The Story:
$450.3 million is the new price tag for the most expensive work of art ever sold, and the accolade goes to Leonardo da Vinci’s “Salvator Mundi” (Savior of the World), a rediscovered portrait of Jesus Christ. The half-millennium-old painting was sold to an unidentified bidder at Christie’s auction house.
The Details:
Da Vinci’s paintings are extremely rare, and less than 20 are thought to have survived. Salvator Mundi is the last of the works deemed to be his.
The portrait is said to have changed many hands for several hundred years among European royalty, and overpainting and poor cleaning efforts have now rendered the work of art almost unrecognizable.
The piece has been validated by museums and scholars after resurfacing at Sotheby’s in 1958. At the time it was sold for about $125, but in 2005, a conservator and a group of Old Master dealers campaigned for the piece to be re-authenticated.
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