French curators had worked for a decade to prepare a major
exhibition marking the 500th anniversary of the death of Leonardo da Vinci.
When it opened, though, the most talked-about painting they had planned to show
— “Salvator Mundi,” the most expensive work ever sold at auction — was nowhere
to be seen.
اضافة اعلان
Plucked from shabby obscurity at a New Orleans estate sale,
the painting had been sold in 2017 as a rediscovered “lost” Leonardo and
fetched more than $450 million from an anonymous bidder who kept it hidden from
view. The chance to see it at the Louvre museum’s anniversary show two years
later had created a sensation in the international art world, and its absence
whipped up a storm of new questions.
Had the Louvre concluded that the painting was not actually
the work of Leonardo, as a vocal handful of scholars had insisted? Had the
buyer — reported to be Saudi Arabia’s Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman,
although he had never acknowledged it — declined to include it in the show for
fear of public scrutiny? The tantalizing notion that the brash Saudi prince
might have gambled a fortune on a fraud had already inspired a cottage industry
of books, documentaries, art world gossip columns, and even a proposed Broadway
musical.
None of that was true.
In fact, the crown prince had secretly shipped “Salvator
Mundi” to the Louvre more than a year earlier, in 2018, according to several
French officials and a confidential French report on its authenticity that was
obtained by The New York Times. The report also states that the painting
belongs to the Saudi Culture Ministry — something the Saudis have never
acknowledged.
A team of French scientists subjected the unframed canvas to
a weekslong forensic examination with some of the most advanced technology
available to the art world, and in their undisclosed report they had
pronounced, with more authority than any previous assessment, that the painting
appeared to be the work of Leonardo’s own hand.
Yet the Saudis had withheld it nonetheless, for entirely
different reasons: a disagreement over a Saudi demand that their painting of
Jesus should hang next to “Mona Lisa,” several French officials said last week,
speaking on condition of anonymity because the talks were confidential.
Far from a dispute about art scholarship, the withdrawal of
the painting appears instead to have turned on questions of power and ego.
Dismissing those demands as irrational and unworkable, the
French, in turn, refused to make public their own positive assessment of its
authenticity.
And the resulting diplomatic standoff between the French and
the Saudis has kept the painting out of sight as the cloud of intrigue around
it continues to swell.
The Louvre curators had secretly prepared a glossy, magazine-style
46-page summary of the conclusions of their forensic examination of the
painting. Its existence was first reported in March 2020 by Alison Cole of The
Art Newspaper. Scanned copies of the confidential report became prized
possessions among prominent Leonardo experts across the world, and The Times
obtained multiple copies.
Experts at the Center for Research and Restoration of the
Museums of France, an independent culture ministry institute, used fluorescent
X-rays, infrared scans and digital cameras aimed through high-powered
microscopes to match signature details of the materials and artistic techniques
in “Salvator Mundi” with the Louvre’s other Leonardo masterpieces.
Traces of hidden painting under the visible layers, details
in the locks of Christ’s hair, and the shade of bright vermilion used in the
shadows all pointed to the hand of Leonardo, the report concluded.
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