The Last da Vinci May Set a New Code

That a painting once hawked for only $60 has fetched $450.3 million this week is definitely the stuff of movies. By breaking not only previous records for paintings sold at auctions (Picasso’s Les Femmes d’Alger for $179 million) but also privately (Paul Gauguin’s When Will You Marry? for $300 million), Salvator Mundi — a portrait of Christ hyped as ‘the last Leonardo da Vinci’ — has shone a spotlight on the curious trajectory of the masterpiece and the billionaire who sold it.

It was commissioned over 500 years ago, was owned by kings and commoners, damaged by over-painting, devalued after being judged as a work by a pupil, collected by an artsy British nobleman, sank into obscurity, was picked out by a group of art dealers, revealed as a da Vinci original, sold to a middleman for $80 million who promptly “flipped” it to the Russian billionaire Dmitry Rybolovlev for $137 million.

Known for getting around the highest divorce settlement ever (a $4.8 billion payout was reduced to “just” $604 million), Rybolovlev has had the last laugh again as a dip in the Old Masters market had led to speculation that he would not recover the price he paid, despite a firm pre-auction offer of $100 million. Christie’s high-decibel pre-sale publicity blitz launched clearly paid off and may become the new code for future star auction attractions.