page_title: Salvator Mundi (Leonardo)
section_title: History
hierarchical_section_title: Salvator Mundi (Leonardo) / History
caption_attribution_description: Leonardo da Vinci, Salvator Mundi. (Black and white photographic reproduction) The painting was sold at Christie's New York, November 15, 2017, for $450.3 million, making it the most expensive painting ever sold.
context_page_description: Salvator Mundi is a painting by Italian Renaissance artist Leonardo da Vinci dated to c. 1500. Long thought to be a copy of a lost original veiled with overpainting, it was rediscovered, restored, and included in a major Leonardo exhibition at the National Gallery, London, in 2011–12. Although most leading scholars have considered it to be an original work by Leonardo, this attribution has been disputed by other specialists, some of whom posit that he only contributed certain elements.
  The painting depicts Jesus in Renaissance dress, making the sign of the cross with his right hand, while holding a transparent, non-refracting crystal orb in his left, signaling his role as Salvator Mundi and representing the 'celestial sphere' of the heavens. Around 20 other variations of the work are known, by students and followers of Leonardo. Preparatory chalk and ink drawings of the drapery by Leonardo are held in the British Royal Collection.
  It is one of fewer than 20 known works by Leonardo, and was the only one to remain in a private collection.
context_section_description: Leonardo da Vinci's Salvator Mundi may have been painted for Louis XII of France and his consort, Anne of Brittany. It was probably commissioned around 1500, shortly after Louis conquered the Duchy of Milan and took control of Genoa in the Second Italian War. Leonardo himself moved from Milan to Florence in 1500. Various copies of the painting were made by followers of Leonardo including his pupil Salaì (1511). Some versions differ significantly from the original, with a few, including one by his pupil Marco d'Oggiono (c. 1500) and another by Salaì depicting a more youthful subject.
  Leonardo's painting seems to have been at James Hamilton's Chelsea Manor in London from 1638 to 1641. After participating in the English Civil War, Hamilton was executed on 9 March 1649 and some of his possessions were taken to the Netherlands to be sold. Bohemian artist Wenceslaus Hollar could have made his engraved copy, dated 1650, in Antwerp at that time. It was also recorded in Henrietta Maria's possession in 1649, the same year her husband Charles I was executed, on 30 January. The painting was included in an inventory of the Royal Collection, valued at £30, and Charles' possessions were put up for sale under the English Commonwealth. The painting was sold to a creditor in 1651, returned to Charles II after the English Restoration in 1660, and included in an inventory of Charles' possessions at the Palace of Whitehall in 1666. It was inherited by James II, and may have remained with him until it passed to his mistress Catherine Sedley, whose illegitimate daughter with James became the third wife of John Sheffield, Duke of Buckingham. The duke's illegitimate son, Sir Charles Herbert Sheffield, auctioned the painting in 1763 along with other artworks from Buckingham House when the building was sold to George III.
  The painting was likely placed in a gilded frame in the 19th century, in which it remained until 2005.
  It was bought by British collector Francis Cook in 1900 for his collection at Doughty House in Richmond. The painting had been damaged by previous restoration attempts and was attributed to Bernardino Luini, a follower of Leonardo. Cook's great-grandson sold it at auction in 1958 for £45 as a work by Leonardo's pupil Giovanni Antonio Boltraffio, to whom the painting remained attributed until 2011.
caption: Photograph (c. 1908–1910) showing overpainting
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