.
It is the first Leonardo to emerge in nearly a century, and one of just 16 surviving paintings by the Renaissance Italian polymath.
“Salvator Mundi” — which translates to “Savior of the World” and depicts Jesus Christ holding an earth-like glass orb — was nearly forgotten forever during its 500-year journey from Italy to the Big Apple.
“We came pretty close to losing it,” Alan Wintermute, a Christie’s vice president and specialist in Old Master paintings, told The Post.
“It’s so rare that anything this important reappears in the way it has that you can’t help but be excited.”
Battered by time and marred by ham-handed attempts to restore it, the so-called “last da Vinci” was, for centuries, thought to be no more than a pupil’s copy of the original.
Leonardo is believed to have produced the work — painted in particularly expensive oil pigments on a walnut panel — sometime around 1500, most likely for then-King of France Louis XII, according to Dr. Robert Simon of Robert Simon Fine Art, who helped authenticate the work.
Simon called the French provenance “speculation, but informed speculation,” adding that the earliest written record of its ownership goes back to King Charles I of England
(Excerpt) Read more at nypost.com ...
Just maybe this painting was inspired by the self portrait of
Albrecht Durer; a painter during the German Renaissance.
Albrecht traveled to Italy in 1494, and remained there till 1495. The trip had a strong effect on Durer; echoes of Italian art would be apparent in most of his paintings, drawings and graphics for the next ten years.
Da Vinci’s ‘male Mona Lisa’ expected to sell for $100M — Salvatori Mundi (video)
The New York Post | October 10, 2017 | 3:19pm | By Tamar Lapin
Posted on 10/10/2017 7:33:40 PM PDT by Swordmaker
http://www.freerepublic.com/focus/chat/3593807/posts
Is that a cleft in the chin?
I believe that’s a cleft palette.
My wife and I were lucky enough to catch the opening exhibition of Da Vinci’s newly restored Adoration of the Magi in Florence as well as the restored Last Supper in Milan on our vacation last Spring. Awe-inspiring.
Bah, I’d take it to Hobby Lobby and have it reframed.
Looks like an androgyne.
Transgender Mona Lisa?
I’m here all week!
What an incredible find and a darn good 90 dollar investment too.
...
But those were 1958 dollars.
What an interesting observation! I too noticed that this looks more like a German Jesus rather than an Italian Jesus.
I know that this is attributed to Da Vinci...but it doesn’t even remind me of his other work.
But, then, again, Leonardo could do anything any way he wanted to!
How did he ever paint that glass globe? Awesome countenance, too.
Should have taken it to the Antique Roadshow!
Nice!
Like most art, it’s who, not what. Other pieces, equally old, and, technically & visually appealing are deemed basically worthless.
Painting: $98
Signature: $100,999,902
The American Pickers would have paid $200 for it.
Except that the particular Self Portrait in a Fur Collared Robe (which I assume is what is referred to in that theory) has been positioned as circa 1500.
I had been unaware of the magnitude of Durer’s influence in Germany — it was not understood by me until readings in recent years. While peripherally aware of his work, it is like thinking Michelangelo was incidental to Italian art — I did not understand how he stood like a crossroads in german art.
I am partway through a new history of the Borgia family and 15th century Italian history is so different when you look at the conflicts during that century rather than just the art.
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