After
19 minutes of dueling, with four bidders on the telephone and one in
the room, Leonardo da Vinci’s “Salvator Mundi” sold on Wednesday night
for $450.3 million with fees, shattering the high for any work of art
sold at auction. It far surpassed Picasso’s “Women of Algiers,” which
fetched $179.4 million at Christie’s in May 2015. The buyer was not
immediately disclosed.
There
were gasps throughout the sale, as the bids climbed by tens of millions
up to $225 million, by fives up to $260 million, and then by twos. As
the bidding slowed, and a buyer pondered the next multi-million-dollar
increment, Jussi Pylkkanen, the auctioneer, said, “It’s an historic
moment; we’ll wait.”
Toward
the end, Alex Rotter, Christie’s co-chairman of postwar and
contemporary art, who represented a buyer on the phone, made two big
jumps to shake off one last rival bid from Francis de Poortere,
Christie’s head of old master paintings.
The price is all the more remarkable at a time when the old masters market is contracting, because of limited supply and collectors’ penchant for contemporary art.
And
to critics, the astronomical sale attests to something else — the
degree to which salesmanship has come to drive and dominate the
conversation about art and its value. Some art experts pointed to the
painting’s damaged condition and its questionable authenticity.
“This
was a thumping epic triumph of branding and desire over connoisseurship
and reality,” said Todd Levin, a New York art adviser.
Christie’s
marketing campaign was perhaps unprecedented in the art world; it was
the first time the auction house went so far as to enlist an outside
agency to advertise the work. Christie’s also released a video
that included top executives pitching the painting to Hong Kong clients
as “the holy grail of our business” and likening it to “the discovery
of a new planet.” Christie’s called the work “the Last da Vinci,” the
only known painting by the Renaissance master still in a private
collection (some 15 others are in museums).
“It’s
been a brilliant marketing campaign,” said Alan Hobart, director of the
Pyms Gallery in London, who has acquired museum-quality artworks across
a range of historical periods for the British businessman and collector
Graham Kirkham. “This is going to be the future.”
There
was a palpable air of anticipation at Christie’s Rockefeller Center
headquarters as the art market’s major players filed into the sales
room. The capacity crowd included top dealers like Larry Gagosian, David
Zwirner and Marc Payot of Hauser & Wirth. Major collectors had
traveled here for the sale, among them Eli Broad and Michael Ovitz from
Los Angeles; Martin Margulies from Miami; and Stefan Edlis from Chicago.
Christie’s had produced special red paddles for those bidding on the
Leonardo, and many of its specialists taking bids on the phone wore
elegant black.
Earlier,
27,000 people had lined up at pre-auction viewings in Hong Kong,
London, San Francisco and New York to glimpse the painting of Christ as
“Savior of the World.” Members of the public — indeed, even many
cognoscenti — cared little if at all whether the painting might have
been executed in part by studio assistants; whether Leonardo had
actually made the work himself; or how much of the canvas had been
repainted and restored. They just wanted to see a masterwork that dates
from about 1500 and was rediscovered in 2005.
“There
is extraordinary consensus it is by Leonardo,” said Nicholas Hall, the
former co-chairman of old master paintings at Christie’s, who now runs
his own Manhattan gallery. “This is the most important old master
painting to have been sold at auction in my lifetime.”
That is the kind of name-brand appeal that Christie’s was presumably banking on by placing the painting in its high-profile contemporary art sale, rather than in its less sexy annual old master auction, where it technically belongs. To some extent, the auction house succeeded with the painting even before the sale, having secured a guaranteed $100 million bid from an unidentified third party. It is the 12th artwork to break the $100 million mark at auction, and a new high for any old master at auction, surpassing Rubens’s “Massacre of the Innocents,” which sold for $76.7 million in 2002 (or more than $105 million, adjusted for inflation).
That is the kind of name-brand appeal that Christie’s was presumably banking on by placing the painting in its high-profile contemporary art sale, rather than in its less sexy annual old master auction, where it technically belongs. To some extent, the auction house succeeded with the painting even before the sale, having secured a guaranteed $100 million bid from an unidentified third party. It is the 12th artwork to break the $100 million mark at auction, and a new high for any old master at auction, surpassing Rubens’s “Massacre of the Innocents,” which sold for $76.7 million in 2002 (or more than $105 million, adjusted for inflation).
But
many art experts argue that Christie’s used marketing window dressing
to mask the baggage that comes with the Leonardo, from its compromised
condition to its complicated buying history and said that the auction
house put the artwork in a contemporary sale to circumvent the scrutiny
of old masters experts, many of whom have questioned the painting’s
authenticity and condition.
“The
composition doesn’t come from Leonardo,” said Jacques Franck, a
Paris-based art historian and Leonardo specialist. “He preferred twisted
movement. It’s a good studio work with a little Leonardo at best, and
it’s very damaged.”
“It’s
been called ‘the male Mona Lisa,’” he said, “but it doesn’t look like
it at all.” Mr. Franck said he has examined the Mona Lisa out of its
frame five times.
Luke
Syson, curator of the 2011 National Gallery exhibition in London that
featured the painting, said in his catalog essay that “the picture has
suffered.” While both hands are well preserved, he said, the painting
was “aggressively over cleaned,” resulting in abrasion of the whole
surface, “especially in the face and hair of Christ.”
Christie’s
maintains that it was upfront about the much-restored, damaged
condition of the oil-on-panel, which shows Christ with his right hand
raised in blessing and his left holding a crystal orb.
But
Christie’s was also slow to release an official condition report and
its authenticity warranty on the Leonardo runs out in five years, as it
does on all lots bought at its auctions, according to the small print in
the back of its sale catalog.
The auction house has also played down the painting’s volatile sales history.
The artwork has been the subject of legal disputes and amassed a price history that ranges from less than $10,000 in 2005, when it was spotted at an estate auction, to $200 million when
it was first offered for sale by a consortium of three dealers in 2012.
But no institution besides the Dallas Museum of Art, which in 2012 made
an undisclosed offer on the painting, showed public interest in buying
it. Finally, in 2013, Sotheby’s sold it privately for $80 million to
Yves Bouvier, a Swiss art dealer and businessman. Soon afterward, he
sold it for $127.5 million, to the family trust of the Russian
billionaire collector Dmitry E. Rybolovlev. Mr. Rybolovlev’s family trust was the seller on Wednesday night.
There
was speculation that Liu Yiqian, a Chinese billionaire and co-founder
with his wife of the Long Museum in Shanghai, may have been among the
bidders. In recent years, the former taxi-driver-turned-power collector
has become known for his splashy, record-breaking art purchases,
including an Amedeo Modigliani nude painting for $170.4 million at a
Christie’s auction in 2015. But in a message sent to a reporter via
WeChat, a Chinese messaging app, Mr. Liu said he was not among the
bidders for the Leonardo.
On
Thursday morning, soon after the final sale was announced, Mr. Liu
posted a message on his WeChat social media feed. “Da Vinci’s Savior
sold for 400 million USD, congratulations to the buyer,” he wrote.
“Feeling kind of defeated right now.”
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