Since the painting first arrived at the Louvre in 1815, "Mona Lisa" has received plenty of love letters and flowers from admirers. Alison Cole, editor of The Art Newspaper, has written extensively about the painting and saw it at the National Gallery. So, you know, it's something I've sort of been following for, you know, a good part of my life. The original one is now located at Muse du Louvre, Paris. That sold for $3.6 million at Sotheby's in New York in 1986. You can't really show it offwhether it's to your best friends or in a museum if you're a public institution. PETERSON-WITHORN: And the fifth was a drawing by Michelangelo called The Holy Family with the Infant St. John the Baptist, which also sold to the Getty Museum in 1993, for $6.3 million. Therell never be another painting that I shall sell for more than this painting tonight.. The work of Leonardo is just as influential to the art that is being created today as it was in the 15th and 16th centuries, he said. (Maybe so, but in the films and other reproduced images it does have a more cloying look). And it was, you know, a thrilling project to be involved with. Pablo Picasso "Garon la pipe" (1905): $142.7 million 8. She spent years restoring the painting, and passionately defends its authenticity in precise detail, pointing out the pentimento under Christ's thumb or a curve of his mouth that could only be Leonardo's. Corrections? The saleroom erupted in cheers and applause. And then, how do we rationalize the difference in the kind of object it is? At the same time, Bouvier was negotiating and eventually succeeded to buy the painting for $112 million from Ursula Ucicky, widow of, Some fear existed, that Portrait of Dr. Gachet had been cremated with the owner in 1996, but Gachet's portrait was privately resold to. The role of most of these associates is unclear, leading to the question of Leonardos so-called apocryphal works, on which the master collaborated with his assistants. ROBERT SIMON: My name is Robert Simon. Additional audio credits: AP, CBS, GatesNotes-The Blog of Bill Gates. Leonardo never married, but he had many close relationships with other artists and intellectuals as well as with his assistants. It is believed to have been compiled between 1506 and 1510. While dozens of manuscripts like the Codex have managed to survive the centuries intact, the Codex Leicester is the only da Vinci notebook that is still in private hands. TINDERA: In his appraisal Simon selected five comparable works all from the Renaissance era. But uncertainty is key to the appeal of every version of the story, as Lewis tells BBC Culture: "Nobody knows if it is a Leonardo, so you too can play the game, you can do your own Da Vinci Code on the Salvator Mundi. MASSEY: Twenty-five million, twenty-six million. So, in discussing what the Codex might be worth today, Robert Simon brought up a recent sale of a da Vinci, which was of a teeny, tiny three-inch by three-inch drawing of a bear's head, which sold in July of this year for $12 million. When Bill Gates bought the manuscript, rather than naming it the Codex Gates after himself, he decided to rename it the Codex Leicester after an earlier owner. Please refer to the appropriate style manual or other sources if you have any questions. As he would throughout his life, Leonardo set boundless goals for himself; if one traces the outlines of his work for this period, or for his life as a whole, one is tempted to call it a grandiose unfinished symphony.. July 8, 2021. It is Oil on wood and measures 168 x 130 cm (5 1/2 x 4 1/2 ft.). Our 1994 story said Hammer was a master at litigation, and the aggrieved shareholders had to settle to keep building costs at $60 million. One of the most famous paintings in the world, the Last Supper was commissioned by Ludovico Sforza, duke of Milan and Leonardo's patron during his first stay in that city, for the Dominican monastery of Santa Maria delle Grazie. SIMON: This is the clipping that I had taken out of the New York Times in 1980, when it was to be auctioned when Armand Hammer bought it. Everyone agreed, like Robert Simon said, that were it to go up for auction today. Leonardo da Vincis parents were unmarried at the time of his birth near a small village named Vinci in Tuscany. There's also something called primacy, which is being the first. Leonardo da Vinci: Last Supper. Two new documentaries delve into the ongoing saga of Leonardo da Vinci's Salvator Mundi in a moment when true art crime stories are at their peak, writes Caryn James. That included footing the bill for not only the Codex he purchased for the $5 million in 1980, but also the tens of millions of dollars spent creating his own art museum in Los Angeles. And one of the other, one of the principles and differences between, say an auction estimate and an appraisaland this is for what we call fair market value appraisalis that we come up with a single value, understanding that it's very rare that we kind of hit the bull's eye, but that is the opinion of the appraiser. It may have been that the rather sophisticated spirit of Neoplatonism prevailing in the Florence of the Medici went against the grain of Leonardos experience-oriented mind and that the more strict, academic atmosphere of Milan attracted him. A jump to $370. There is hardly a person on this planet that doesn't know about this artwork. The sale of Vincent van Gogh's Sunflowers was the first time a "modern" (in this case 1888) painting became the record holder, as opposed to the old master paintings which previously had dominated the market. The alleged vandalism attempt on Sunday left the painting's glass covered in cake frosting. And Lewis points out that as the art market has enlarged, our world view itself has changed. TINDERA: Right. They brought it to Dianne Modestini, a highly respected restorer, who removed decades of grime and overpainting, and was the first to suspect it might be a true Leonardo. The collector acquired it from Bouvier for $127m, who had in turn acquired it from Sothebys in a private sale in 2013 for about $50m less. It stayed with the Earl of Leicesters estate until 1980, when it finally went up for auction. CBS CLIP, BILL GATES: Well, that's simply based on taking the stock I own in Microsoft and doing some type of multiplication. In 2011, the National Gallery included it in the exhibition Leonardo da Vinci: Painter at the Court of Milan. Simon has said that it took a couple of years after they bought the painting to become convinced himself that he was dealing with an original work by Leonardo. A lost painting by Leonardo da Vinci may have been found in a Scottish farmhouse, reported The Daily Mail. The Louvre and the National Gallery refused to comment for either film. Antique Heliogravure on wove paper after t.. 620: 1893 Leonardo da Vinci Bust of an Old Man in Roman Costume print signed Est: $ 500 - $ 700 View sold prices Feb. 05, 2023 KCM Galleries Cape Coral, FL, US They write new content and verify and edit content received from contributors. CLIP OF BILL GATES: Taking Leonardo's notebook and translating them so everybody can understand the way that da Vinci thought a little better than before is very important. In the end, the picture was placed in Christies postwar and contemporary evening sale, wedged between lots of work by Cy Twombly, John Currin, Keith Haring and Jean-Michel Basquiat. Within two days he sold it to Rybolovlev for $127.5 million. With its sleek narrative and a wide range of voices from dealers to art historians to investigative journalists, The Lost Leonardo is the better of the two films, and benefits greatly from using Modestini as its main character. The case led to the resignation of Monacos then justice minister, Philippe Narmino. According to the Christie's auction catalogue for the 1994 sale, the Codex was described as being in good and stable condition. And how does that help us come up with a number for today? Guinness World Records lists Leonardo da Vinci's Mona Lisa as having the highest ever insurance value for a painting. It's worth at least what Gates paid for it. He had just gotten married to Melinda Gates on New Year's Day of that year and was in the middle of building his multi-million-dollar mega mansion, Xanadu 2.0. TINDERA: I'm Michela Tindera, and this is Priceless. (or simply Leonardo) (Leonardo diser Piero ser da Vinci) (Italian, 1452-1519). At an auction held at Christie's New York in 2016 during a contemporary art event, Salvator Mundi by Leonardo da Vinci turned into the most expensive painting ever sold, selling for $450 million at the end of a nineteen-minute bidding war. Contemporary art, Mould told the Guardian, is where all the big money is. He Died in May 2, 1519 in Amboise, Kingdom of France.His Famous works includes Mona Lisa, The Last Supper, The Vitruvian Man Style/Period: High Renaissance Biography. Also of note is the decorative ceiling painting (1498) he made for the Sala delle Asse in the Milan Castello Sforzesco. That's why these valuations can be so tricky. Author of. The current record price is approximately US$450.3 million (which includes commission), paid for Leonardo da Vinci's Salvator Mundi (c.1500). Record private sales are believed to include $250m for a painting by Paul Czanne and $300m for a Paul Gauguin. No one in the art world knows for sure where the painting is. It looks interesting. Five hundred years later, the Codex is in such good condition, in part because it hasn't changed hands many times. Amid all of that the Codex went back to Christie's in 1994, where it was once again expected to bring $10 million. See a gallery of the world's most expensive paintings, Leonardo da Vincis Salvator Mundi sold for $400 million at Christies ($450.3m, including auction house premium), One of four versions of The Scream created by Munch and the only one that is privately owned. Price excludes sales commission and other costs. TINDERA: Hammer is also the great-grandfather of Hollywood actor Armie Hammer. The first question we're asking, but we're going to ask it again is, What are we actually looking at? If it's a first edition of Moby Dick, that's a great thing to have. So, I think we could legitimately set the floor at that price. The Salvator Mundi can be exhibited, and if it goes to a museum in Saudi Arabia, and people travel there and go to see it, I mean, it would have in terms of that income value I was talking about, it would have, you know, a phenomenal one, you know, perhaps quite in excess of the $450 million that it brought at auction. This Leonardo da Vinci's portrait paintings are of Ginevra de' Benci, who was a rather popular Florentine woman. There are a great many superb extant pen and pencil drawings from this period, including many technical sketchesfor example, pumps, military weapons, mechanical apparatusthat offer evidence of Leonardos interest in and knowledge of technical matters even at the outset of his career. Oil tycoon Armand Hammer bought it that year, and 14 years later, Gates bought it at another auction. In this episode, we're taking you inside the world of rare books, manuscripts, and Old Masters works to tell you about how we've estimated the value of one very special notebook, with ties to the world's most expensive painting ever sold at auction: the Salvator Mundi. For this notebook, we considered values ranging from $50 million, all the way up to $4 billion. PETERSON-WITHORN: Yeah, when I heard about that $12 million sale, I remembered that the Codex had about 360 illustrations inside of it. At the height of the auction, as many of six bidders were in play. Later in 2002, Thomson donated his private collection, including the Rubens, to the. In November 2017 Saudi crown prince Mohammed bin Salman paid $450 million for a da Vinci painting. Because at the end of the day, it's an entertaining story.". Leonardo da Vinci. [note 1] Where necessary, the price is first converted to dollars using the exchange rate at the time the painting was sold. Whereas Picasso and Warhol became wealthy men, van Gogh is known to have sold only one painting in his lifetime, The Red Vineyard, for 400 French francs (approximately $2,000 in 2018 dollars) in 1890, to the Belgian impressionist painter and heiress Anna Boch. CHASE PETERSON-WITHORN: Hi, Michela. He used his superb intellect, unusual powers of observation, and mastery of the art of drawing to study nature itself, a line of inquiry that allowed his dual pursuits of art and science to flourish. Back in 1980 according to an Associated Press report, the man who was the Earl of Leicester at the time decided to sell the Codex, which had been part of the Earl's estate for more than 250 years. 1. A Leonardo da Vinci painting has sold for a record-breaking $450 million this week, at Christie's auction house in New York. Here's how much the artwork is worth! At $28 million it's away from the room now and on the telephone at $28 million. In contrast, there are currently only nine pre-1875 paintings among the listed top 89, and none created between 1635 and 1874. In 1482 Leonardo moved to Milan to work in the service of the citys dukea surprising step when one realizes that the 30-year-old artist had just received his first substantial commissions from his native city of Florence: the unfinished panel painting Adoration of the Magi for the monastery of San Donato a Scopeto and an altar painting for the St. Bernard Chapel in the Palazzo della Signoria, which was never begun. St John the Baptist by Leonardo da Vinci. So, we reached out to Martin Kemp, who is another da Vinci scholar, and an Oxford University emeritus professor. DETAILS BELOW Leonardo da Vinci (born April 15, 1452) is famous for being painter. His father, Ser Piero, was a Florentine notary and landlord, and his mother, Caterina, was a young peasant woman who shortly thereafter married an artisan. TINDERA: Okay, so to recap, when it sold in 1980, it was expected to sell for $10 million, but ended up going for half that. Usually estimated at "over 50 M" or "between 50 and 60 million Euros". TINDERA: Right. But some have said that's because he was left-handed, and he didnt want his ink to smear. Georgia O'Keeffe holds the record for the highest price paid for a painting by a woman. The buyer was anonymous, but the New York Times soon revealed him to be acting for bin Salman, a discovery that catapulted the painting into the geopolitical realm. Veiled in layers of mystery and international intrigue, the story of the Salvator Mundi is an ongoing, endlessly fascinating saga, told in two new documentaries, The Lost Leonardo and Saviour for Sale: Da Vinci's Lost Masterpiece?, which play out with all the drama and suspense of a detective story. Thanks for joining me. ", Leonardo da Vinci's Salvator Mundi was sold by Christie's in 2017 for a record-breaking $450 million (Credit: Photo by Ilya S Savenok/Getty Images for Christie's Auction House). Since the museums rarely sell them, they are considered priceless. The sale places Salvator Mundi as the highest-priced work sold privately or at auction, including Pablo Picassos 1955 Women of Algiers (Version O), sold for $179.4m, and Amedeo Modiglianis 1917-18 Reclining Nude, sold for $170.4m. We also spoke with Stephen Massey, who we heard at the beginning of this episode. The two documentaries arrive at a time when films, podcasts and pop culture itself seem fascinated by art crimes, mysteries and forgeries. A list in another currency may be in a slightly different order due to exchange-rate fluctuations. This painting depicted St. Anne, her daughter the Virgin Mary, and the infant Jesus. What Gouzer may have meant is that buyers prepared to spend in excess of $100m on artwork exist in the modern and contemporary fields. It depicts the dramatic scene described in several closely connected moments in the Gospels, including Matthew 26: . Leonardo devoted 12 yearswith interruptionsto this task. He had an exceedingly inquisitive mind and made strenuous efforts to become erudite in languages, natural science, mathematics, philosophy, and history, among other subjects. At the press conference, Artnews reported, Gouzer spoke of the exceptional rarity of a work by Leonardo. Kenneth Griffin acquired it in 2004 from Wynn. CLIP OF BILL GATES: So here, you're just seeing the page exactly as it looked to da Vinci. Lady with an Ermine by Leonardo da Vinci. The ensuing war left the clay model a heap of ruins. Still, it was a record-breaking event. So if Saudi Arabia decides that culture is going to be the way it opens up and the Salvator Mundi is going to be a key player in that strategy and the Louvre is offering to exhibit it, then all those things are tied up together.". The general attitude toward art crime, he says, used to be shrugged off as "it's billionaires spending money, crooking each other", but today there is a realisation that "no, you can't loot that country's entire cultural heritage". Unless new documentation surfaces (unlikely after all these centuries), or a new scientific method of authentication arrives (also tricky because the work has been so damaged), the mystery may prove eternal. Here are 20 of Leonardo da Vinci's most famous paintings: Mona Lisa by Leonardo da Vinci. What is Leonardo da Vinci best known for? "When we chose the title," Andreas Dalsgaard, a producer and a writer of The Lost Leonardo, tells BBC Culture, "the inspiration was partly that the painting is lost right now and the truth is lost, but it was also inspired by movies like the Indiana Jones movies that are full of treasures and treasure hunts.". MICHELA TINDERA: So its 1994, and were listening to an auction in a salesroom at Christie's in Manhattan. Some of the most eye-opening commentary in both films isn't even about art. The work, thought to be a 500-year-old portait of Madonna and child, is potentially worth over $150 million (100 million) if experts are able to prove its authenticity. It came close. TINDERA: Simon shared with us his own process for how he estimated the fair market value in the appraisal he put together nearly 30 years ago. Amidst all these delightfully tangled histories, nothing rivals the Salvator Mundi. MASSEY: Twenty-seven million. At that time this was the 4th highest (unadjusted) price at auction and 10th highest price on this list. Salvator Mundi, the long-lost Leonardo da Vinci painting of Jesus Christ commissioned by King Louis XII of France more than 500 years ago, has sold at Christie's in New York for $450.3m . Renaissance artist, inventor, polymath, musician, and architect who painted the Mona Lisa and The Last Supper and drew the iconic Vitruvian Man. Well, as we mentioned, the most expensive painting ever sold at auction was the Salvator Mundi for $450 million. In 1472 Leonardo was accepted into the painters guild of Florence, but he remained in his teachers workshop for five more years, after which time he worked independently in Florence until 1481. Taking inflation into account, the 1962 value would be around US$900 million in 2021. He also worked in the next-door workshop of artist Antonio del Pollaiuolo, a sculptor, painter, engraver, and goldsmith, who frequently worked with his brother, Piero. PETERSON-WITHORN: So I thought this was super fascinating that you could actually consider a work of art as something that could not only hold value and appreciate in value, but could also be a business, generating income for its owner over time. Love film and TV? (According to contemporary sources, Leonardo was commissioned to create three more pictures, but these works have since disappeared or were never done.) Whoever cut it up would be pilloried forever. And we're going to show you how we narrowed that range to settle on one number. The Annunciation by Leonardo da Vinci. But if our maximum value isn't $4 billion, then what is it? In 1472 Leonardo was accepted into the painters guild of Florence, but he remained in his teachers workshop for five more years, after which time he worked independently in Florence until 1481. The earliest sale on the list below (Vase with Fifteen Sunflowers by Vincent van Gogh) is from March 1987; with a price of 24.75 million (74.1 million in 2021 currency). Soon, the painting was on its way to Christie's. So of course, da Vinci never called it the Codex Leicester or the Codex Hammer. Scholars have been unable to agree in their attributions of these works. She tells BBC Culture, "Since then, Dianne Modestini continued to work on it. TINDERA: Simon also included another work by da Vinci: a sheet of studies including sketches of a child embracing a lamb. That he gave up both projects seems to indicate that he had deeper reasons for leaving Florence. The most famous paintings, especially old master works created before 1803, are generally owned or held at museums, for viewing by patrons. Leonardo da Vinci was described as having a gracious but reserved personality and an elegant bearing. With closing fees from the auction house, it came out to $30.8 million. And my background is as an art historian. MASSEY: Nineteen-million five hundred thousand I'll be happy to take. This list is ordered by consumer price index inflation-adjusted value (in bold) in millions of United States dollars in 2021. The painting, which dates to around 1500, was lost to history for more than 200 years, was damaged and badly restored, and was sold and resold as a minor work, probably by a Leonardo acolyte. One of the sources says the Louvre concluded that Leonardo merely "contributed to the painting," but that bin Salman would only approve the loan if the Salvator Mundi were labelled an authentic Leonardo. TINDERA: That average of every expert opinion worked out to about $130 million. If all we do is adjust the $30.8 million that Gates paid for it for inflation, that gets us to somewhere around $50 million today. PETERSON-WITHORN: And in fact, that fall he had just appeared atop our Forbes 400 ranking of the richest Americans, with an estimated net worth of $9.35 billion. What by Leonardo can we compare it with? TINDERA: Simon talked about how there have been a certain subset of book dealers called "breakers," who made it their job to buy books and then tear them apart, selling their illustrated pages piece by piece. Then I went to those other items that were of kind of the same rarity as works of the Renaissance that had been on the market. Life of Leonardo da Vinci, a Short Biography 1. In the past year two documentaries, the engaging Made You Look and the pedestrian Driven to Abstraction, tackled the case of the Knoedler Gallery in New York, which for nearly two decades sold forgeries supposedly by 20th-Century masters including Mark Rothko and Jackson Pollock. Before the auction opened, the 500-year-old Leonardo da Vinci painting was estimated to sell for $100 million. Many factors seem to have converged to create this flourishing moment for true art crime. An exceptional case is graffiti artist David Choe, who accepted payment in shares for painting graffiti art in the headquarters of a fledgling Facebook. DARREN WINSTON: Once we've decided that the book is worth looking at for its condition, for its provenance. SIMON: And if you look at the illuminated manuscripts that are from, you know, missiles, and you know, these are Renaissance manuscripts, many of them have been broken apart. Vincent van Gogh, Pablo Picasso, and Andy Warhol are the best-represented artists in the list. PETERSON-WITHORN: After the auction, he told the press, I'm very happy with the price. Saviour for Sale opens in the US on 17 September. She was universally considered to be the painter's sitter. She even has her own mailbox. This is the mirror where we flip it around, and now here it is in English. And then there's also rarity, or how rare this exact copy or version of a book or manuscript is. "A Botticelli Portrait Sells for $92 Million at Sotheby's Auction", "Christie's 'Secret Weapon' in Rockefeller's 'Sale of the Century' | Auctions News | THE VALUE | Art News", "Claude Monet (18401926), Nymphas en fleur", Greatest German Renaissance Madonna sold by prince, Vincent van Gogh (18531890) Laboureur dans un champ, U.K. Buys Titian Diana Painting for 50 Million Pounds, Titian deal paves way for next acquisition, "Mark Rothko: No. He needed to do that because in order to pay the inheritance taxes on a previous Earl of Leicester, who died in 1976, they needed to sell off some stuff. Leonardo da Vinci not only developed his skill in drawing, painting and sculpting during his apprenticeship, but through others working in and around the studio, he picked up knowledge in such diverse fields as mechanics, carpentry, metallurgy, architectural drafting and chemistry. This means the Codex is certainly one of the world's most valuable pieces of art. Freeman's was founded in 1805, and is actually America's oldest auction house. Leonardos gracious but reserved personality and elegant bearing were well-received in court circles. In this episode of Priceless, staff writer Michela Tindera and deputy wealth editor Chase Peterson-Withorn explain how Forbes determines the value of a one-of-a-kind Leonardo da Vinci manuscript that Bill Gates purchased in 1994. [6] Another example is a 2019 sale of The Seated Zouave by Vincent van Gogh. The Burlington House Cartoon by Leonardo da Vinci. When it sold in 1994, it was also expected to sell for $10 million, but ended up selling for three times that. The first is da Vinci's "The Last Supper," painted during his time in Milan, from about 1495 to 1498. I wana write a poem about it. Paintings are listed only once, i.e. "And it is involved therefore in the politics around culture. Sowhat do we do with any of that? CBS CLIP, CONNIE CHUNG: You know, you may be the richest man in America, or at least the second-richest man in America. TINDERA: On sale is a one-of-a kind Leonardo da Vinci manuscript known as the Codex Hammer. PETERSON-WITHORN: Exactly. We felt that offering this painting within the context of our postwar and contemporary evening sale is a testament to the enduring relevance of this picture.. PETERSON-WITHORN: The person who ended up winning the auction was Armand Hammer, the 82-year-old multimillionaire chairman of oil and gas giant Occidental Petroleum. But now the Salvator Mundi has become the poster boy for the volatile mix of money, power and geopolitics that defines the art world today. I expected to pay much more. PETERSON-WITHORN: Two were da Vinci drawings of draperies. Five-point-five million dollars to start. And that's the number we're using to value it. The painting sold for $119,922,500, Picassos Nude, Green Leaves and Bust (1932) sold at Christie's in New York for $106,482,500, Lhomme qui Marche I (1961) by Alberto Giacometti sold for 65,001,250 ($105,182,398) at Sothebys in London, Picassos Boy With a Pipe (1905) sold at Sotheby's in New York for $104,168,000, Gustav Klimts Portrait of Adele Bloch-Bauer II (1912)went under the hammer at Christies New York and sold for $87,936,000, Francis Bacons Triptych (1976) sold for $85.9m to oligarch Roman Abramovich, A Chinese 18th century Qianlong dynasty porcelain vase sold for 53,100,000 ($85,921,461) at Bainbridges auction house in London, Dora Maar au Chat (1941) by Pablo Picasso sold for 51,560,080 ($83,429,503) at Sotheby's in London, Portrait of Dr Paul Gachet (1890) by Vincent van Gogh sold for $82,500,000 (50,985,692) at Christies in New York, Thank you all for your bidding, said Pylkknen. Like we did earlier in this episode, he considered the price that it sold for in 1980. Taking inflation into account, the 1962 value would be around US$900 million in 2021.[3]. A jump to $400m. I'm an art dealer in New York. On November 20, 2014 at Sotheby's, the Crystal Bridges Museum of American Art bought her 1932 painting Jimson Weed/White Flower No.
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