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. And seeing these works enjoyed by people all over the world. The inflation adjustment may change as recent inflation rates are often revised. What by Leonardo can we compare it with? TINDERA: Hypothetically though, Simon explained that our logic of taking one drawing and reviewing the sale price of that to extrapolate what a whole manuscript filled with drawings might be worth was something he considered in his own appraisal. ", Auction Records Fall at Phillipss Sale of Contemporary Masters, "Fernand Lger (18811955), Contraste de formes", "Warmer Response at Sotheby's 2nd Night of Auctions", "Hong Kong Billionaire Lau Sets Two Records in 24 Hours", Led by $66M Van Gogh, Sotheby's Impressionist and Modern Sale Robustly Kicks Off Season, "Willem de Kooning (19041997), Untitled XXV", "Wang Meng painting auction for $62 million", "A Petite $69 Million Picasso Leads Sotheby's Solid $189 Million Impressionist Sale in London", "Property from a Distinguished Private Collection Pablo Picasso Femme Au Bret Et La Robe Quadrille (Marie-Thrse Walter)", Getty breaks record with $65.1-million purchase of Manet's 'Spring', As Stocks Fall, Art Surges at a $315.8 Million Sale, Claude Monet's "Le Bassin aux nymphas" auction results, A Zao Wou-Ki painting sold for $65 million, breaking records for a work by an Asian artist, Zao Wou-Ki's "Juin-Octobre 1985" auction results, The Most Expensive Paintings ever sold list by theartwolf, Oeuvres d'art les plus dispendieuses au monde, https://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=List_of_most_expensive_paintings&oldid=1140779647, Private Collection, New York, United States, This page was last edited on 21 February 2023, at 19:17. So Gates sort of went out and bought the ultimate book. So first, we looked to experts in the world of rare books and manuscripts to learn about the qualities that make a book valuable. Vincent van Gogh, Pablo Picasso, and Andy Warhol are the best-represented artists in the list. Record private sales are believed to include $250m for a painting by Paul Czanne and $300m for a Paul Gauguin. Yves Bouvier, a Swiss art dealer, bought the painting from the New York dealers for $83 million, reportedly on behalf of his client, a Russian oligarch named Dmitry Rybolovlev, though this is disputed by Mr Bouvier. He had an exceedingly inquisitive mind and made strenuous efforts to become erudite in languages, natural science, mathematics, philosophy, and history, among other subjects. (or simply Leonardo) (Leonardo diser Piero ser da Vinci) (Italian, 1452-1519). [6] Another example is a 2019 sale of The Seated Zouave by Vincent van Gogh. In particular, Qi Baishi's Twelve Landscape Screens was sold for $140.8 million in 2017. Articles from Britannica Encyclopedias for elementary and high school students. 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. 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. He was listed in the register of the royal household as pictor et ingeniarius ducalis (painter and engineer of the duke). The Louvre very much wanted to include it in its grand exhibition to celebrate Leonardo's 500th anniversary in 2019. Alison Cole, editor of The Art Newspaper, has written extensively about the painting and saw it at the National Gallery. And my background is as an art historian. The artwork alone garners thousands of visitors from around the world to the famous gallery it is placed in - the . Salvator Mundi, the long-lost Leonardo da Vinci painting of Jesus Christ commissioned by King Louis XII of France more than 500 years ago, has sold at Christies in New York for $450.3m, including auction house premium, shattering the world record for any work of art sold at auction. In this room, inon the telephone rather, at $28 million. The triptych had probably been reassembled by the Italian collector Francesco De Simone Niquesa, but were resold to a person in the US before 2013, This is the small version of the painting; the large version is at the. But if our maximum value isn't $4 billion, then what is it? July 8, 2021. Leonardo da Vinci was an artist and engineer who is best known for his paintings, notably the Mona Lisa (c. 150319) and the Last Supper (149598). By 1508, Leonardo returned to Milan, working for the French rulers of the city. I'm going to show it all over the world.. Despite the excitement over the sale of the only Leonardo in private hands queues of people had formed around Rockefeller Center in New York to see the canvas many in the art world had wondered if the piece would find a buyer. Leonardo da Vinci - Paintings, Inventions & Quotes - Biography It is Oil on wood and measures 168 x 130 cm (5 1/2 x 4 1/2 ft.). In this period, he painted very little and instead focused on his scientific activity, specifically his study of anatomy. One sold for nearly $6 million, and the other for $5.2 million. $450 million - Celebrity Net Worth Leonardo Da Vinci 1503 It was kept it at the Palace at Fontainebleau, where it remained until King Louis XIV moved the painting to the Palace of Versailles. 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. Updates? And that's the number we're using to value it. When Leonardo was about 15, his father, who enjoyed a high reputation in the Florentine community, apprenticed him to artist Andrea del Verrocchio. Art restorer Dianne Modestini in a scene from The Lost Leonardo, one of two new documentaries about the Salvator Mundi (Credit: Sony Pictures Classics/Entertainment Pictures). And my enjoyment in owning these wonderful works of art. Rybolovlev resold Gauguin's Otahi before 2017 for less than $50 million. In cases like these, that's why we have to turn to the experts who know more about this than us. According to a CNBC report, the median net worth of someone who is 66 years old, which is Gates' age is about $266,000. But just weeks before the auction happened, a devastating earthquake struck Italy and the government ended up skipping the sale. While dozens of manuscripts like the Codex have managed to survive the centuries intact, the Codex Leicester is the only da Vinci notebook that is still in private hands. 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. See a gallery of the world's most expensive paintings, Leonardo da Vincis Salvator Mundi sold for $400 million at Christies ($450.3m, including auction house premium), One of four versions of The Scream created by Munch and the only one that is privately owned. It's with you at $28 million. This is a list of the highest known prices paid for paintings. He's the head of the Books, Maps and Manuscripts department at Freeman's Auction House in Philadelphia. Mona Lisa is not only Leonardo da Vinci's most famous painting but the entire world's most famous painting. Apparently, Hammer had made a habit of buying things with Occidental Petroleum money. Read about our approach to external linking. Leonardo da Vinci Paintings & Artwork for Sale | Leonardo da Vinci Art Hi, Chase. Explore the life of Italian painter, architect, engineer, and humanist Leonardo da Vinci. The bidding then resumed: $353m, $355m. Top 10 Most Expensive Paintings Ever Sold At Auction Rybolovlevs spokesman, Brian Cattell, told the Wall Street Journal the family hoped the sale will finally bring to an end a very painful chapter. Nonetheless, Leonardos notebooks reveal a sharp intellect, and his contributions to art, including methods of representing space, three-dimensional objects, and the human figure, cannot be overstated. And then there's also rarity, or how rare this exact copy or version of a book or manuscript is. While Hammer was alive, we reported that Oxy shareholders sued three times asking to be reimbursed for what Hammer spent on art and the museum. The Nahmad family bought Suprematist Composition in 2008 at Sotheby's, New York, for $60,002,500 ($76million in 2021 dollars) from the heirs of Kazimir Malevich. Previewing the lot last month, Christies described the painting of Christ holding a crystal orb in his left hand and raising his right in benediction as the biggest discovery of the 21st century. 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. In Verrocchios renowned workshop Leonardo received multifaceted training that included painting and sculpture as well as the technical-mechanical arts. Before Rybolovlev, Salvator Mundi had been owned by a consortium of dealers including Alexander Parish, who had picked it up for $10,000 at an estate sale in the US in 2005, and had had it restored and authenticated. The abrupt $20m and $30m jumps in price were indeed unusual, Cerutti confirmed. [8] The actual purchase price was not disclosed, because of a confidentiality agreement attached to the private sale. And how does that help us come up with a number for today? Last Supper | History, Technique, Location, & Facts | Britannica The Annunciation by Leonardo da Vinci. It's worth at least what Gates paid for it. JoinBBC Culture Film and TV Clubon Facebook, a community for cinephiles all over the world. 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 most famous paintings in the world, the Last Supper was commissioned by Ludovico Sforza, duke of Milan and Leonardo's patron during his first stay in that city, for the Dominican monastery of Santa Maria delle Grazie. Portrait of Ginevra de' Benci by Leonardo da Vinci. Where is the world's most expensive painting? - BBC Culture 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. He also pulled together a list of artwork that he found it to be similar to. 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. He had just gotten married to Melinda Gates on New Year's Day of that year and was in the middle of building his multi-million-dollar mega mansion, Xanadu 2.0. MASSEY: At 16 million, 17 million. [13][14], Among the listed top 89, only six are paintings by non-Western artists. 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. Soon, the painting was on its way to Christie's. A handpicked selection of stories from BBC Future, Culture, Worklife and Travel, delivered to your inbox every Friday. A Leonardo, even one as dulled as this, could prove an amusing conversation piece. 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. Many factors seem to have converged to create this flourishing moment for true art crime. The first is da Vinci's "The Last Supper," painted during his time in Milan, from about 1495 to 1498. Christies CEO, Guillaume Cerutti, said he did not know whether the buyer would reveal themselves. One of my hats I wearI'm a capitalist. Saviour for Sale opens in the US on 17 September. The painting was sold in November 2017,[1][2] through the auction house Christie's in New York City. Billionaires just live in a different world. I'm an art dealer in New York. Leonardo da Vinci. Various vandals have tried to harm da Vinci's famed masterpiece, and 1956 was a particularly bad year. PETERSON-WITHORN: Armand placed the winning bid and paid about $5.6 million for the Codex, which was less than the roughly $10 million that it was reported experts thought it might sell for. TINDERA: That's right. Most observers agree that it is likely stashed in the Middle East, but some have speculated that it is stored in a tax-free zone in Geneva or even on the Prince's half-a-billion-dollar yacht. 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. At the time bin Salman was trying to burnish Saudi Arabia's image by loosening a few restrictions. A Look at the Wold's Most Valuable Paintings - artincontext.org The Return to Italy - the Mona Lisa disappeared from the Louvre Museum in 1911. Two of his most important worksthe Battle of Anghiari and the Leda, neither of them completedhave survived only in copies. ARCHIVAL CLIP OF ARMAND HAMMER: I guess I'm wearing a great many hats. In 1493 the clay model of the horse was put on public display on the occasion of the marriage of Emperor Maximilian to Bianca Maria Sforza, and preparations were made to cast the colossal figure, which was to be 16 feet (5 metres) high. That is still a question. A jump to $400m. 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. The Met has since returned the coffin to Egypt. PETERSON-WITHORN: And in fact, that fall he had just appeared atop our Forbes 400 ranking of the richest Americans, with an estimated net worth of $9.35 billion. Leonardos parents were unmarried at the time of his birth. And if Gates himself had the Codex appraised since he bought it. PETERSON-WITHORN: After the auction, he told the press, I'm very happy with the price. The sale generated a sustained 20 minutes of tense telephone bidding as the auctioneer Jussi Pylkknen juggled rival suitors before a packed crowd of excited onlookers in the salesroom. As a painter, Leonardo completed six works in the 17 years in Milan. She spent years restoring the painting, and passionately defends its authenticity in precise detail, pointing out the pentimento under Christ's thumb or a curve of his mouth that could only be Leonardo's. Ford House couldn't refuse", "Secret $100 Million Czanne Sale in Detroit artnet News", "Chteau Ptrus Makes a Record-Breaking Saleof Art", Roman Abramovich brings home the $86.3m Bacon and the $33.6m Freud, "Femme assise prs d'une fentre (Marie-Thrse), 1932", Auction; `Blue' Picasso Breaks Record at $51.7 Million, Works by Johns and de Kooning Sell for $143.5 Million, "Russian Billionaire Takes 74% Loss on $85 Million Gauguin", "Now hanging at the Art Institute: Chicago billionaire Ken Griffin's new, $100 million Basquiat canvas", "Ken Griffin Buys Basquiat Painting for More Than $100 Million", The Getty secures masterpiece portrait by Titian, Mark Rothko painting sets post-war auction record, Hopper Painting Sells for Record $91.9 Million at Christies, "ARTnews: Cohen Buys Two Works from Wynn in $120M Deal", David Hockney Painting Sells for $90 Million, Smashing Record for Living Artist, "Post-War and Contemporary Evening Sale Fine Art Auction Search Results Christie's", "Revealed: $72.8m Rockefeller Rothko has gone to Qatar", https://www.msn.com/en-us/news/world/the-heirs-of-a-jewish-banker-are-taking-a-japanese-company-to-court-over-an-allegedly-nazi-looted-van-gogh/ar-AA15sviM?ocid=msedgntp&cvid=cc9460cf2a05415db49f7eb48ba01da2, "How Robert Rauschenberg 'rewrote the rules of the game', "Report: Alice Walton Was Buyer of Record-Breaking $88.8 M. 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". 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. What is Leonardo da Vinci best known for? He used his superb intellect, unusual powers of observation, and mastery of the art of drawing to study nature itself, a line of inquiry that allowed his dual pursuits of art and science to flourish. Madonna and Child with the Infant Saint John the Baptist by Leonardo da Vinci. 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). Author of. 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. That he gave up both projects seems to indicate that he had deeper reasons for leaving Florence. Love film and TV? TINDERA: Gates is up against a group from a bank in Milan thats sitting in the front of the Christie's salesroom. Nineteen million on the telephone. [6] Though the Louvre Museum had turned down the opportunity to purchase it for 100 million,[7] the painting was estimated to sell for $110 to $170 million. So next, we decided to try some sources who not only know Old Masters works, but they know da Vinci really well. Cole was the first to report, in March 2020, the existence of a 46-page booklet the Louvre prepared for publication but never released, which asserts that the piece is an authentic Leonardo. Leonardo da Vinci: Facts, Paintings & Inventions - HISTORY But one tries to lay out in a rational way, why one has a higher value than the other, why one has a lesser market appeal, and then try from that to come up with a single value. Robert Simon told us that he thought it would not sell for less than $150 million. Thanks for having me. 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. Since the museums rarely sell them, they are considered priceless. He applied his creativity to every realm in which graphic representation is used: he was a painter, sculptor, architect, and engineer. TINDERA: Robert pointed out one other unique distinction. They brought it to Dianne Modestini, a highly respected restorer, who removed decades of grime and overpainting, and was the first to suspect it might be a true Leonardo. A New York Times story on the sale remarked that it was the highest price ever paid at auction for a manuscript. And Lewis points out that as the art market has enlarged, our world view itself has changed. At the press conference, Artnews reported, Gouzer spoke of the exceptional rarity of a work by Leonardo. TINDERA: Simon talked about how there have been a certain subset of book dealers called "breakers," who made it their job to buy books and then tear them apart, selling their illustrated pages piece by piece. Leda and the Swan - Leonardo da Vinci CLIP OF BILL GATES: So here, you're just seeing the page exactly as it looked to da Vinci. If one drawing sold for $12 million, that would mean that he could sell off this whole book clipped to pieces and earn something like $4 billion. 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. Contemporary art, Mould told the Guardian, is where all the big money is. In November 2017 Saudi crown prince Mohammed bin Salman paid $450 million for a da Vinci painting. The earliest sale on the list below (Vase with Fifteen Sunflowers by Vincent van Gogh) is from March 1987; with a price of 24.75 million (74.1 million in 2021 currency). [5], The list is incomplete with respect to sales between private parties, as these are not always reported and, even if they are, details like the purchase price may remain secret. In The Lost Leonardo, a grinning Bouvier says his exploits are just business as usual: "you buy low and you sell high." And flipping through this copy, I have to say, I cant read a word of this. "When we chose the title," Andreas Dalsgaard, a producer and a writer of The Lost Leonardo, tells BBC Culture, "the inspiration was partly that the painting is lost right now and the truth is lost, but it was also inspired by movies like the Indiana Jones movies that are full of treasures and treasure hunts.". A tempera and oil mural on plaster, "The Last Supper" was created for the refectory . That's because da Vinci wrote it backwards, which is what he did for much of what he wrote. The sale of Vincent van Gogh's Sunflowers was the first time a "modern" (in this case 1888) painting became the record holder, as opposed to the old master paintings which previously had dominated the market. And we're going to show you how we narrowed that range to settle on one number. Leonardo is sometimes credited as the inventor of the tank, helicopter, parachute, and flying machine, among other vehicles and devices, but later scholarship has disputed such claims. Fifty-fivefive-point-five million dollars to start it. The series is full of conspiracy theories about the never-solved robbery. Ludovicos fall in 1499 sealed the fate of this abortive undertaking, which was perhaps the grandest concept of a monument in the 15th century. Salvator Mundi, the long-lost Leonardo da Vinci painting of Jesus Christ commissioned by King Louis XII of France more than 500 years ago, has sold at Christie's in New York for $450.3m . Five-point-five million dollars to start. Leonardo da Vinci paintings that is on public display in the Western Hemisphere. ", https://www.telegraph.co.uk/luxury/art/art-sales-russian-buyers-inject-confidence-into-old-master-marke/, Picasso piece sets record for art sold at auction, qatar may have purchased Warhol's 'Eight Elvises', "Nahmads confirm Picasso's $115m flower girl will go to Paris", "Rockefeller Picasso sells for $115 million including feesauthor=Robert Frank", "DIC Sells 'Anna's Light' Painting For Y10.3bn Gain", "Regarding extraordinary profit associated with the sale of a certain painting owned by the company and revision of its consolidated operating result forecast", "How Basquiat Became the $60 Million Man", "A Basquiat Sells for 'Mind-Blowing' $110.5 Million at Auction", A Monet Sells for $110.7 Million, an Auction High for an Impressionist Work, "Qatar bought Ford House's $100-million Cezanne", "$100M for Czanne painting? Is 'The Last Da Vinci' Painting Really Worth $450 Million? This episode was reported by Michela Tindera, produced by Michela Tindera and Jonathan Palmer, with additional research by Sue Radlauer. The Top 10 Most Expensive Paintings Ever Sold At Auctions 10. Leonardo da Vinci - 205 artworks - painting - WikiArt The Virgin and Child with St Anne was painted by Leonardo Da Vinci in 1510. But it does have two anonymous sources, their faces hidden on camera, identified as high-ranking French government officials who had access to the Louvre's studies of the painting and to the French-Saudi negotiations. Everyone agreed, like Robert Simon said, that were it to go up for auction today. Last Supper, Italian Cenacolo, one of the most famous artworks in the world, painted by Leonardo da Vinci probably between 1495 and 1498 for the Dominican monastery Santa Maria delle Grazie in Milan. As a master artist, Leonardo maintained an extensive workshop in Milan, employing apprentices and students. 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. Following the French Revolution it was moved to the Louvre. And if you liked this story,sign up for the weekly bbc.com features newsletter, called The Essential List. Months earlier, he had appeared on the cover of Forbes, and he was a member of our very first Forbes 400 ranking. An exceptional case is graffiti artist David Choe, who accepted payment in shares for painting graffiti art in the headquarters of a fledgling Facebook. That's why these valuations can be so tricky. 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.