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. 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. SIMON: He spent much more time as a writer, a scientist, a draftsman than he did as a painter. People who often would never get a chance to visit the great museums of the world. TINDERA: So back in November 1994, Microsoft cofounder Bill Gates was 39 years old and pretty much at the top of his game. 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. And it was a challenge. Leonardo da Vinci Paintings & Artwork for Sale | Leonardo da Vinci Art What is Leonardo da Vinci best known for? 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. 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.". And if you liked this story,sign up for the weekly bbc.com features newsletter, called The Essential List. ARCHIVAL CLIP OF ARMAND HAMMER: Another hat is my hobby for collecting art. How many Leonardo da Vinci paintings are there? 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. Guinness World Records lists Leonardo da Vinci's Mona Lisa as having the highest ever insurance value for a painting. That sold for $3.6 million at Sotheby's in New York in 1986. During this first Milanese period he also made one of his most famous works, the monumental wall painting Last Supper (149598) in the refectory of the monastery of Santa Maria delle Grazie (for more analysis of this work, see below Last Supper). Corrections? As of 2023, Leonardo da Vinci's net worth is $320 million. And Lewis points out that as the art market has enlarged, our world view itself has changed. The 16th-century writer Giorgio Vasari indicated that Leonardo cared little for money but was very generous toward his friends and assistants. Life of Leonardo da Vinci, a Short Biography 1. On permanent display at the Louvre in Paris, the Mona Lisa was assessed at US$100 million on 14 December 1962. Art Sales: Russian buyers inject confidence into Old Master market: Last edited on 21 February 2023, at 19:17, Pendant portraits of Maerten Soolmans and Oopjen Coppit, La Montagne Sainte-Victoire vue du bosquet du Chteau Noir, Portrait of an Artist (Pool with Two Figures), Portrait of a Young Man holding a Roundel, Triptych Inspired by the Oresteia of Aeschylus, Peasant Woman Against a Background of Wheat, Femme au bret et la robe quadrille (Marie-Thrse Walter), List of most expensive artworks by living artists, List of most expensive non-fungible tokens, List of most expensive books and manuscripts, Abu Dhabi Department of Culture & Tourism, For Founders to Decorators, Facebook Riches, Mystery Buyer of Work Attributed to Caravaggio Revealed, Caravaggio Painting Estimated at $170 M. Sold Privately Ahead of Auction in France, "El enigma detrs del Van Gogh que sali de la Argentina", "The Red Vineyard Painting at annaboch.com", "Anna Boch.com Impressionist, patron of many artists", "The Most Expensive Female Artists 2016 artnet News", "The Chinese Ink Paintings of Wang Shaofei Break the World Record", "Abu Dhabi to acquire Leonardo da Vinci's 'Salvator Mundi': Christie's", "A Leonardo Made a $450 Million Splash. Why do bad things happen to TINDERA: Right. Among Leonardos pupils at this time were Giovanni Antonio Boltraffio, Ambrogio de Predis, Bernardino de Conti, Francesco Napoletano, Andrea Solari, Marco dOggiono, and Salai. 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. Apparently, Hammer had made a habit of buying things with Occidental Petroleum money. At one point, Pylkknen remarked: Historic moment, well wait as the the bidding went back and forth, pausing at just over $200m as it rose to break the auction record. 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. Nineteen million on the telephone. His notebooks reveal a spirit of scientific inquiry and a mechanical inventiveness that were centuries ahead of their time. That's because da Vinci wrote it backwards, which is what he did for much of what he wrote. PETERSON-WITHORN: Two were da Vinci drawings of draperies. At $28 million. MASSEY: Twenty-seven million. In contrast, there are currently only nine pre-1875 paintings among the listed top 89, and none created between 1635 and 1874. He was described in our Forbes 400 issue of the magazine that year as both a hard worker and brutally candid.. Leonardo grew up on his fathers familys estate, where he was treated as a legitimate son and received the usual elementary education of the day: reading, writing, and arithmetic. Contemporary art, Mould told the Guardian, is where all the big money is. An artist by disposition and endowment, he considered his eyes to be his main avenue to knowledge; to Leonardo, sight was mans highest sense because it alone conveyed the facts of experience immediately, correctly, and with certainty. a 2011 exhibition at the National Gallery in London, Art Bust: Scandalous Stories of the Art World, Kim Kardashian was photographed next to it. Leonardo da Vinci | Biography, Art, Paintings, Mona Lisa, Drawings In cases like these, that's why we have to turn to the experts who know more about this than us. Lady with an Ermine by Leonardo da Vinci. And then amid. (According to contemporary sources, Leonardo was commissioned to create three more pictures, but these works have since disappeared or were never done.) Now There's No Sign of It", "Leonardo da Vinci Painting 'Salvator Mundi' Sells for $450.3 Million", "Billionaire Griffin Pays $500 Million for Two Paintings", Welt-online: Das Rtsel vom teuersten Bild aller Zeiten, "Qatar Purchases Czanne's The Card Players for More Than $250 Million, Highest Price Ever for a Work of Art", "Lawsuit Reveals Gauguin Painting Was Not World's Most Expensive", "Gauguin Painting Is Said to Fetch Nearly $300 Million", "Russian Billionaire Seeks to Pull Sotheby's Into Art-World Fight", "The tangled history of Klimt's '$170m' Water Serpents", "The Billionaire, the Dealer, and the $186 Million Rothko", Portraits of Maerten Soolmans and Oopjen Coppit by Rembrandt, an exceptionnal acquisition exhibited at the Muse du Louvre, "Buyer of record-setting Picasso painting revealed", "Picasso and Giacometti Artworks Top $120 Million Each at Christie's Sale", "Netherlands to buy Rembrandt Standard Bearer self-portrait", "The Netherlands Is Ready to Spend $198 Million to Bring a Rembrandt Self-Portrait Back Home for Good", "Chinese Taxi Driver Turned Billionaire Bought Modigliani Painting", "With $170.4 Million Sale at Auction, Modigliani Work Joins Rarefied Nine-Figure Club", A Pollock Is Sold, Possibly for a Record Price, "Auction Sales Down at Christie's, Sotheby's and Phillips, in a Challenging 2016", "Agnes Gund Sells a Lichtenstein to Start Criminal Justice Fund", "Steve Cohen buys Roy Lichtenstein's 'Masterpiece' for $165 million", Lauder Pays $135 Million, a Record, for a Klimt Portrait, $616 Million Poorer, Hedge Fund Owner Still Buys Art, "The Gustav Klimt Painting Oprah Reportedly Sold for $150M Has Quite a Story", "Francis Bacon triptych smashes art auction record", Buyer of $142.4 Million Bacon Triptych Identified as Elaine Wynn, "Bacon's Study of Freud Sells for $142.4 Million", "Qi Baishi Just Became the First Chinese Artist to Break the $100 Million Mark at Auction", An Art Mystery Solved: Mogul Is 'Scream' Buyer, "A $100 Million Mystery: A Russian, His Art, and His Big Losses", "Planting a Johns 'Flag' in a Private Collection", "Who Bought the Brody Picasso for $106m? That's why these valuations can be so tricky. I wana write a poem about it. For her part, Modestini has documented her work and the scientific studies of the painting, and published them online. This list is ordered by consumer price index inflation-adjusted value (in bold) in millions of United States dollars in 2021. Therell never be another painting that I shall sell for more than this painting tonight.. 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. So Gates sort of went out and bought the ultimate book. TINDERA: Okay, so our $4 billion estimate isn't all that realistic. 10 Secrets of The Mona Lisa by Leonardo da Vinci Early Life: Verrocchio's Pupil. Six-million five hundred thousand, seven million. Read about our approach to external linking. The Lost Leonardo is now playing in the US and opens in the UK on 10 September. DETAILS BELOW Leonardo da Vinci (born April 15, 1452) is famous for being painter. But one key difference between my version and the one Bill Gates owns is that while my version is bound in the middle, like any typical hardcover book, every page of the original Codex Leicester is held in glass to make it easier to view all the pages. 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. This portrait was painted in Florence from 1474 to 1478. So, you know, it's something I've sort of been following for, you know, a good part of my life. An exceptional case is graffiti artist David Choe, who accepted payment in shares for painting graffiti art in the headquarters of a fledgling Facebook. Usually estimated at "over 50 M" or "between 50 and 60 million Euros". Paintings are listed only once, i.e. It then disappeared again until it was bought at a small U.S. auction house in 2005. Leonardo spent 17 years in Milan, until Ludovicos fall from power in 1499. Mona Lisa. The bidding then resumed: $353m, $355m. PETERSON-WITHORN: Armand placed the winning bid and paid about $5.6 million for the Codex, which was less than the roughly $10 million that it was reported experts thought it might sell for. Earlier this summer, very fittingly, as the country's oldest auction house, they sold a copy of the Declaration of Independence for $4.4 million. CLIP OF BILL GATES: So here, you're just seeing the page exactly as it looked to da Vinci. The Most Famous Works of Leonardo Da Vinci | Arthive Here are 20 of Leonardo da Vinci's most famous paintings: Mona Lisa by Leonardo da Vinci. That is still a question. Why Would Anyone Pay $450 Million for the 'Salvator Mundi'? Because Leonardo da Vinci: Last Supper. Kenneth Griffin acquired it in 2004 from Wynn. Our 1994 story said Hammer was a master at litigation, and the aggrieved shareholders had to settle to keep building costs at $60 million. Previewing the lot last month, Christies described the painting of Christ holding a crystal orb in his left hand and raising his right in benediction as the biggest discovery of the 21st century. 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. For example, on June 25, 2019, the American hedge fund manager J. Tomilson Hill bought a recently rediscovered Judith and Holofernes (1607) attributed to Caravaggio, two days before it would have been auctioned in Toulouse. PETERSON-WITHORN: Yeah, when I heard about that $12 million sale, I remembered that the Codex had about 360 illustrations inside of it. MASSEY: Twenty-five million, twenty-six million. Leonardo da Vinci Biography, Paintings, Family, Early Life What by Leonardo can we compare it with? Whoever cut it up would be pilloried forever. He also pulled together a list of artwork that he found it to be similar to. That these tales can work in a podcast, where no one can even see the work being described, suggests how much the allure of today's art-crime stories is in the skulduggery and mystery, not aesthetics. Son of Daniel (conductor & cellist) and Eleanore Saidenberg who were Picasso's New York dealers from 1955 to 1973. JoinBBC Culture Film and TV Clubon Facebook, a community for cinephiles all over the world. [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]. At $28 million it's away from the room now and on the telephone at $28 million. Last Supper, Italian Cenacolo, one of the most famous artworks in the world, painted by Leonardo da Vinci probably between 1495 and 1498 for the Dominican monastery Santa Maria delle Grazie in Milan. Guinness World Records lists Leonardo da Vinci's Mona Lisa as having the highest ever insurance value for a painting. An attempt to psychoanalyze the buyer of Leonardo da Vinci's 'Salvator Mundi.' Tim Schneider , November 17, 2017 The scene at Christie's New York on November 15. Last Supper (c. 1495-98) Leonardo da Vinci: Last Supper Images Group/REX/Shutterstock.com. Is it even a Leonardo at all? A Look at the Wold's Most Valuable Paintings - artincontext.org I've worked as well as an art appraiser. Qi Baishi "Twelve Landscape Screens" (1925): $148.7 million 7. The disciples, devastated by Christ stating one of them would cause his death, convey their feelings dramatically through their body language. To him, it was just his collection of scientific observations and illustrations and writings, mostly focused on the study of water. The Last Supper by Leonardo da Vinci. Self-portrait as Archangel Gabriel unveiled, Queen's Leonardo da Vinci drawings to be shown across UK cities, Salvator Mundi by Leonardo Da Vinci before and after restoration. MASSEY: At 16 million, 17 million. However, other critics have disagreed with the truth of that claim. Any more? The current record price is approximately US$450.3 million (which includes commission), paid for Leonardo da Vinci's Salvator Mundi (c.1500). TINDERA: Hypothetically though, Simon explained that our logic of taking one drawing and reviewing the sale price of that to extrapolate what a whole manuscript filled with drawings might be worth was something he considered in his own appraisal. It's not exactly known why he did that. Self Portrait by Leonardo da Vinci. When asked whether Salvator Mundis involvement in the Rybolovlev-Bouvier case might overshadow its sale, Christies postwar and contemporary chairman, Loc Gouzer, who secured the work with a $100m guarantee, said: We cannot comment about sellers, but it has every passport, every visa.. 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. Christies sells long-lost Salvator Mundi, artwork billed as biggest discovery of the 21st century, for $400m plus auction house premium. (crowd laughs) Good start. 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. The world's most expensive painting to sell at auction is Leonardo da Vinci's Salvator Mundi, which sold for $450.3 million on November 15, 2017 at Christie's.Shattering previous records and exceeding auction expectations, the sale underscored market demand for the artist's rare auction appearances, and the competition among collectors to own a work of such caliber and distinction. And so I think it's, you know, not so much, Let's look at it and see what would happen if we took scissors to it and divided it up. But just to say, Here we have something of such significance, partly because it has survived 500 years without, you know, being destroyed.. One of my hats I wearI'm a capitalist. Portrait of Ginevra de' Benci 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. And so, you've got the painting itself is you know, much more of a rare object. He applied his creativity to every realm in which graphic representation is used: he was a painter, sculptor, architect, and engineer. Head of anApostle. PETERSON-WITHORN: Yeah, and Gates loves books. But there would, there are people in the world that would probably do that. 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. It is Oil on wood and measures 168 x 130 cm (5 1/2 x 4 1/2 ft.). The ensuing war left the clay model a heap of ruins. That estimate sort of got you thinking in another direction, though, right Chase? 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. PETERSON-WITHORN: After the auction, he told the press, I'm very happy with the price. He also did not apply himself to higher mathematicsadvanced geometry and arithmeticuntil he was 30 years old, when he began to study it with diligent tenacity. Four hundred million selling here at Christies. But when I saw it, it didn't sit comfortably with me as an autograph Leonardo." 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. Re-sold for 12m to Stavros Niarchos in 1993. SIMON: My feeling was that the Codex was quite a bit more valuable than any single drawing would be. He told us via email that his guess would be, "over $100 million." As late as the press preview of the show, there was an empty space on the wall waiting for the Salvator Mundi, but it never arrived. CBS CLIP, BILL GATES: Well, that's simply based on taking the stock I own in Microsoft and doing some type of multiplication. When he was about 15, his father, who enjoyed a high reputation in the Florence community, apprenticed him to artist Andrea del Verrocchio. 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. This sale tripled the previous record, and introduced a new era in top art sales. Using monthly averages gives slightly different numbers, most significantly for paintings sold early or late in a year with significant inflation. But we ended up contacting others who we thought might know the work well, too. A list in another currency may be in a slightly different order due to exchange-rate fluctuations. Rybolovlevs spokesman, Brian Cattell, told the Wall Street Journal the family hoped the sale will finally bring to an end a very painful chapter. 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. 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. And my enjoyment in owning these wonderful works of art. However, weeks after the grand opening of his museum, where he planned to showcase the Codex and other art he had collected over the years, Hammer died at the age of 92. Where is the world's most expensive painting? - BBC Culture 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. His was the last name on the 1988 provenance list; painting came from "a private collection in Arizona". Leonardo da Vincis parents were unmarried at the time of his birth near a small village named Vinci in Tuscany. 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.. [3] And flipping through this copy, I have to say, I cant read a word of this. A major turning point came when the painting was controversially displayed as an authentic Leonardo at a 2011 exhibition at the National Gallery in London. Biography Of Leonardo da Vinci: How Old Is Leonardo da Vinci | Net Gifted with a curious mind and a brilliant. Please refer to the appropriate style manual or other sources if you have any questions. The Christie's sale itself was a highly staged drama, beginning with a marketing video that showed not the painting but the faces of observers most are ordinary people but one of them is Leonardo DiCaprio looking reverently at the image as if they were seeing Christ himself. Leonardo da Vinci (1452-1519) is one of the most intriguing personalities in the history of Western art. The writings in his notebooks suggest that he may have been a vegetarian, and there is also some speculation that he may have been gay. I expected to pay much more. It is believed to have been compiled between 1506 and 1510. Leonardo da Vinci Paintings He was listed in the register of the royal household as pictor et ingeniarius ducalis (painter and engineer of the duke). This means the Codex is certainly one of the world's most valuable pieces of art. So first, we looked to experts in the world of rare books and manuscripts to learn about the qualities that make a book valuable. But he went even beyond that. Joining me for this is Chase Peterson-Withorn, an editor on the Forbes wealth team. At the time bin Salman was trying to burnish Saudi Arabia's image by loosening a few restrictions. The painting disappeared from 1763 until 1900, when it was bought by Sir Charles Robinson as a work by Bernardino Luini, a follower of Leonardo. Most art world observers thought the Salvator Mundi would be the centrepiece of a new museum or art centre in the region, but the painting has not been glimpsed in public since. Leonardo da Vinci, (Italian: "Leonardo from Vinci") (born April 15, 1452, Anchiano, near Vinci, Republic of Florence [Italy]died May 2, 1519, Cloux [now Clos-Luc], France), Italian painter, draftsman, sculptor, architect, and engineer whose skill and intelligence, perhaps more than that of any other figure, epitomized the Renaissance humanist 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. Leonardos artistic inclinations must have appeared early. It's with you at $28 million. Billionaires just live in a different world. He decided that the Codex's fair market value was $50 million. Thanks for having me. Leonardo da Vinci's paintings: a guide to 8 famous works Various vandals have tried to harm da Vinci's famed masterpiece, and 1956 was a particularly bad year. A handpicked selection of stories from BBC Future, Culture, Worklife and Travel, delivered to your inbox every Friday. "I'm absolutely sure that six months down the road or a year, there's going to be some kind of new information, whether true or not, that's going to blow up everywhere in the news media," Dalsgaard says. The Louvre and the National Gallery refused to comment for either film. [13][14], Among the listed top 89, only six are paintings by non-Western artists. A scene from Saviour for Sale, a second documentary about the Salvator Mundi, by French journalist Antoine Vitkine (Credit: Zadig Productions). 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. 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. The paintings transferred to the dealers include a late, Alan Bond could not pay off the painting, and. The quality of the painting itself divides people. TINDERA: That's right. And to put into perspective, how much less art sold for 40 years ago, the sale of the Codex was the fifth-highest price for any piece of art sold at auction ever. Love film and TV? Leonardos parents were unmarried at the time of his birth. However, we should probably note that it seems unlikely that as the owner of the Codex, Gates would actually do this. The painting was sold in November 2017,[1][2] through the auction house Christie's in New York City. They bought it from an auction in Louisiana for just over $1,000.