World’s priciest painting may be a Leonardo after all

PARIS: The world’s most expensive painting, the “Salvator Mundi”, may be the work of Leonardo da Vinci after all, with several media reports contradicting doubts raised in a French documentary. The painting of Christ has not been seen in public since it was bought for $450 million by the Saudi royal family at a 2017 Christie’s auction.

“The Savior for Sale”, a documentary by filmmaker Antoine Vitkine due to run on French TV this week, claims the Saudis withheld the painting from a 2019 exhibition at The Louvre after its experts concluded it was produced by da Vinci’s workshop and that the master only “contributed” to it. But after widespread reporting of Vitkine’s claims, other media have denied his version of events. “The Louvre and the C2RMF (its analysis unit) reached the opposite conclusion to the documentary: for them, the painting is indeed the work of Leonardo and only him. This information was communicated to the Saudis in September 2019,” said Didier Rykner, editor of magazine La Tribune de l’Art.