In this article, we’ll discuss the most expensive work in the history of art: Leonardo da Vinci’s Salvator Mundi. Indeed, beyond the record-breaking price the work sold for at auction, the debate around it is fuelled by its dubious attribution and the mystery surrounding its current location. As a result, analysing the history of “The Last Da Vinci” will allow us not only to uncover the story of a lost masterpiece, but also to better understand the mechanisms that govern the art market today and the fragilities of such a system.
Most experts agree that the story of the Salvator Mundi begins around 1500, immediately after the fall of Ludovico il Moro in Milan. Indeed, in 1499, Leonardo da Vinci had just finished The Last Supper and was working on the colossal equestrian monument of the Sforza family. However, Louis XII, the new king of France, claimed the Duchy of Milan because of his grandmother, who belonged to the Visconti family, so he invaded Italy. Within months, French troops entered Milan. Il Moro fled, and Leonardo suddenly found himself without a patron and with his greatest work, the clay model of the horse for the equestrian statue, being used as a target for French archers.
Yet, Louis XII was a cultured man, deeply fascinated by the Italian Renaissance. When he entered Milan triumphantly in October 1499, he had the opportunity to see the Last Supper. According to legend, the King was impressed by the painting so much that he wanted to remove it from the wall of the refectory of Santa Maria delle Grazie and take it to France. Realizing he couldn’t have the wall, he decided to have the artist instead: it is in this context that Leonardo received the commission for the Salvator Mundi.
The final painting is a small oil on walnut panel (65.6 x 45.4 cm), in which Christ is depicted frontally, blessing with his right hand and holding a rock crystal sphere, symbol of the cosmos, in his left. The work is significant for Leonardo’s career, as it marks the beginning of a new period in which he worked as a “painter and engineer in ordinary” for the French sovereign, while remaining in Italy. The artwork was also particularly important to Louis XII, who wished to present himself not as a usurper, but as a legitimate Christian ruler. In this regard, Christ as Savior of the World was an image of divine order and peace. Owning such a painting by the genius who had served his enemy was an immense political trophy, especially considering that Leonardo was already renowned throughout the European courts at that time.
Following the Salvator Mundi on its journey, the work remained in the French royal collections until 1625. In that year, Princess Henrietta Maria of France married Charles I of England and took the painting with her to London as part of her dowry or private collection. As evidence of this, the painting is documented in the inventory of Charles I’s royal collection in 1649. After the king’s beheading during Cromwell’s Commonwealth, the painting was sold to pay the crown’s debts but returned to Charles II with the Restoration of the monarchy. The last ancient trace of the painting dates back to 1763, when it was auctioned by Charles Sheffield, the illegitimate son of the Duke of Buckingham. From that moment, the painting disappeared into thin air for 137 years.
When the work reappeared in 1900, it was unrecognizable, having been heavily repainted: Christ’s face had a moustache and a false beard, the colours were dark, and the wooden panel was cracked. Around that time, the Salvator Mundi was purchased by Sir Francis Cook for his collection in Richmond, yet no one believed it to be a work by Leonardo. In fact, it was catalogued as a painting by Bernardino Luini, one of his followers. In 1958, the Cook heirs auctioned the collection, which included the Salvator Mundi, at Sotheby’s. Considered a low-value copy and reduced to a mass of paint, the work was sold for £45, ending up in a bedroom in Louisiana for several decades.
After nearly 50 years, in 2005, the painting reappeared at a small auction house in New Orleans, the St. Charles Gallery, where it was listed as a “Leonardo copy.” At the end of the auction, two New York art dealers, Robert Simon and Alexander Parrish, had won it for $1,175. However, only then did Robert Simon notice something beneath the overpainting and decide to take the painting to Dianne Modestini, one of the world’s greatest restorers. As she gradually removed dirt and previous restorations, the quality of the hair, the blessing, and, most importantly, a pentimento (a correction made by the artist during the work) on the right thumb emerged. This became a key clue, as only the original artist made pentimenti, not a copyist. In 2008, the work was taken to the National Gallery in London for inspection by leading experts (including Nicholas Penny and Martin Kemp). The “canonization” took place there: the painting was declared an autograph Leonardo.
In 2013, Simon and Parrish decided to put the work up for sale through Sotheby’s. This resulted in a private sale for $80 million with Swiss art dealer Yves Bouvier, who resold the painting the same day to Russian billionaire Dmitry Rybolovlev for $127.5 million. However, Rybolovlev would only discover years later, through a newspaper article, that Bouvier had pocketed a $47.5 million “commission” in a single day, sparking a years-long international legal battle. This led Rybolovlev to believe he had overpaid for the work, so he decided to auction it at Christie’s New York in 2017.
Christie’s decided to adopt a very aggressive marketing strategy, deciding to include the Salvator Mundi in its “Contemporary and Post-War Art” auction. The aim was to engage a wider audience by communicating the work’s timeless iconography. Furthermore, the auction house placed great emphasis on the fact that it was the only privately owned Leonardo da Vinci, calling it “The Last Da Vinci.” On November 15, 2017, the starting bid was set at $100 million, but within 19 minutes, the price ballooned to $450,312,500, the highest price ever paid for a work of art to date. The person who paid that sum was Badr bin Abdullah bin Mohammed bin Farhan Al Saud, a minor member of the Saudi royal family. However, a New York Times investigation revealed that he was acting on behalf of Mohammed bin Salman (MBS), the crown prince and de facto ruler of Saudi Arabia.
With this latest step, the Salvator Mundi’s transformation from a painting to a globally recognized asset is complete. Indeed, the main reason for the purchase is that Saudi Arabia is seeking to diversify its economy, focusing on tourism and culture. For this reason, the painting was intended to be the centrepiece of a new museum complex, capable of competing with the Louvre Abu Dhabi. However, the project was not completed due to a diplomatic and scientific stalemate that has not yet been resolved. It all began in 2019, when the loan to the Louvre in Paris for the exhibition celebrating Leonardo’s 500th anniversary was agreed upon. At that time, the Louvre conducted secret analyses in its laboratory, and it seems the curators were not ready to label the work “100% Leonardo,” preferring instead to label it “Leonardo’s workshop with intervention by the master.” Furthermore, MBS had imposed the non-negotiable condition that the painting be displayed in the same room as the Mona Lisa, thus placing it on the same hierarchical level. Faced with this situation, the world’s most visited museum refused to exhibit the work, but at the same time the owners withdrew it, lest its value be lost forever.
Currently, the Salvator Mundi remains a ghost, having not been seen publicly since 2017. Naturally, there are several theories regarding its current whereabouts: for years, it was thought to be in MBS’s cabin on his €500 million yacht, while other rumours point to a high-security warehouse in Geneva. The most recent theory is that the work is already in a bunker in Saudi Arabia, ready to become the centrepiece of the “Black Box,” a secret or ultra-exclusive museum currently being completed in the Saudi desert.
What we can say with certainty is that the case of the Salvator Mundi raises the question of whether it is right or wrong for the greatest discovery of the 21st century, which should be considered a world heritage, to be in private hands. However, beyond this primary issue, this case accurately exemplifies the current state of the art market, in which the name of the artist matters far more than the work itself.
In the case of the Salvator Mundi, the situation is further exaggerated by the fact that its value has been built on the idea that it is “The Last Da Vinci.” Imagine that tomorrow, documentary evidence proves that the painting is the work of Bernardino Luini, one of Leonardo’s best students, with intervention by the master. Physically, the painting would not change a millimetre: the colours, the light, and Christ’s gaze would remain identical. Yet, its market value would collapse by at least 90% in an instant.
This tells us that the buyer hasn’t purchased the beauty, technique, or history of the wood and pigments; he’s purchased the “Leonardo Brand.” The artwork is no longer experienced as an aesthetic experience, but as an intangible asset, similar to a patent or a luxury brand. In this dynamic, the painting becomes a vehicle of value, whose price is tied exclusively to the rarity of the brand and its ability to confer prestige on the owner.
In financial terms, the doctrine of “Too Big to Fail” describes institutions so structurally significant that their collapse would trigger systemic disaster, forcing regulators to protect them at any cost. Applying this idea to the Salvator Mundi, the feared “failure” is not bankruptcy, but reducing an autograph Leonardo to the work of his workshop. Such a shift would not merely reduce the value of hundreds of millions of dollars; it would severely damage the credibility of Christie’s, embarrass the scholars who authenticated it, and deal an unacceptable reputational blow to Saudi Arabia’s cultural ambitions. As a result, faced with stakes this high, the painting’s attribution has ceased to be an art-historical question and has become a geopolitical and financial one. Ironically, the safest way to shield a $450 million asset from scrutiny is to withdraw it from the public eye, ensuring that doubts can never be proven right.
There is a bitter irony in the trajectory of the Salvator Mundi. An artwork once dismissed as a worthless copy—sold for forty-five pounds and hung in a Louisiana bedroom—has emerged from layers of paint to become the most expensive object in art history. Yet, that very triumph proved to be its trap. The astronomical price that was paid at Christie’s auction is the exact reason it has vanished once again. The Savior of the World has triumphed over the global art market, but in doing so, it has ended up where art was never meant to be: entirely out of sight.
My name is Luca Buzzo, and I was born and raised in Genoa. When I was 18, after obtaining a scientific high school diploma, I decided to move to Milan to study at Bocconi University. Currently, I am pursuing a master's degree in Economics and Management in Arts, Culture, Media, and Entertainment (ACME). My interests span across multiple fields but the one I am most interested in are Visual arts, Culture and heritage, Museum studies, Asian studies (in particular China and Hong Kong), Social dynamics and Identity studies.
