da Vinci’s Salvator Mundi
A newly discovered painting by an old master will always be something that gets people excited, especially if that master is Leonardo da Vinci himself. da Vinci only has between 15 and 20 paintings verified to be his work so something new is a real find. However, is this painting really the discovery that some think it is?
Leonardo da Vinci and Salvator Mundi
I know that everyone already knows at least a little about da Vinci himself, especially if you’re a loyal reader (hi, thank you!). If not I can quickly recap, Leonardo da Vinci was born on April 15, 1482, in Florence, Italy. He was a painter, yes, but he was also a very active engineer, draughtsman, scientist, theorist, sculptor, and architect. Remember about the scientist part, that’ll be important later. So we’ve established, he’s smart and talented and he has a lot of diverse interests.
Now let’s talk about Salvator Mundi (Latin for “Savior of the World”) and what scholars believe to be its background. This piece is estimated to have been painted between 1499 and 1510 and it’s thought that it would have been a patron commissioned painting because of the specificity of the subject matter. There are some speculations and theories about who this patron could be. Some art historians believe that it could have been painted for Louis XII of France and his consort, Anne of Brittany. This is somewhat backed up by the fact that Louis conquered the Duchy of Milan and took control of Genoa around 1500 and that was when da Vinci moved away from Milan to Florence, but the painting could have been commissioned before the move. Other possible patrons include Isabella d’Este (one of the foremost women in the Italian Renaissance), King Matthias Corvinus of Hungary, and Charles VIII of France.
A painting of this size and subject matter would have been used for personal devotion in the sixteenth century. Scholars have noted the close devotional relationship that Louis XII had with Salvator Mundi as a subject.
This is really all we know for sure, the providence of the painting breaks after 1530.
Seventeenth to Nineteenth Centuries
As I said, we can’t know any of this for sure but people speculate that this is how the painting changed hands over the next few decades. It looks like Salvator Mundi may have been at James Hamilton’s Chelsea manor in London from 1638-1641. After the English Civil War Hamilton was executed (yikes) and some of his possessions were taken to the Netherlands to be sold, including the painting. An engraving was made in 1650 of the work by an artist in Antwerp. It changed hands A LOT after that so I won’t bore you with all the names and dates but to make a long story short it was put in a gilded frame at some point and was probably bought by British collector Francis Cook in 1900 for his collection. By this time the painting had been damaged because of restoration attempts and was being attributed to Bernardino Luini, a follower of da Vinci. As a result, it wasn’t seen as super valuable and in 1958 Francis Cook’s great-grandson sold it at auction for £45. Now the painting was being attributed to Giovanni Antonio Boltraffio, a student of da Vinci. Salvator Mundi remained attributed to Boltraffio until 2011.
Rediscovery and Controversy
It was thought that the original da Vinci painting that this version had been based on had been lost or destroyed around 1603. However, when the painting was brought to auction in 2005 a group of art dealers bought it for the tiny amount of €8,450 from the estate of the man who had purchased it for £45 in 1958. They believed that this painting could potentially be a lost da Vinci original. As a result, they hired Professor Dianne Dwyer Modestini from NYU to oversee its restoration. When they bought the painting in 2005 it was described as “a wreck, dark and gloomy”.
This is where opinion starts to split on whether or not this is a true da Vinci original so I’ll try to present you with equal thoughts from both sides and then you can decide.
When Modestini started to remove the overpainting as part of the restoration process she found that there was a strange area where the board the piece was painted on was uneven, like someone had shaved it down to fix a mistake and built the area back up with glue. Using infrared cameras she discovered that the composition of Christ’s hand (giving the blessing) had been changed mid-painting. Originally the thumb on the blessing hand was in a straight, not curved position. She points to this as a sign that this painting is an original because if it was a copy the artist wouldn’t be second-guessing their composition in this way.
During the restoration process, Modestini also compared Salvator Mundi to the Mona Lisa extensively and concluded that "The artist who painted her was the same hand that had painted the Salvator Mundi" (Modestini, 2019). Once the restoration was finished, the painting was compared to 20 other versions of Salvator Mundi paintings and was found superior to all of them. There are several other areas of the painting that lend themselves to a positive attribution to da Vinci:
There are a number of changes that can be seen that the artist made to the painting (like the change of position of the right thumb)
The sfumato effect used on the face was a trademark skill used frequently by da Vinci (this refers to the way that colours are blended together to give the effect of something just out of focus of the human eye, da Vinci was known for this)
The way the ringlets of hair fall and the knotwork in the cloth are seen as indicative of da Vinci’s style
The hands are very detailed which is typical of da Vinci
The pigments of paint and the use of a walnut panel to paint on are consistent with other da Vinci originals
There are actually two drawings that da Vinci created, practising for painting drapery that look A LOT like Salvator Mundi
A leading da Vinci expert, Martin Kemp, has even said “It had that kind of presence that Leonardos have ... that uncanny strangeness that the later Leonardo paintings manifest. It's got that kind of uncanny vortex, as if the hair is a living, moving substance, or like water, which is what Leonardo said hair was like”.
After the restoration was complete, in 2011, the National Gallery in London exhibited the piece and authenticated it as a work done by Leonardo da Vinci. In 2012 it was also authenticated by the Dallas Museum of Art. In the next few years, the painting was exhibited in Hong Kong, London, San Francisco, and New York to name a few. Everyone wanted to see this newly discovered da Vinci.
However, this fame didn’t come without sceptics. Even though museums and art galleries were deeming it an original da Vinci not everyone was convinced. Remember how da Vinci was also a scientist and an engineer? He definitely knew a lot about light and refraction and reflection and all that stuff. This is part of why people do not believe this to be a real, or completely real, da Vinci. The orb that Christ is holding in his left hand is not reflecting or refracting anything at all, it is painted to be completely clear like a bubble. Scholars argue that a man who was so obsessed with light and how it worked would never have painted such an inaccurate orb like that.
There are some that point to the bubble as a deliberate choice that da Vinci would have made. If he had painted the orb correctly the robes and hand would have been extremely distorted within it, drawing attention away from Christ who should be the focal point of the painting. Additionally, art historians think that the orb is meant to be made of rock crystal, which da Vinci was an expert on.
Anyways, getting back to the sceptics. New York magazine art critic Jerry Saltz wrote: “I’m no art historian or any kind of expert in old masters. But I’ve looked at art for almost 50 years and one look at this painting tells me it’s no Leonardo. The painting is absolutely dead. Its surface is inert, varnished, lurid, scrubbed over, and repainted so many times that it looks simultaneously new and old” (Sayej, 2017).
Todd Levin, curator and art advisor at the Levin Art Group in New York, agrees that the attribution to da Vinci doesn’t feel right. “This painting, regardless of who it’s by, is in a poor condition at best, it has been considerably over-painted several times and it has been aggressively over-cleaned. If the image of a painting is defaced to this extreme extent, it doesn’t matter who it’s by, the painting is effectively gone. When one is standing in front of the painting, regardless of the artist, it’s not a gripping masterpiece, and Leonardo is known for gripping masterpieces, it’s hard for me to believe the attribution to Leonardo”. This is an interesting point of view because this painting could still be a da Vinci original but because of its life, it effectively shouldn’t even be attributed to him anymore and is almost ruined for the viewer.
In 2017 Salvator Mundi sold at auction for $450,312,500, the new record for the most expensive artwork in the world. This only served to draw more attention to it and the debate raged on.
What is interesting is that in 2017 the buyer of the painting was acting on behalf of Abu Dhabi’s Department of Culture and Tourism. They wanted this painting for an exhibit they were putting on at the Louvre Abu Dhabi. In 2018 the exhibition was put on hold indefinitely, some think that this was due to the controversy surrounding the attribution of the painting and others were fearing for its safety. In 2020 the Louvre in Paris asked to borrow the painting for an exhibit they were having of many of the remaining da Vinci paintings, however, they ended up not featuring Salvator Mundi at all. Is this because they don’t believe it to be a da Vinci or is it because the painting has been lost again? As of now, its whereabouts are unknown, some say it is in storage in Geneva but others claim that as of 2019 it is on Crown Prince of Saudi Arabia Mohammed bin Salman’s luxury yacht, sailing on the Red Sea. HOPEFULLY NOT.
What Do You Think?
I will be honest with you, even though there are definitely sceptics I find the theory that Salvator Mundi was at least partially painted by da Vinci himself to be the most believable. And most art historians and scholars would agree. This doesn’t mean that the painting wasn’t done in part by a student or someone from his workshop or that it wasn’t over-restored and painted on changing the viewing experience. It does mean that da Vinci himself had a hand in its creation. But, as always, you’re free to make up your own mind.
Works Cited
Martinique, Elena. “From Riches to Rags? Louvre Questions the Authenticity of Leonardo’s Salvator Mundi”. Widewalls. 2019. https://www.widewalls.ch/magazine/salvator-mundi-fake-louvre
Modestini, Dianne. “History of the Salvator Mundi”. Salvator Mundi Revisited. 2019. https://salvatormundirevisited.com/Introduction
Sayej, Nadja. “Artistic License? Experts Doubt Leonardo da Vinci Painted $450 Million Salvator Mundi”. The Guardian. 2017. https://www.theguardian.com/artanddesign/2017/nov/20/artistic-license-experts-doubt-leonardo-da-vinci-painted-450m-salvator-mundi