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. At one point, a telephone bidder jumped in, pushing the price from $332m to $350m. TINDERA: Robert pointed out one other unique distinction. Leonardo is sometimes credited as the inventor of the tank, helicopter, parachute, and flying machine, among other vehicles and devices, but later scholarship has disputed such claims. During his second period in Florence (1500-1508), he painted his most famous work, the Mona Lisa (ca. 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. A list in another currency may be in a slightly different order due to exchange-rate fluctuations. 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. 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. TINDERA: Gates is up against a group from a bank in Milan thats sitting in the front of the Christie's salesroom. His drawing of the Vitruvian Man (c. 1490) has also become a cultural icon. PETERSON-WITHORN: Given Simon's connections to the Salvator Mundi, and his experience running a gallery of Old Masters works, he seemed like an excellent source to speak with for this valuation. She tells BBC Culture, "Since then, Dianne Modestini continued to work on it. PETERSON-WITHORN: Exactly. This is a list of the highest known prices paid for paintings. 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. The sale generated a sustained 20 minutes of tense telephone bidding as the auctioneer Jussi Pylkknen juggled rival suitors before a packed crowd of excited onlookers in the salesroom. She was universally considered to be the painter's sitter. And we're going to show you how we narrowed that range to settle on one number. And so, you've got the painting itself is you know, much more of a rare object. Before Rybolovlev, Salvator Mundi had been owned by a consortium of dealers including Alexander Parish, who had picked it up for $10,000 at an estate sale in the US in 2005, and had had it restored and authenticated. CLIP OF BILL GATES: So here, you're just seeing the page exactly as it looked to da Vinci. He decided that the Codex's fair market value was $50 million. One sold for nearly $6 million, and the other for $5.2 million. Biography Of Leonardo da Vinci: How Old Is Leonardo da Vinci | Net Worth | People ProfilesPeople Profiles is a channel that dives deep into the lives of some. I cannot say if he or she will want to be public.. Trained in Florence as a painter and sculptor in the workshop of Andrea del Verrocchio (1435-1488), Leonardo is also celebrated for his scientific contributions. In 1993, Simon was hired by the trustees of the Armand Hammer Museum to do an appraisal of the Codex back when it was known as the Codex Hammer. The series is full of conspiracy theories about the never-solved robbery. This Leonardo da Vinci's portrait paintings are of Ginevra de' Benci, who was a rather popular Florentine woman. 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 Louvre and the National Gallery refused to comment for either film. He told us via email that his guess would be, "over $100 million." I expected to pay much more. That estimate sort of got you thinking in another direction, though, right Chase? Why do bad things happen to 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. His was the last name on the 1988 provenance list; painting came from "a private collection in Arizona". MASSEY: Nineteen-million five hundred thousand I'll be happy to take. Love film and TV? And then there's also rarity, or how rare this exact copy or version of a book or manuscript is. So it doesn't really look like a notebook anymore. 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. Since the painting first arrived at the Louvre in 1815, "Mona Lisa" has received plenty of love letters and flowers from admirers. Knowingly or not? In particular, Qi Baishi's Twelve Landscape Screens was sold for $140.8 million in 2017. The Virgin and Child with St Anne by Leonardo da Vinci. So Gates sort of went out and bought the ultimate book. 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. 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. It is Oil on wood and measures 168 x 130 cm (5 1/2 x 4 1/2 ft.). 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.. Highly esteemed, he was constantly kept busy as a painter and sculptor and as a designer of court festivals. [6] Though the Louvre Museum had turned down the opportunity to purchase it for 100 million,[7] the painting was estimated to sell for $110 to $170 million. Guinness World Records lists Leonardo da Vinci's Mona Lisa as having the highest ever insurance value for a painting. Pierre-Auguste Renoir "Bal du moulin de la Galette" (1876): $154.7 million 6. 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.. At the height of the auction, as many of six bidders were in play. On the telephone in this room at $28 million. Everyone agreed, like Robert Simon said, that were it to go up for auction today. The only non-Western modern artwork listed is that of the Chinese-French painter Zao Wouki's oil painting Juin-Octobre 1985, which was sold for $65 million in 2018. 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. The Last Supper by Leonardo da Vinci. So, they decided to hold an auction through Christie's, and it took place in London in December 1980. 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. [11][12] Prices realised for just his nine paintings listed below, when adjusted for inflation to 2017, add up to over US$900million. He was also frequently consulted as a technical adviser in the fields of architecture, fortifications, and military matters, and he served as a hydraulic and mechanical engineer. Rybolovlev resold Te Fare in February 2017 at Christie's in London for $25 million. Twenty-eight million. What is Leonardo da Vinci best known for? This episode was reported by Michela Tindera, produced by Michela Tindera and Jonathan Palmer, with additional research by Sue Radlauer. SIMON: My feeling was that the Codex was quite a bit more valuable than any single drawing would be. 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. So, you know, it's something I've sort of been following for, you know, a good part of my life. It looks interesting. 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. In this period, he painted very little and instead focused on his scientific activity, specifically his study of anatomy. 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 16th-century writer Giorgio Vasari indicated that Leonardo cared little for money but was very generous toward his friends and assistants. 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.. Qi Baishi "Twelve Landscape Screens" (1925): $148.7 million 7. When it sold in 1994, it was also expected to sell for $10 million, but ended up selling for three times that. But, it makes up only about 0.1% of Gates' $134 billion fortune, which we estimated for the Forbes 400 this year. 7 | The Macklowe Collection | | Sotheby", "Sale Offers a Reason for Relief at Sotheby's", "Ming Dynasty Scroll Sells for Record $77 Million at Auction", The Collection of Eleanore and Daniel Saidenberg, Francis Bacon (19091992) Portrait of George Dyer Talking, Francis Bacon Work Sells for $70 Million at Christies Auction, "sGallery: A Gauguin and a van Gogh Change Hands", Andy Warhol's "Four Marlons" auction results, "Magritte 'Masterpiece' Sells for Record-Breaking $79.8 M. During Sotheby's Sale", "China auction sees Qi Baishi painting sell for $65m", "The buyer of 422.5 Million Qi Baishi painting revealed", "What Are The Top 10 Al-Thani Family Art Acquisitions? Before this, the highest absolute price paid for a painting was 8.1 million (20.4 million in 2021 currency) paid by the J. Paul Getty Museum for Andrea Mantegna's Adoration of the Magi at Christie's in London on 18 April 1985. For her part, Modestini has documented her work and the scientific studies of the painting, and published them online. However, other critics have disagreed with the truth of that claim. TINDERA: Okay, so our $4 billion estimate isn't all that realistic. And my background is as an art historian. After his death, Hammer's estate became tied up in a series of new lawsuits that began with the niece of Hammer's late wife suing for a piece of his art collection and other assets. 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. Taking inflation into account, the 1962 value would be around US$900 million in 2021. Before the auction opened, the 500-year-old Leonardo da Vinci painting was estimated to sell for $100 million. 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. 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. And flipping through this copy, I have to say, I cant read a word of this. Something like the first printing in North America, or the first time a new word was used in print. Steve Wynn, who bid on the painting at auction, privately acquired the work several months later from the unidentified buyer for an undisclosed, supposedly lower price. Like we did earlier in this episode, he considered the price that it sold for in 1980. Self Portrait by Leonardo da Vinci. By 1508, Leonardo returned to Milan, working for the French rulers of the city. The winning bidder would later be revealed to be Saudi Arabia's Prince. Vincent van Gogh, Pablo Picasso, and Andy Warhol are the best-represented artists in the list. (Maybe so, but in the films and other reproduced images it does have a more cloying look). The disciples, devastated by Christ stating one of them would cause his death, convey their feelings dramatically through their body language. Alan Wintermute, a senior specialist in old master paintings at Christies in London, called it the holy grail of old masters. Leonardo da Vinci (1452-1519) is one of the most intriguing personalities in the history of Western art. Georgia O'Keeffe holds the record for the highest price paid for a painting by a woman. On November 20, 2014 at Sotheby's, the Crystal Bridges Museum of American Art bought her 1932 painting Jimson Weed/White Flower No. They write new content and verify and edit content received from contributors. July 8, 2021. MASSEY: Still with me then at five-million five hundred thousand, five-million eight hundred thousand, five-million eight hundred thousand. (or simply Leonardo) (Leonardo diser Piero ser da Vinci) (Italian, 1452-1519). (According to contemporary sources, Leonardo was commissioned to create three more pictures, but these works have since disappeared or were never done.) 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. 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. Nineteen million on the telephone. TINDERA: Hammer is also the great-grandfather of Hollywood actor Armie Hammer.