Please select which sections you would like to print: Director, Central Institute for the History of Art, Munich, 194770. 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. I think it's the greatest acquisition I ever made. Exact price (even the currency of sale) is not known, with estimates from $250 million to $300 million, Within weeks after a private viewing in Vienna in September 2012, Rybolovlev agreed to pay $183.8 million via his dealer Bouvier. But it does have two anonymous sources, their faces hidden on camera, identified as high-ranking French government officials who had access to the Louvre's studies of the painting and to the French-Saudi negotiations. Some of the most eye-opening commentary in both films isn't even about art. In The Lost Leonardo, Evan Beard, a Bank of America executive who deals with art as investment, talks about the common buyers' motive of using artworks as collateral for other financial manoeuvres. 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. 1. We also spoke with Stephen Massey, who we heard at the beginning of this episode. Somewhere in Saudi Arabia, hidden away by order of Crown Prince Mohammad bin Salman, is the world's most expensive painting, Leonardo da Vinci's Salvator Mundi. PETERSON-WITHORN: Yeah, when I heard about that $12 million sale, I remembered that the Codex had about 360 illustrations inside of it. But just weeks before the auction happened, a devastating earthquake struck Italy and the government ended up skipping the sale. 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. 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. Quiz: Ancient Illustrations Showing Us the Way, https://www.britannica.com/biography/Leonardo-da-Vinci, Social Studies for Kids - Biography of Leonardo da Vinci, Humanities LibreTexts - Leonardo da Vinci, Art Encyclopedia - Biography of Leonardo Da Vinci, University of California Museum of Paleontology - Biography of Leonardo da Vinci, Web Gallery of Art - Biography of Leonardo da Vinci, Leonardo da Vinci - Children's Encyclopedia (Ages 8-11), Leonardo da Vinci - Student Encyclopedia (Ages 11 and up), Art and accomplishment: Leonardo as artist-scientist, Art and accomplishment: Painting and drawing. Leonardo da Vincis total output in painting is really rather small; there are less than 20 surviving paintings that can be definitely attributed to him, and several of them are unfinished. The two documentaries arrive at a time when films, podcasts and pop culture itself seem fascinated by art crimes, mysteries and forgeries. Articles from Britannica Encyclopedias for elementary and high school students. [15] Not listed here in this list is Chinese painter Wang Shaofei's The High Sun, which was appraised for $74 million in 2017.[16]. Saviour for Sale opens in the US on 17 September. The figure more than doubles the existing record for an artwork sold at auction: a $179.4 million bid for a Picasso in 2015. 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. One of two pastel versions; another two painted versions (and lithography) exist, all created by Munch. So next, we decided to try some sources who not only know Old Masters works, but they know da Vinci really well. As everyone who does not live in utter isolation knows, a painting of Christ known as the "Salvator Mundi" ("Savior of the World") by the Italian Renaissance artist Leonardo da Vinci was. Corrections? Guinness World Records lists Leonardo da Vinci's Mona Lisa as having the highest ever insurance value for a painting. CLIP OF BILL GATES: So here, you're just seeing the page exactly as it looked to da Vinci. In fact, it was also noted in the Codexs 1994 auction catalogue written by late da Vinci scholar Carlo Pedretti, that the Mona Lisa is, "indeed a visual synthesis of Leonardo's scientific knowledge as summed up in the Codex.". A Look at the Wold's Most Valuable Paintings - artincontext.org Alison Cole, editor of The Art Newspaper, has written extensively about the painting and saw it at the National Gallery. TINDERA: Robert pointed out one other unique distinction. Leonardos artistic inclinations must have appeared early. 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.. Probably, they knew there was room before the end of the competition., They wanted to get the job done quicker, but it still took a long time.. 1 (Royal Red and Blue)", "Claude Monet (18401926), Odalisque couche aux magnolias", "Basquiat Tops Phillips Contemporary Sale at $85 Million", "Titian masterpiece Diana and Callisto saved for nation", "No. Pablo Picasso "Garon la pipe" (1905): $142.7 million 8. 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). (Swiss authorities investigated him for defrauding Rybolovlev over several artworks, but this year closed the case without charging him.) Leonardo da Vinci: Paintings, Drawings, Quotes, Facts, & Bio $450 million - Celebrity Net Worth Both sold at Sotheby's in Monaco on the same date in 1989. In total, Christies said, 27,000 people had seen the work on a pre-sale tour with stops in Hong Kong, London and San Francisco. Among Leonardos pupils at this time were Giovanni Antonio Boltraffio, Ambrogio de Predis, Bernardino de Conti, Francesco Napoletano, Andrea Solari, Marco dOggiono, and Salai. In 1493 the clay model of the horse was put on public display on the occasion of the marriage of Emperor Maximilian to Bianca Maria Sforza, and preparations were made to cast the colossal figure, which was to be 16 feet (5 metres) high. The saleroom erupted in cheers and applause. It's not a da Vinci. - Celebrity Net Worth Leonardo da Vinci: Facts, Paintings & Inventions - HISTORY We reported that same year that Gates envied his friend Warren Buffett, because he had more time to spend reading than Gates did. 1503-1519). I've worked as well as an art appraiser. Robert Simon told us that he thought it would not sell for less than $150 million. Leonardo never married, but he had many close relationships with other artists and intellectuals as well as with his assistants. The quality of the painting itself divides people. The current record price is approximately US$450.3 million (which includes commission), paid for Leonardo da Vinci's Salvator Mundi (c.1500). Let us know if you have suggestions to improve this article (requires login). 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. But many experts think she did a drastic over-restoration. TINDERA: Right. So, you know, it's something I've sort of been following for, you know, a good part of my life. Yves Bouvier, a Swiss art dealer, bought the painting from the New York dealers for $83 million, reportedly on behalf of his client, a Russian oligarch named Dmitry Rybolovlev, though this is disputed by Mr Bouvier. We asked Robert, if the Codex if it went up for sale again, could it compete with the Mundi's price? They bought it from an auction in Louisiana for just over $1,000. But one tries to lay out in a rational way, why one has a higher value than the other, why one has a lesser market appeal, and then try from that to come up with a single value. MASSEY: Still with me then at five-million five hundred thousand, five-million eight hundred thousand, five-million eight hundred thousand. 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 is believed to have been compiled between 1506 and 1510. While every effort has been made to follow citation style rules, there may be some discrepancies. Georgia O'Keeffe holds the record for the highest price paid for a painting by a woman. Soon, the painting was on its way to Christie's. 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. And we're going to show you how we narrowed that range to settle on one number. Rybolovlev resold Te Fare in February 2017 at Christie's in London for $25 million. Christies CEO, Guillaume Cerutti, said he did not know whether the buyer would reveal themselves. 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. According to the provenance in the auction catalogue, a few Italian artists own the Codex after da Vinci's death, including a painter named Giuseppe Ghezzi, who apparently sold it in 1717 to Thomas Coke, a man who eventually became England's Earl of Leicester. She is a captivating, elegant presence on screen, with a whispery voice and wide eyes behind signature black or red-framed glasses. 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. 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. 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. Nonetheless, the exhibition went a long way toward legitimising a shaky attribution. The artwork alone garners thousands of visitors from around the world to the famous gallery it is placed in - the . WINSTON: So once we've deduced that it's a first edition because it meets all of this criteria. (According to contemporary sources, Leonardo was commissioned to create three more pictures, but these works have since disappeared or were never done.) The auction house would not reveal the identity of the buyer or even the region from which they came. The Virgin and Child with St Anne by Leonardo Da Vinci On permanent display at the Louvre in Paris, the Mona Lisa was assessed at US$100 million on 14 December 1962. The Virgin and Child with St Anne by Leonardo da Vinci. From about 1483 to 1486, he worked on the altar painting The Virgin of the Rocks, a project that led to 10 years of litigation between the Confraternity of the Immaculate Conception, which commissioned it, and Leonardo; for uncertain purposes, this legal dispute led Leonardo to create another version of the work in about 1508. And my background is as an art historian. Here are 20 of Leonardo da Vinci's most famous paintings: Mona Lisa by Leonardo da Vinci. 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. PETERSON-WITHORN: Yeah, and Gates loves books. By 1508, Leonardo returned to Milan, working for the French rulers of the city. 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. This time, though, it sold for three times that in the battle we heard about at the beginning of the episode between Gates and the Italian bank. This wall painting in the Dominican monastery of Santa Maria delle Grazie, Milan, allowed Leonardo to explore how the body communicates inner states of being. And trying to balance them And of course, one of the things in doing an appraisal like this is you just don't put them in a mix, whatever. CBS CLIP, BILL GATES: Well, that's simply based on taking the stock I own in Microsoft and doing some type of multiplication. The Top 10 Most Expensive Paintings Ever Sold At Auctions 10. During his second period in Florence (1500-1508), he painted his most famous work, the Mona Lisa (ca. 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. ARCHIVAL CLIP-STEPHEN MASSEY, CHRISTIES: The Leonardo da Vinci Codex Hammer. His curiosity and insatiable hunger for knowledge never left him. That's why these valuations can be so tricky. TINDERA: So keeping all of those things in mind and knowing what he does about the Codex today. He was the auctioneer at the 1994 Christie's sale. That he gave up both projects seems to indicate that he had deeper reasons for leaving Florence. And then, how do we rationalize the difference in the kind of object it is? He applied his creativity to every realm in which graphic representation is used: he was a painter, sculptor, architect, and engineer. 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. It depicts the dramatic scene described in several closely connected moments in the Gospels, including Matthew 26: . They reflected the importance of the painting and that some of the bidders were conscious that the price would go higher than their bids. Inside besides da Vinci's writings, there are also about 360 drawings and diagrams throughout the manuscript. There are more and more platforms for telling stories. An exceptional case is graffiti artist David Choe, who accepted payment in shares for painting graffiti art in the headquarters of a fledgling Facebook. The subjects range from Inigo Philbrick, criminally charged with defrauding clients by selling more than 100% of shares in artworks, to a golden Egyptian coffin whose smuggled past came to light after Kim Kardashian was photographed next to it at the Metropolitan Museum's Costume Institute gala. The rest are owned by museums around the world. ", 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). But Christie's declined to comment, and a spokesperson for Gates never responded to our questions. A list in another currency may be in a slightly different order due to exchange-rate fluctuations. And then amid. 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. During this period Leonardo worked on a grandiose sculptural project that seems to have been the real reason he was invited to Milan: a monumental equestrian statue in bronze to be erected in honour of Francesco Sforza, the founder of the Sforza dynasty. Vincent van Gogh, Pablo Picasso, and Andy Warhol are the best-represented artists in the list. "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.". At the press conference, Artnews reported, Gouzer spoke of the exceptional rarity of a work by Leonardo. And seeing these works enjoyed by people all over the world. TINDERA: In his appraisal Simon selected five comparable works all from the Renaissance era. In 1982, he appeared on our list with an estimated net worth of $150 million. Leonardo da Vincis parents were unmarried at the time of his birth near a small village named Vinci in Tuscany. But, because of the imminent danger of war, the metal, ready to be poured, was used to make cannons instead, causing the project to come to a halt. The first is da Vinci's "The Last Supper," painted during his time in Milan, from about 1495 to 1498. Cole was the first to report, in March 2020, the existence of a 46-page booklet the Louvre prepared for publication but never released, which asserts that the piece is an authentic Leonardo. 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. So it doesn't really look like a notebook anymore. Like we did earlier in this episode, he considered the price that it sold for in 1980. The Burlington House Cartoon by Leonardo da Vinci. And Lewis points out that as the art market has enlarged, our world view itself has changed. Paintings are listed only once, i.e. Contemporary art, Mould told the Guardian, is where all the big money is. In both films, Luke Syson, the curator of the show, stands by his decision. Leonardo da Vinci: Last Supper. [8] The actual purchase price was not disclosed, because of a confidentiality agreement attached to the private sale.