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. Paintings are listed only once, i.e. TINDERA: Gates is up against a group from a bank in Milan thats sitting in the front of the Christie's salesroom. 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. MASSEY: Twenty-five million, twenty-six million. 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. The 16th-century writer Giorgio Vasari indicated that Leonardo cared little for money but was very generous toward his friends and assistants. However, we should probably note that it seems unlikely that as the owner of the Codex, Gates would actually do this. The paintings transferred to the dealers include a late, Alan Bond could not pay off the painting, and. A jump to $370. PETERSON-WITHORN: Yeah, and Gates loves books. His notebooks reveal a spirit of scientific inquiry and a mechanical inventiveness that were centuries ahead of their time. He also pulled together a list of artwork that he found it to be similar to. Leonardo da Vinci paintings that is on public display in the Western Hemisphere. TINDERA: That's Darren Winston. Taking inflation into account, the 1962 value would be around US$900 million in 2021. Get a Britannica Premium subscription and gain access to exclusive content. 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. TINDERA: So back in November 1994, Microsoft cofounder Bill Gates was 39 years old and pretty much at the top of his game. This Leonardo da Vinci's portrait paintings are of Ginevra de' Benci, who was a rather popular Florentine woman. He currently resides in Vinci, Italy. 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. Leonardo never married, but he had many close relationships with other artists and intellectuals as well as with his assistants. 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. When Leonardo was about 15, his father, who enjoyed a high reputation in the Florentine community, apprenticed him to artist Andrea del Verrocchio. Knowingly or not? 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. I'll give everyone time. So of course, da Vinci never called it the Codex Leicester or the Codex Hammer. 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. Oprah Winfrey had bought the painting in November 2006 at Christie's for nearly $88 million. 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. According to the Christie's auction catalogue for the 1994 sale, the Codex was described as being in good and stable condition. Guinness World Records lists Leonardo da Vinci's Mona Lisa as having the highest ever insurance value for a painting. On the last telephone, 18 million. That sold for $3.6 million at Sotheby's in New York in 1986. Whoever cut it up would be pilloried forever. According to some sources, the painting had been sold by Argentinian art collector Nelly Arrieta de Blaquier for $300 million,[9] but the price was not confirmed by any of the parties involved.[10]. TINDERA: Slicing up and selling off a beautiful manuscript or book is not without precedent, though, Robert explained to us. 9. 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. Renaissance artist, inventor, polymath, musician, and architect who painted the Mona Lisa and The Last Supper and drew the iconic Vitruvian Man. He was the auctioneer at the 1994 Christie's sale. 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. The two documentaries arrive at a time when films, podcasts and pop culture itself seem fascinated by art crimes, mysteries and forgeries. "And it is involved therefore in the politics around culture. And flipping through this copy, I have to say, I cant read a word of this. CLIP OF BILL GATES: So here, you're just seeing the page exactly as it looked to da Vinci. "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.". Six-million five hundred thousand, seven million. Five hundred years later, the Codex is in such good condition, in part because it hasn't changed hands many times. 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. This list is ordered by consumer price index inflation-adjusted value (in bold) in millions of United States dollars in 2021. It depicts the dramatic scene described in several closely connected moments in the Gospels, including Matthew 26: . 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. But Christie's declined to comment, and a spokesperson for Gates never responded to our questions. Rybolovlev resold Gauguin's Otahi before 2017 for less than $50 million. At that time this was the 4th highest (unadjusted) price at auction and 10th highest price on this list. Joining me for this is Chase Peterson-Withorn, an editor on the Forbes wealth team. It looks interesting. Fifty-fivefive-point-five million dollars to start it. 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. There are all sorts of factors that come into play: condition, provenance. The current record price is approximately US$450.3 million (which includes commission), paid for Leonardo da Vinci's Salvator Mundi (c.1500). It stayed with the Earl of Leicesters estate until 1980, when it finally went up for auction. That he gave up both projects seems to indicate that he had deeper reasons for leaving Florence. And so, you've got the painting itself is you know, much more of a rare object. The source says he advised the government that "exhibiting under the Saudi conditions would be like laundering a piece that cost $450 million". 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. ROBERT SIMON: My name is Robert Simon. That's because da Vinci wrote it backwards, which is what he did for much of what he wrote. While Hammer was alive, we reported that Oxy shareholders sued three times asking to be reimbursed for what Hammer spent on art and the museum. The Virgin and Child with St Anne by Leonardo da Vinci. He decided that the Codex's fair market value was $50 million. Four hundred million selling here at Christies. 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. The unique fame that Leonardo enjoyed in his lifetime and that, filtered by historical criticism, has remained undimmed to the present day rests largely on his unlimited desire for knowledge, which guided all his thinking and behaviour. 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. On permanent display at the Louvre in Paris, the Mona Lisa was assessed at US$100 million on 14 December 1962. 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. On permanent display at the Louvre in Paris, the Mona Lisa was assessed at US$100 million on 14 December 1962. Our editors will review what youve submitted and determine whether to revise the article. There is hardly a person on this planet that doesn't know about this artwork. 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. Leonardo Da Vinci 1503 It was kept it at the Palace at Fontainebleau, where it remained until King Louis XIV moved the painting to the Palace of Versailles. Despite the excitement over the sale of the only Leonardo in private hands queues of people had formed around Rockefeller Center in New York to see the canvas many in the art world had wondered if the piece would find a buyer. CHASE PETERSON-WITHORN: Hi, Michela. St John the Baptist by Leonardo da Vinci. 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. Many factors seem to have converged to create this flourishing moment for true art crime. They bought it from an auction in Louisiana for just over $1,000. Edvard Munch "The Scream" (1895): $135.2 million 9. Gifted with a curious mind and a brilliant. $50 million through Sothebys in 1997. Well, as we mentioned, the most expensive painting ever sold at auction was the Salvator Mundi for $450 million. (crowd laughs) Good start. Portrait of Ginevra de' Benci by Leonardo da Vinci. While every effort has been made to follow citation style rules, there may be some discrepancies. 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. Nonetheless, the exhibition went a long way toward legitimising a shaky attribution. TINDERA: That's right. PETERSON-WITHORN: In the end, we decided to take the average of all the recommendations we got from our expert sources. Christie's billed the painting as an original work by Leonardo da Vinci himself. [note 1] Where necessary, the price is first converted to dollars using the exchange rate at the time the painting was sold. 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. The Top 10 Most Expensive Paintings Ever Sold At Auctions 10. TINDERA: That's Gates talking for a video posted on his blog a few years ago, around the time that he exhibited the Codex Leicester in some museums in Europe. Hi, Chase. 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. Inside besides da Vinci's writings, there are also about 360 drawings and diagrams throughout the manuscript. The US art critic Jerry Saltz rails in The Lost Leonardo that "it's not even a good painting", much less a great Leonardo, while true believers gush that seeing it in person is a transcendent experience. 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. Mona Lisa. 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. 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. 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. ", 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). 1. 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. All episodes of the Art Bust podcast are available now. It is believed to have been compiled between 1506 and 1510. As of 2023, Leonardo da Vinci's net worth is $320 million. TINDERA: That average of every expert opinion worked out to about $130 million. 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. 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. MASSEY: Twenty-seven million. A Malevich Suprematist Composition sold for $85.8 million at Christies, breaking the record for a work of Russian art. MICHELA TINDERA: So its 1994, and were listening to an auction in a salesroom at Christie's in Manhattan. Author of. The documentary covers much of the same ground as The Lost Leonardo, but less stylishly, with too many stock establishing shots of cities. PETERSON-WITHORN: Thanks for listening to Priceless. 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. There are more and more platforms for telling stories. This stands as the most expensive painting by a living artist. Read about our approach to external linking. Contemporary art, Mould told the Guardian, is where all the big money is. The saleroom erupted in cheers and applause. 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. A lost painting by Leonardo da Vinci may have been found in a Scottish farmhouse, reported The Daily Mail. But many experts on camera and elsewhere in the press think he leapt to an early conclusion. One of my hats I wearI'm a capitalist. Early Life: Verrocchio's Pupil. Vincent van Gogh, Pablo Picasso, and Andy Warhol are the best-represented artists in the list. 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. Encyclopaedia Britannica's editors oversee subject areas in which they have extensive knowledge, whether from years of experience gained by working on that content or via study for an advanced degree. It suffers from not having Modestini or some other compelling central figure. One of two pastel versions; another two painted versions (and lithography) exist, all created by Munch. In particular, Qi Baishi's Twelve Landscape Screens was sold for $140.8 million in 2017. At $28 million. Any more? That estimate sort of got you thinking in another direction, though, right Chase? The original one is now located at Muse du Louvre, Paris. But when I saw it, it didn't sit comfortably with me as an autograph Leonardo." This sale tripled the previous record, and introduced a new era in top art sales. The New York Times confirmed rumours that the Louvre wouldn't accede to bin Salman's demand that his painting be displayed in the same room as the Mona Lisa, giving it near-equal status. [11][12] Prices realised for just his nine paintings listed below, when adjusted for inflation to 2017, add up to over US$900million. (Swiss authorities investigated him for defrauding Rybolovlev over several artworks, but this year closed the case without charging him.) 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.. It was first unveiled to the public at the National Gallery in London in 2011. 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. 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. Bin Salman himself visited President Emmanuel Macron in Paris while the loan was dangling in the balance. I expected to pay much more. Most observers agree that it is likely stashed in the Middle East, but some have speculated that it is stored in a tax-free zone in Geneva or even on the Prince's half-a-billion-dollar yacht. 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.