Then we look at the condition, and we base the condition on what's in our hands, and how you look at a book thats 150, 170 years old. CHASE PETERSON-WITHORN: Hi, Michela. TINDERA: That average of every expert opinion worked out to about $130 million. It would not draw more than the Salvator Mundi, which sold for $450 million. 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. 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 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. 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. 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. What Gouzer may have meant is that buyers prepared to spend in excess of $100m on artwork exist in the modern and contemporary fields. 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. 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. This stands as the most expensive painting by a living artist. Taking inflation into account, the 1962 value would be around US$900 million in 2021.[3]. And it was, you know, a thrilling project to be involved with. Four hundred million selling here at Christies. That he gave up both projects seems to indicate that he had deeper reasons for leaving Florence. 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. (crowd laughs) Good start. Back in 1980 according to an Associated Press report, the man who was the Earl of Leicester at the time decided to sell the Codex, which had been part of the Earl's estate for more than 250 years. 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. Leonardo da Vinci (1452-1519) - The Metropolitan Museum of Art The film doesn't take a stand on the painting's attribution, but makes it clear that museums, dealers and potential buyers had millions to gain along with incalculable prestige by choosing to believe it is a true Leonardo. Finding a new one is rarer than finding a new planet, he said. 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. The Most Famous Works of Leonardo Da Vinci | Arthive Months earlier, he had appeared on the cover of Forbes, and he was a member of our very first Forbes 400 ranking. Rybolovlev resold Gauguin's Otahi before 2017 for less than $50 million. According to a CNBC report, the median net worth of someone who is 66 years old, which is Gates' age is about $266,000. Lost Leonardo Da Vinci Painting Worth 100 Million May Have - HuffPost 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. MASSEY: Still with me then at five-million five hundred thousand, five-million eight hundred thousand, five-million eight hundred thousand. 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. If all we do is adjust the $30.8 million that Gates paid for it for inflation, that gets us to somewhere around $50 million today. Our editors will review what youve submitted and determine whether to revise the article. TINDERA: Now the audience in the room doesnt know this, but a representative for Microsoft cofounder Bill Gates is bidding on the phone. Leonardo da Vinci not only developed his skill in drawing, painting and sculpting during his apprenticeship, but through others working in and around the studio, he picked up knowledge in such diverse fields as mechanics, carpentry, metallurgy, architectural drafting and chemistry. In 1482 Leonardo moved to Milan to work in the service of the citys dukea surprising step when one realizes that the 30-year-old artist had just received his first substantial commissions from his native city of Florence: the unfinished panel painting Adoration of the Magi for the monastery of San Donato a Scopeto and an altar painting for the St. Bernard Chapel in the Palazzo della Signoria, which was never begun. Bin Salman himself visited President Emmanuel Macron in Paris while the loan was dangling in the balance. 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. The Louvre very much wanted to include it in its grand exhibition to celebrate Leonardo's 500th anniversary in 2019. Additional audio credits: AP, CBS, GatesNotes-The Blog of Bill Gates. Because the Louvre cannot comment on privately-owned works it has not displayed, the book can't be published, and at first, Cole says, the museum denied its existence. July 8, 2021. SIMON: What it does is make you realize how important the fact that the Codex has survived intact is. People who often would never get a chance to visit the great museums of the world. A scene from Saviour for Sale, a second documentary about the Salvator Mundi, by French journalist Antoine Vitkine (Credit: Zadig Productions). What is Leonardo da Vinci best known for? Top 10 Most Expensive Paintings Ever Sold At Auction 1503-1519). TINDERA: Right. Pablo Picasso "Garon la pipe" (1905): $142.7 million 8. And that's the number we're using to value it. With its sleek narrative and a wide range of voices from dealers to art historians to investigative journalists, The Lost Leonardo is the better of the two films, and benefits greatly from using Modestini as its main character. But we need a lot more information than that before we make our estimate. 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. That included footing the bill for not only the Codex he purchased for the $5 million in 1980, but also the tens of millions of dollars spent creating his own art museum in Los Angeles. TINDERA: Simon also included another work by da Vinci: a sheet of studies including sketches of a child embracing a lamb. And seeing these works enjoyed by people all over the world. Leda and the Swan - Leonardo da Vinci At $28 million it's away from the room now and on the telephone at $28 million. Joining me for this is Chase Peterson-Withorn, an editor on the Forbes wealth team. On permanent display at the Louvre in Paris, the Mona Lisa was assessed at US$100 million on 14 December 1962. Some of the most eye-opening commentary in both films isn't even about art. TINDERA: Robert pointed out one other unique distinction. Rybolovlev resold Te Fare in February 2017 at Christie's in London for $25 million. 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. Updates? And trying to balance them And of course, one of the things in doing an appraisal like this is you just don't put them in a mix, whatever. 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. This means the Codex is certainly one of the world's most valuable pieces of art. But he went even beyond that. Leonardo da Vinci painting sells for $450m at auction, smashing records SIMON: These went into the mix. Because at the end of the day, it's an entertaining story.". The image of Christ as The Saviour of the World was billed as The Last da Vinci at Christie's 2017 auction, where it sold for a record $450 million (342 million) to a proxy for bin Salman (yes, that bin Salman, whom the CIA found responsible for ordering the murder of the journalist Jamal Khashoggi). 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. While every effort has been made to follow citation style rules, there may be some discrepancies. With closing fees from the auction house, it came out to $30.8 million. For her part, Modestini has documented her work and the scientific studies of the painting, and published them online. The piece is sold.. There are all sorts of factors that come into play: condition, provenance. TINDERA: That's Darren Winston. On July 12, 2011, $75M was equivalent to 53M. 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. [13][14], Among the listed top 89, only six are paintings by non-Western artists. We should note here that we did reach out to Christie's, as well as Bill Gates to ask if they had any comments on the value of the Codex today. Leonardo da Vinci (1452-1519) is one of the most intriguing personalities in the history of Western art. We reported that same year that Gates envied his friend Warren Buffett, because he had more time to spend reading than Gates did. But some have said that's because he was left-handed, and he didnt want his ink to smear. That's why these valuations can be so tricky. $450 million - Celebrity Net Worth I'm going to show it all over the world.. Since the museums rarely sell them, they are considered priceless. 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. SIMON: It's a truly horrific prospect. That is still a question. However, other critics have disagreed with the truth of that claim. Leonardo da Vinci | Biography, Art, Paintings, Mona Lisa, Drawings 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. She even has her own mailbox. They bought it from an auction in Louisiana for just over $1,000. The painting was consigned to Christies by Dmitry Rybolovlev, 50, a Russian fertiliser oligarch who has been at the center of an art-world scandal involving claims that a Paris-based dealer, Yves Bouvier, cheated the collector out of as much as $1bn on sales of 38 artworks, including the Leonardo. He was known to be fastidious in personal care, keeping a beard neat and trim in later age, and to dress in colorful clothing in styles that dismissed current customs. This sale tripled the previous record, and introduced a new era in top art sales. Let us know if you have suggestions to improve this article (requires login). Saviour for Sale opens in the US on 17 September. We know quite a bit about Leonardo's life from a mini-biography by Giorgio Vasari, a Leonardo fanboy and the world's first art historian.Born a nobody, Leonardo was a charismatic and complicated man self confident and not, driven and not, distracted and not. But uncertainty is key to the appeal of every version of the story, as Lewis tells BBC Culture: "Nobody knows if it is a Leonardo, so you too can play the game, you can do your own Da Vinci Code on the Salvator Mundi. 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. And we can go into the auction record and look at previous copies of that exact same book, when it sold, where it sold, what its estimate was, what it brought. And so, the first place we looked were the auction records for the Codex from the 1980 and the 1994 sales. Price excludes sales commission and other costs. PETERSON-WITHORN: Exactly. And then there's also rarity, or how rare this exact copy or version of a book or manuscript is. 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. There is hardly a person on this planet that doesn't know about this artwork. TINDERA: But admittedly, Darren told us that he wasn't a da Vinci, or Codex expert and was hesitant to put a value on it out of the gate. It then disappeared again until it was bought at a small U.S. auction house in 2005. 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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. Please select which sections you would like to print: Director, Central Institute for the History of Art, Munich, 194770. A New York Times story on the sale remarked that it was the highest price ever paid at auction for a manuscript. Madonna and Child with the Infant Saint John the Baptist by Leonardo da Vinci. [4] In constant dollars, the highest price paid before 1987 was by the National Gallery of Art when in February 1967 they acquired Leonardo da Vinci's Ginevra de' Benci for around $5 million ($41million in 2021 dollars) from the Princely Family of Liechtenstein. 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. 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. What by Leonardo can we compare it with? The Lost Leonardo is now playing in the US and opens in the UK on 10 September. Please refer to the appropriate style manual or other sources if you have any questions. Leonardo da Vinci's paintings: a guide to 8 famous worksIs 'The Last Da Vinci' Painting Really Worth $450 Million? Alan Wintermute, a senior specialist in old master paintings at Christies in London, called it the holy grail of old masters. The current record price is approximately US$450.3 million (which includes commission), paid for Leonardo da Vinci's Salvator Mundi (c.1500). "And it is involved therefore in the politics around culture. The 16th-century writer Giorgio Vasari indicated that Leonardo cared little for money but was very generous toward his friends and assistants. 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. A list in another currency may be in a slightly different order due to exchange-rate fluctuations. Record private sales are believed to include $250m for a painting by Paul Czanne and $300m for a Paul Gauguin. 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Rauschenberg at Christie's", A Warhol Leads a Night of Soaring Prices at Christies, Andy Warhol's "Triple Elvis" auction results, "Basquiat's In This Case headlines Christie's inaugural 21st Century Evening Sale at $93,105,000". Within two days he sold it to Rybolovlev for $127.5 million. A Leonardo da Vinci the Size of a Post-it Sells for $12.2 Million Rybolovlevs spokesman, Brian Cattell, told the Wall Street Journal the family hoped the sale will finally bring to an end a very painful chapter. ARCHIVAL CLIP OF ARMAND HAMMER: I guess I'm wearing a great many hats. But as it turned out, he also had his own personal connection to the Codex. PETERSON-WITHORN: Thanks for listening to Priceless. 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. The Louvre and the National Gallery refused to comment for either film. The work of Leonardo is just as influential to the art that is being created today as it was in the 15th and 16th centuries, he said. One of the sources says the Louvre concluded that Leonardo merely "contributed to the painting," but that bin Salman would only approve the loan if the Salvator Mundi were labelled an authentic Leonardo. The Virgin and Child with St Anne by Leonardo da Vinci. His shares were of limited value when he was given them, but by the time of Facebook's IPO they were valued at around $200 million. Nineteen million on the telephone. This Leonardo da Vinci's portrait paintings are of Ginevra de' Benci, who was a rather popular Florentine woman. 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. Most experts today agree the painting was probably produced by assistants in Leonardo's workshop, where he added some finishing touches a common practice. So it's difficult to get much better than someone who has actually appraised an item. The Burlington House Cartoon by Leonardo da Vinci. 1 for US$44.4 million (equivalent to US$50.8million in 2021). He Died in May 2, 1519 in Amboise, Kingdom of France.His Famous works includes Mona Lisa, The Last Supper, The Vitruvian Man Style/Period: High Renaissance Biography. And one of the other, one of the principles and differences between, say an auction estimate and an appraisaland this is for what we call fair market value appraisalis that we come up with a single value, understanding that it's very rare that we kind of hit the bull's eye, but that is the opinion of the appraiser. Thanks for joining me. The first question we're asking, but we're going to ask it again is, What are we actually looking at? If it's a first edition of Moby Dick, that's a great thing to have. 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. His drawing of the Vitruvian Man (c. 1490) has also become a cultural icon. Something like the first printing in North America, or the first time a new word was used in print. 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. 31 of the Most Expensive Paintings Ever Sold at Auction a 2011 exhibition at the National Gallery in London, Art Bust: Scandalous Stories of the Art World, Kim Kardashian was photographed next to it. The Virgin and Child with St Anne was painted by Leonardo Da Vinci in 1510. LONDON A tiny Leonardo da Vinci sketch sold on Thursday at Christie's for 8.9 million with fees, or about $12.2 million, a record price for a Leonardo drawing at auction . The painting was sold in November 2017,[1][2] through the auction house Christie's in New York City. TINDERA: Okay, so our $4 billion estimate isn't all that realistic. He's gone to extra lengths to make this work as a whole more accessible to the public. 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.. 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. French President Emmanuel Macron pictured in 2018 with the owner of the Leonardo, Crown Prince Mohammad bin Salman (Credit: Photo by Bandar Algaloud/Getty Images), "The Louvre is supported by the government, the ministry of culture and ultimately Macron," Cole tells BBC Culture. Twenty-eight million dollars, then. Lady with an Ermine by Leonardo da Vinci. A tempera and oil mural on plaster, "The Last Supper" was created for the refectory . (Maybe so, but in the films and other reproduced images it does have a more cloying look). 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. TINDERA: I'm Michela Tindera, and this is Priceless. But we ended up contacting others who we thought might know the work well, too. Oil tycoon Armand Hammer bought it that year, and 14 years later, Gates bought it at another auction. 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. During his second period in Florence (1500-1508), he painted his most famous work, the Mona Lisa (ca. 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. But Christie's declined to comment, and a spokesperson for Gates never responded to our questions. Christies CEO, Guillaume Cerutti, said he did not know whether the buyer would reveal themselves. According to the provenance in the auction catalogue, a few Italian artists own the Codex after da Vinci's death, including a painter named Giuseppe Ghezzi, who apparently sold it in 1717 to Thomas Coke, a man who eventually became England's Earl of Leicester. But there would, there are people in the world that would probably do that. Qi Baishi "Twelve Landscape Screens" (1925): $148.7 million 7. SIMON: The Codex is something that for most of the year, let's say you have to keep it under lock and key and out of the light. 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. Its the last painting by Leonardo, the greatest of all Renaissance artists, and it had an appeal to collectors from all parts of the world., Every major scholar of Leonardos work accepts the picture and has for the past decade, he said, addressing questions over the paintings authenticity and condition, adding: Its not in flawless condition, its 500 years old and absolutely has the presence and condition of a true Leonardo.. Knowingly or not? The Wikipedia template uses a yearly average inflation. Leonardo da Vinci Net Worth 2023: Money, Salary, Bio - CelebsMoney So Gates sort of went out and bought the ultimate book. Leonardo spent 17 years in Milan, until Ludovicos fall from power in 1499. The paintings transferred to the dealers include a late, Alan Bond could not pay off the painting, and. But, it makes up only about 0.1% of Gates' $134 billion fortune, which we estimated for the Forbes 400 this year. His Last Supper (149598) and Mona Lisa (c. 150319) are among the most widely popular and influential paintings of the Renaissance. Paintings are listed only once, i.e. CBS CLIP, CONNIE CHUNG: You know, you may be the richest man in America, or at least the second-richest man in America. 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. I've worked as well as an art appraiser. Corrections? And Lewis has a new eight-episode podcast, Art Bust: Scandalous Stories of the Art World, which promises stories of "the ugliest crimes, the biggest scandals and the murky in-between." 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. By 1508, Leonardo returned to Milan, working for the French rulers of the city. They reflected the importance of the painting and that some of the bidders were conscious that the price would go higher than their bids. Leonardos artistic inclinations must have appeared early. Antoine Vitkine's film Saviour for Sale is most notable for some explosive additions about what might have happened behind the scenes at the Louvre. PETERSON-WITHORN: Art is one of the toughest things we value for our lists, because the value is just so subjective, and you really don't know what something will sell for until it hits the auction block.
