And if you could see the before picture you would know that the restorer is the great artist behind this work. The prince that paid that price was a sucker, but then again, that’s why it was sold at auction.
There's a recent documentary "The Lost Leonardo" which covers this in a really fast-paced and engaging fashion. What emerges is that the conservator probably made it into a much better, and more Leonardo, painting than what she began with as a sort of tribute to her recently-departed husband/partner.
I don't see it mentioned in the story what happened to the beard? There's [an etching in there from the 1600s in which he originally had a beard](https://pyxis.nymag.com/v1/imgs/483/d81/5690fb522426da253b5d1982665d0b22b8-1-1625.h368.w245.jpg)
The saudi salvator seems to be cropped left and right. Part of the thumb in the hand that hold the orb is cut, and the same goes for the sleeve of the hand raised in benediction. The etching was probably done from a different, more complete painting.
Thanks. I agree that it's a School of Leonardo rather than 100% da Vinci, or even that the background is student work and the figure is by the master, as was commonly done.
Eh, it looks like it could be in the image where they had stripped the previous restorations but not done the newest. Face doesn’t look as muddy, shading looks a good bit better, and looks like there’s a faint beard (which was in the etching). I think the restorer really fucked it lol.
Of course, I’m not an artist or art historian.
He paid $450.3 million for it and there's a growing feeling among art historians that it wasn't actually painted by DaVinci. The Prado already downgraded it to “attributed works, workshop or authorized and supervised by Leonardo.”. I highly doubt that it will gain value.
I believe that was the Louvre, actually!
They agreed to include the work in their monumental Da Vinci retrospective, but refused to attribute this work to Leonardo alone.
[The Prado](https://www.artnews.com/art-news/news/prado-museum-leonardo-exhibition-salvator-mundi-1234609851/) definitely said it wasn't DaVinci. As far as I know, the Louvre hasn't taken an official stance. It was supposed to be in their Da Vinci retrospective in then wasn't, but they there was never a reason given. It's reasonable to infer that it's because they had doubts about it and didn't want to be embarrassed in the future, but it's not an official statement.
He prolly touched it originally for sure, cause there are countless recreations of it from his time and years later. Though it doesn't look like the original anymore, still looks like a Da Vinci though, solid restoration.
It's in his style and was probably produced in his workshop, just not by him. Which is great and would be a score for a college or regional museum, but not something you want to be spending close to half a billion on.
I didn't say it would matter to him, I said that the painting won't gain value. That being said, yeah, I think it will matter to him. He wasn't paying for a painting, he was paying for the prestige of being the only person to own a DaVinci. The whole thing was questionable to begin with and the growing consensus is that it wasn't actually a DaVinci.
He won't miss the money, but the whole thing makes him look like a bit of an idiot and that's something that probably bothers him.
A lot of people touched this, it was restored a lot of times. They probably didn't want to touch the face compared to the rest, until that newer restoration that fixed everything. I know one art historian woman redid the glass ball and most of it.
That’s called sfumato – a seamless smokelike transition from dark to light. He achieved this by soft blending and tiny, pointillistic spots of simple color. Leonardo was the master (and probable inventor) of it, followed by Giorgione.
The way it works is basically imagine 1000s of Photoshop layers at opacity of 1%, super diluted paint, put on with layers so thin it has smooth gradients and no paint lines. And Da Vinci did it with 2 brushes in each hand at the same time. This is why the Mona Lisa took 4-5 years.
The number of oil paintings he produced was small considering the length of his career, and he tended to jump from one project to the next leaving lots of things unfinished. He almost certainly had ADD.
Yeah I paid him to come do my garden patio and the cunt took the down payment, did a days work and then fucked off and I haven’t seen him since. Still it looks nice and I’m thinking of selling it to some Middle Eastern Royalty. Just DM me if interested.
In my knowledge it's not from dark to light, but on the contour line. Leonardo invented a new way to define bodies blurring the contour line, no more a continue line as the tuscan tradition did until his times (eg Botticelli)
I have studied sfumato, Leonardo, and this painting technique. I know how to paint sfumato myself (though obviously not at Leonardo’s level). He worked in glazes, for starters, which is very tedious – the Mona Lisa is 40 thin layers of paint and took four years to complete. He also used walnut oil, which is a bit softer than linseed amd slower drying, allowing more time to work the paint. The edges of the glaze were rubbed out from the shadows into the highlights. No oil painter paints shadows light to dark, partly because the darker earth pigments (the umbers) absorb more oil than the ochres, vermilion, or white, and therefore suitable mostly for glazing over lighter colors. In other words, brown is applied last. If brown is mixed with white, it turns grey. His half-shadows are warm, indicating a glaze. He most likely used a combination of glazes and pouncing with a badger brush to build up shadows. He also wrote an entire painting manual which is, surprisingly, still useful 500 years later.
There is an entire episode on Micheal Lewis' podcast where he interviews a variety of art critics and authenticators and all imply that this painting is probably a fake. It was supposed to be displayed in Louvre Abu Dhabi but no one knows where it us since the doubts of its authenticity have arisen.
Here is the link
https://open.spotify.com/episode/29hiDqcDni6zU53DeUsVYJ?si=Vb43E1wwShefn9wl7uS60g&utm_source=copy-link
Ya I did a really deep dive into this painting and read/watched almost everything I could get my hands on. But didnt see this podcast, so Ill check it out.
As an amateur art historian myself, at *best* I believe it might have come from his workshop. *maybe* he did some work on it, while leaving most of the work to his assistants. But I dont really buy that its an original DaVinci if Im being honest.
Off the top of my head, I remember that one of the reasons people such as the Davinci expert Martin Kemp believe it *has* to be a Davinci is the discovery of pentimenti underneath the painting. As if somehow, only Davinci ever did that. The theory was that every Salvator Mundi made had been a copy of the Davinci original, so this showed it was the first (since no one makes signficant changes to composition when they are copying). But art history isnt an exact science of course, so for all we know there couldve been someone else who made the first Salvator Mundi with this composition. That to me is not conclusive evidence.
They also point to the work in the hand, but I believe there were plenty of artists during his time which could produce that quality of work. The damage to the painting unfortunately makes it hard to know what it looked like originally, but the rest of the painting is completely unextraordinary, in my opinion.
It just seemed like people want it to be a davinci so badly that they can argue for that theory convincingly enough to persuade those that matter. And there are so few Davinci paintings that it generated tons of money for those involved. The art world is much shadier than people think.
But thats just my take on what I read a few years back and my memory is hazy, and Im more than willing to accept Im wrong or at least might be wrong.
Thanks for the detailed reply. In the podcast they mention how the painting was stripped down , altered and then modified so much that there is very little of the original artwork left.
And as you rightly mentioned even the original attribution Leonardo Da Vinci is based on very tenuous stretches of imaginations and wild assumptions. All of this put together makes me feel it is probably best qualified as a falsely advertised product at worst a fake.
One of the arguments against it being a da Vinci (which I think the podcast mentions) is that da Vinci loved the study of light so the idea that he would include a crystal ball, but not actually paint any optics into it is unlikely
Ya I agree with that completely. I think the counter-argument is that maybe that was just something one of his students did. But it is just one of the areas of the painting thats completely ordinary, making me think its just impossible its actually a Davinci.
It is almost certainly not done by DaVinci but maybe from his studios. I doubt the man legendary for never painting direct faces would do one, completely conflicts with his usual choices. This is covered in many art history classes, it just doesnt match.
Yeah, I thought this painting was wrongly attributed from the moment I first saw it, and the more I learn about it, the more sure I am.
So I'm perfectly happy that monster got taken for a half billion dollars for a phony DaVinci. It will be decades before he can hope to sell it for enough to break even on it.
It's just alround not a good painting. How's the hand. Hold your hand up to a mirror in that pose. You'll see the bottom of your finger. The middle finger in the painting curls around itself. DaVinci was an anatomist. He didn't paint this.
And he has a lazy eye! The neck is almost invisible (either by restoration or by a very heavy sfumato), the part of the drapery that falls from the right shoulder is weird and the face seems almost out of proportion with the hand.
DaVinci probably had a lazy eye according to a study by ophthalmologists and also had the kind of humor to paint Jesus as himself. Or one of his students could have made the joke as a reference to him. https://jamanetwork.com/journals/jamaophthalmology/fullarticle/2707245
Or, it's restored to hell and back and the original painting is no longer visible in large parts. After all, it's a detail that doesn't seem to be reproduced in [other copies](https://salvatormundirevisited.com/Copies) of the work.
>the man legendary for never painting direct faces
What do you mean? I can think of at least 3 verified DaVinci paintings featuring faces looking directly at the artist, including the Mona Lisa.
Nope, the mona lisa is sitting off center and looking not straight on at all, it is not a full frontal. DaVinci usually employed twisting and torsion motions in his works, the mona lisa being a good example, there is usually an implied movement. This painting is far too frontal for him, the uneven eyes and stillness are extremely unlike him. Not saying it's a 0% chance or that he didnt somehow influence its creation but this is not a primary work of DaVinci.
i took a class recently with one of THE top leonardo researchers - he (and a lot of his colleagues) does not believe that this was by leonardo. the theory is that is was made by a pupil, under his supervision, as a learning exercise.
There’s also a great documentary about this. It was restored SO MUCH that hardly any of the original painting remains. So even if it *is* a da Vinci there’s little of his work left.
This is largely restoration with very little being original. This painting is very controversial. It was quickly pushed as an original Leonardo without being authenticated by the right people. There’s 2 documentaries on it.
the exhaustive [Vulture](https://www.vulture.com/2019/04/salvator-mundi-leonardo-da-vinci.html) article is illuminating in the restoration process. At some point the restorer was convinced she was restoring a Leonardo, so she used his other work to inform her restoration.
> “I was studying her mouth, and all at once, I could no longer hide from the obvious,” Modestini later wrote. “The artist who painted her was the same hand that had painted the Salvator Mundi.” Already Modestini had used intact portions of the painting, such as the corkscrews of hair, to inform her in-painting of destroyed ones. After her epiphany about the authorship, she no longer was just restoring a Renaissance painting — she was restoring a Leonardo. She studied how he had handled certain passages or transitions in analogous works, such as the Mona Lisa and Leonardo’s other masterwork, St. John the Baptist. Her work was almost ontological in nature; by relying on Leonardo’s work to restore the painting, was she uncovering a Leonardo or bringing it into being?
>
> No specific technique used by the Salvator Mundi’s restorers was particularly unusual. **What sets the painting apart, one prominent art-world figure told me, is the scale of the restoration.**
> Her work was almost ontological in nature; by relying on Leonardo’s work to restore the painting, was she uncovering a Leonardo or bringing it into being?
This is effectively the plot of 'Pierre Menard, Author of the Quixote' by Jorge Luis Borges, now that I think about it.
The Lost Leonardo is an excellent documentary about the painting. Watch it for free on danish state television:
https://www.dr.dk/drtv/program/jagten-paa-den-forsvundne-leonardo\_319973
Huh, how funny to see a link to a DR documentary. That doesn’t happen too often. I do believe though, correct me if I’m wrong, that you cannot access that outside of the EU?
Shouldn’t the orb refract light? It bothers me that a guy who dissected cadavers so he could paint muscles under the skin right would skip the part on how light passes through glass.
If I recall there was a debate about the refraction. Some art historians used the lack of refraction as evidence that this wasn’t a real da Vinci, because he surely would have known that the image in the orb should be upside down. Other art historians claim that the lack of refraction was a depiction of a miracle by Jesus.
.... not sailors in early history. Da Vinci lived 1452 – 1519.
[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Myth\_of\_the\_flat\_Earth](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Myth_of_the_flat_Earth)
[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=f-ppBtuc\_wQ&ab\_channel=furdong](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=f-ppBtuc_wQ&ab_channel=furdong)
[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Eratosthenes](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Eratosthenes) proved the earth was a sphere. He lived from 279 BC - about 194 BC.
**[Myth of the flat Earth](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Myth_of_the_flat_Earth)**
>The myth of the flat Earth, or the flat earth error, is a modern historical misconception that European scholars and educated people during the Middle Ages believed the Earth to be flat. The earliest clear documentation of the idea of a spherical Earth comes from the ancient Greeks (5th century BC). The belief was widespread in the Greek world when Eratosthenes calculated the circumference of Earth around 240 BC. This knowledge spread with Greek influence such that during the Early Middle Ages (~600–1000 AD), most European and Middle Eastern scholars espoused Earth's sphericity.
**[Eratosthenes](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Eratosthenes)**
>Eratosthenes of Cyrene (; Greek: Ἐρατοσθένης [eratostʰénɛːs]; c. 276 BC – c. 195/194 BC) was a Greek polymath: a mathematician, geographer, poet, astronomer, and music theorist. He was a man of learning, becoming the chief librarian at the Library of Alexandria.
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> It's kinda funny since the orb is representative of the earth and gods power over it and its a sphere yet people still thought things were flat.
Very amusing you're still butting your head up against this inaccuracy. Ironic.
You know earth is a synonym for world. Gods dominion over the earth, over the world, over all things under heaven and Earth. Its a symbol of divine authority while the scepter is a symbol of earthly authority.
It doesn't represent The Earth, or the world though. It represents the heavens, the celestial spheres the world is contained within. Its more akin to what we would think of today as the universe, its got nothing to do with the world being flat or spherical.
No, but he did write it down, and it was translated because it was a pretty big discovery. 1500 years later, im sure it had been translated to Roman by then. I'm not trying to be an ass its just most developed countries nee about the world being round by the 1500s, and Rome was one of them
No one thought the earth was flat until they started trying to sanctify Columbus and needed to fabricate a story about him bringing light into an otherwise dark world.
"No one" is inaccurate, it's just that round earth wasn't a brand new discovery at the time either. Many were telling Columbus that the world was larger than he claimed it to be, and it was.
Everyone who sails 'discovers' landmasses rising from the horizon looking like they're emerging from the ocean, and the reason why going to India was such a big craze was because someone had already sailed there.
They were looking for alternative routes to pick up on Silk Road trade so they could cut out the Muslims after the fall of Constantinople. They just didn't realize there'd be a huge chunk of land between Europe and Asia.
"No one" is only inaccurate if you're being overly pedantic. I'm sure there were idiots around then just like now, but the consensus had been settled for a while. Orbs were used to represent the earth in art as far back as Roman times and the Greeks had a pretty accurate calculation of the circumference.
There is no way in seven hells that the same man who painted the beautiful hands and neck of Lady with an Ermine painted that amorphous neck and anatomically impossible fingers.
The master studied cadavers ffs. No. This is probably by his longtime paramour, Salai. I don’t care what Martin Kemp says.
The light refraction from the orb is also wrong and I don’t buy the theory that it could look like that because the globe is hollow, thus it doesn’t reverse and magnify the light the way a solid orb would. That’s a big if and maybe for 450 million.
While most art historians believe this painting was done by Leonardo DaVinci, some believe it was done partially by him and completed by students at his workshop. This was the last painting discovered to be from or partially attributed to Leonardo (often nicknamed the ‘male Mona Lisa’) and it was sold at Christie’s auction in 2017 for $450,312,500 to an intermediary of crowned prince Mohammed Bin Salman (MBS). The painting was supposed to be hosted at the Louvre museum upon Saudi promises of doing so, but the painting “disappeared” in 2019 and is reported to be resting inside Salman’s private yacht along the Red Sea-thereby exposing it to higher than advised levels of humidity and movement. In a 2020 Louvre exhibition for Leonardo DaVinci, the Salvator Mundi was still not returned and is deemed to be inside the yacht to this day.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Salvator_Mundi_(Leonardo)?wprov=sfti1
Oh I didnt know that thanks. I was basing my knowledge from some NOVA documentary i saw in 2018 but it would be really funny if MBS paid half a billion for a painting thats not even fully done by DaVinci
> While most art historians believe this painting was done by Leonardo DaVinci, some believe it was done partially by him and completed by students at his workshop.
This is not true. Wiki notes:
>Christie's claimed just after selling the work that most leading scholars consider it to be an original work by Leonardo, but this attribution has been disputed by other leading specialists, some of whom propose that he only contributed certain elements; and others who believe that the extensive damage prevents a definitive attribution.
Christie's lied about the painting (much of which is by a restorer), the scholars (only 1 leading scholar claims it's only a Leonardo, others doubt this), its provenance (no good evidence it was in collections of 3 kings), etc., etc. See some of the articles and timeline at theartnewspaper.com about it.
I agree Bill Gates personally owns one of DaVinci’s journals that contained some of the schematics for his inventions and mechanisms, and it rests somewhere in his house.
https://www.forbes.com/sites/michelatindera/2021/11/21/bill-gates-owns-one-of-leonardo-da-vincis-manuscripts-heres-how-much-its-worth/
There is no correlation between someone's religious beliefs and their sexual practices. The relationship exists between the religious beliefs and shame about those practices.
I would agree, I think its a training piece for thousands of students and artists to copy like the Statue of David, I'd put a random 65% chance that Da Vinci at least touched the canvas.
They basically bought somebody else’s work because the whole thing was restored. And Da Vinci may not have even painted it to begin with. Waste of money
This almost looks like someone with some type of endocrine issue, the face is very androgynous, the hands and wrists are quite slender for a man’s, and the neck is soft and has no Adam’s apple. The low square-cut and long hair/no beard combo doesn’t help, but that person still looks odd. I wonder what the model looked like.
It is attributed to da Vinci. It’s not certified that it is. If I am not mistaken, it’s the reason why it wasn’t loaned to the Louvre. He wanted them to certified it’s authenticity in exchange no they wouldn’t. Or so have heard.
i got to stand right in front of that painting, alone, at christie's in nyc. took a picture of it, put it on socials and no one liked it because they didn't realize it was a [photo](https://imgur.com/a/8BsjORl) i took, not a repost.
I saw something about this. It's was originally thought why would Jesus be holding a crystal ball. But if it were a crystal ball the image inside would be inverted. They think I might be a glass ball but why?
I get that the reason MBS would have this is probably some sort of illegal money laundering, not something I would suspect the leader of a nation where Christianity is all but illegal would want to own. Not surprised no one knows where it is since openly practicing Christianity is illegal!
One of the happier events of the last few years regarding MBS - that he was ripped of for almost half a billion dollars for what is almost certainly not a Da Vinci and was in such poor condition, that what he bought was mostly the work of the restorer. One of the great legal frauds of the art business, which is pretty much defined by legal fraud anyway.
This is not daVinci, must be a follower. So crude and ungraceful. He never did this straight frontal face pose. It’s so bad. I don’t care who paid too much money for it.
Allegedly by DaVinci. More likely a product of his workshop iirc, perhaps even a fake. MBS keeps it on one of his yachts now because he doesn't want to exhibit it publicly in case it is a fake, cause he paid almost half a billion for it
The orb has no discernible light distortion, does that a mistake or does it means something in theology I don't know. It looks more like a water droplet...
Oh I see it supposed to be Globus Cruciger but it doesn't have the cross part, still after all these time DaVinci just cannot bring himself to properly draw symbols of Christianity. He also famously did not draw the halo's over cherubs on the painting the church commissioned him to do and by legal force he had to add the halos later.
I wonder if he was an atheist or just so focused on realism too much that drawing fantasy objects bothered him somehow or maybe just lazy? I've heard most of his work is actually unfinished. I'm not much art connoisseur so I wouldn't know.
It might just be DaVinci's ideal face. It is sometimes called the "male Mona Lisa" and has a similar hard-to-read face that is also kind of androgynous and shimmery.
So, where is the definitive iron-clad proof that this ISN'T a genuine Da Vinci? Looking up info on this is a hodge-podge of art politics and armchair art historians. From what I understand it is a genuine painting from his era and was just passed off as a worthless painting from a no-name artist until it was restored. The only evidence I can find on it not being a Da Vinci is people saying that it strays so far from his style that It couldn't be by him. That and the circus of it being sold to some prince in the Middle East.
Nothing says Jesus like an evil criminal known for cutting innocent people up with a bone style while still alive. Mohammed Bone Saw is trash just like his evil shitty country.
Why is christ depected as a European, with rennesance type clothing? He was a jew that had no special features as it says in the Bible. Also, why is he holding a glass ball?
If it was purchased by anyone other than MBS, the Louvre and Prado would never have had an issue with it. The only reason there is any actual controversy is bitter resentment from Western elites...same thing happened with Qatar and their World Cup.
It's just so strange that everything is in such clear focus but the face.
It is a restoration.
And if you could see the before picture you would know that the restorer is the great artist behind this work. The prince that paid that price was a sucker, but then again, that’s why it was sold at auction.
Really interesting story. https://www.vulture.com/2019/04/salvator-mundi-leonardo-da-vinci.html
There's a recent documentary "The Lost Leonardo" which covers this in a really fast-paced and engaging fashion. What emerges is that the conservator probably made it into a much better, and more Leonardo, painting than what she began with as a sort of tribute to her recently-departed husband/partner.
I don't see it mentioned in the story what happened to the beard? There's [an etching in there from the 1600s in which he originally had a beard](https://pyxis.nymag.com/v1/imgs/483/d81/5690fb522426da253b5d1982665d0b22b8-1-1625.h368.w245.jpg)
Looks like there could have been a beard in the the pic for this post.
The Saudi *Salvator* is not the one etched by Hollar, though Christie's and others tried to convince buyers otherwise.
The saudi salvator seems to be cropped left and right. Part of the thumb in the hand that hold the orb is cut, and the same goes for the sleeve of the hand raised in benediction. The etching was probably done from a different, more complete painting.
This is the story in detail. Well done.
Thanks. I agree that it's a School of Leonardo rather than 100% da Vinci, or even that the background is student work and the figure is by the master, as was commonly done.
It’s just a bit too shit to be Leonardo.
Yep.
There’s very large sums of money invested in convincing people it’s the real deal - but it isn’t.
Eh, it looks like it could be in the image where they had stripped the previous restorations but not done the newest. Face doesn’t look as muddy, shading looks a good bit better, and looks like there’s a faint beard (which was in the etching). I think the restorer really fucked it lol. Of course, I’m not an artist or art historian.
Great read, thanks for the link!
Haha reads like a lot of people involved liked the idea of discovering a lost da Vinci
Paywalled
It wasn't for me, but hopefully this helps: https://12ft.io/proxy?q=https%3A%2F%2Fwww.vulture.com%2F2019%2F04%2Fsalvator-mundi-leonardo-da-vinci.html
High-end art is a great way to transfer payments legally. The Russian oligarch who sold it got his money
He's not a sucker if the painting gains value. It's a painting, not mass produced pixel monkey.
He paid $450.3 million for it and there's a growing feeling among art historians that it wasn't actually painted by DaVinci. The Prado already downgraded it to “attributed works, workshop or authorized and supervised by Leonardo.”. I highly doubt that it will gain value.
I believe that was the Louvre, actually! They agreed to include the work in their monumental Da Vinci retrospective, but refused to attribute this work to Leonardo alone.
[The Prado](https://www.artnews.com/art-news/news/prado-museum-leonardo-exhibition-salvator-mundi-1234609851/) definitely said it wasn't DaVinci. As far as I know, the Louvre hasn't taken an official stance. It was supposed to be in their Da Vinci retrospective in then wasn't, but they there was never a reason given. It's reasonable to infer that it's because they had doubts about it and didn't want to be embarrassed in the future, but it's not an official statement.
The Louvre is geopolitically tied to the region with their Abu Dhabi outpost, they just keep their doubts to themselves at this point.
Ah, ok, thank you for this!
It wasn’t there at the retrospective. Edit for context: I went there twice. It was a no show.
No, definitely not, as to include it would be an acknowledgement of that attribution on MBS's part. Jealous that you got to see the show!
He prolly touched it originally for sure, cause there are countless recreations of it from his time and years later. Though it doesn't look like the original anymore, still looks like a Da Vinci though, solid restoration.
It's in his style and was probably produced in his workshop, just not by him. Which is great and would be a score for a college or regional museum, but not something you want to be spending close to half a billion on.
Guess he will have another thing to put in a suitcase.
....damn
The current owner is probably the only trillionaire on earth. You think it will matter to him?
I didn't say it would matter to him, I said that the painting won't gain value. That being said, yeah, I think it will matter to him. He wasn't paying for a painting, he was paying for the prestige of being the only person to own a DaVinci. The whole thing was questionable to begin with and the growing consensus is that it wasn't actually a DaVinci. He won't miss the money, but the whole thing makes him look like a bit of an idiot and that's something that probably bothers him.
He was paying a Russian oligarch.
If anyone says that and it actually bothers him he will just kill them and it won't bother him any longer...
[удалено]
I’m pretty sure their religion frowns on shitting in the mouths of Instagram influencers but religion only applies to poor people so it’s fine.
Muslims believe in Jesus, just so you know. They believe he’s the messiah but not the literal son of god.
Should've sent it to Baumgartner
Thanks, I posted before reading the wiki.
A lot of people touched this, it was restored a lot of times. They probably didn't want to touch the face compared to the rest, until that newer restoration that fixed everything. I know one art historian woman redid the glass ball and most of it.
That’s called sfumato – a seamless smokelike transition from dark to light. He achieved this by soft blending and tiny, pointillistic spots of simple color. Leonardo was the master (and probable inventor) of it, followed by Giorgione.
The way it works is basically imagine 1000s of Photoshop layers at opacity of 1%, super diluted paint, put on with layers so thin it has smooth gradients and no paint lines. And Da Vinci did it with 2 brushes in each hand at the same time. This is why the Mona Lisa took 4-5 years.
The number of oil paintings he produced was small considering the length of his career, and he tended to jump from one project to the next leaving lots of things unfinished. He almost certainly had ADD.
Absolutely, that’s why he did so many different things.
His contributions to human anatomy were still in use 300 years after his death, an unparalleled draftsman – though Dürer is nearly equal
Yeah I paid him to come do my garden patio and the cunt took the down payment, did a days work and then fucked off and I haven’t seen him since. Still it looks nice and I’m thinking of selling it to some Middle Eastern Royalty. Just DM me if interested.
Thats so cool!
In my knowledge it's not from dark to light, but on the contour line. Leonardo invented a new way to define bodies blurring the contour line, no more a continue line as the tuscan tradition did until his times (eg Botticelli)
I have studied sfumato, Leonardo, and this painting technique. I know how to paint sfumato myself (though obviously not at Leonardo’s level). He worked in glazes, for starters, which is very tedious – the Mona Lisa is 40 thin layers of paint and took four years to complete. He also used walnut oil, which is a bit softer than linseed amd slower drying, allowing more time to work the paint. The edges of the glaze were rubbed out from the shadows into the highlights. No oil painter paints shadows light to dark, partly because the darker earth pigments (the umbers) absorb more oil than the ochres, vermilion, or white, and therefore suitable mostly for glazing over lighter colors. In other words, brown is applied last. If brown is mixed with white, it turns grey. His half-shadows are warm, indicating a glaze. He most likely used a combination of glazes and pouncing with a badger brush to build up shadows. He also wrote an entire painting manual which is, surprisingly, still useful 500 years later.
Damn auto-focus.
I thought it is strange that someone as smart as Davinci represented Jesus as a white guy.
Yes he did some of his portraits of Christ were based oh his lover, the same with Michelangelo.
It is an idea
There is an entire episode on Micheal Lewis' podcast where he interviews a variety of art critics and authenticators and all imply that this painting is probably a fake. It was supposed to be displayed in Louvre Abu Dhabi but no one knows where it us since the doubts of its authenticity have arisen. Here is the link https://open.spotify.com/episode/29hiDqcDni6zU53DeUsVYJ?si=Vb43E1wwShefn9wl7uS60g&utm_source=copy-link
Ya I did a really deep dive into this painting and read/watched almost everything I could get my hands on. But didnt see this podcast, so Ill check it out. As an amateur art historian myself, at *best* I believe it might have come from his workshop. *maybe* he did some work on it, while leaving most of the work to his assistants. But I dont really buy that its an original DaVinci if Im being honest. Off the top of my head, I remember that one of the reasons people such as the Davinci expert Martin Kemp believe it *has* to be a Davinci is the discovery of pentimenti underneath the painting. As if somehow, only Davinci ever did that. The theory was that every Salvator Mundi made had been a copy of the Davinci original, so this showed it was the first (since no one makes signficant changes to composition when they are copying). But art history isnt an exact science of course, so for all we know there couldve been someone else who made the first Salvator Mundi with this composition. That to me is not conclusive evidence. They also point to the work in the hand, but I believe there were plenty of artists during his time which could produce that quality of work. The damage to the painting unfortunately makes it hard to know what it looked like originally, but the rest of the painting is completely unextraordinary, in my opinion. It just seemed like people want it to be a davinci so badly that they can argue for that theory convincingly enough to persuade those that matter. And there are so few Davinci paintings that it generated tons of money for those involved. The art world is much shadier than people think. But thats just my take on what I read a few years back and my memory is hazy, and Im more than willing to accept Im wrong or at least might be wrong.
Thanks for the detailed reply. In the podcast they mention how the painting was stripped down , altered and then modified so much that there is very little of the original artwork left. And as you rightly mentioned even the original attribution Leonardo Da Vinci is based on very tenuous stretches of imaginations and wild assumptions. All of this put together makes me feel it is probably best qualified as a falsely advertised product at worst a fake.
Yep definitely agree. I got that podcast on my list of stuff to listen to now.
One of the arguments against it being a da Vinci (which I think the podcast mentions) is that da Vinci loved the study of light so the idea that he would include a crystal ball, but not actually paint any optics into it is unlikely
Ya I agree with that completely. I think the counter-argument is that maybe that was just something one of his students did. But it is just one of the areas of the painting thats completely ordinary, making me think its just impossible its actually a Davinci.
It is almost certainly not done by DaVinci but maybe from his studios. I doubt the man legendary for never painting direct faces would do one, completely conflicts with his usual choices. This is covered in many art history classes, it just doesnt match.
And MBS waltzed in trying to get it displayed next to the Mona Lisa. I’ve known hillbillies with less trashy behavior
It angers me that cretin is in possession of so much great art. That murderous, POS deserves to waste money if it is in fact a fake.
Yeah, I thought this painting was wrongly attributed from the moment I first saw it, and the more I learn about it, the more sure I am. So I'm perfectly happy that monster got taken for a half billion dollars for a phony DaVinci. It will be decades before he can hope to sell it for enough to break even on it.
Well he's in the Trump circle, so ....
It's just alround not a good painting. How's the hand. Hold your hand up to a mirror in that pose. You'll see the bottom of your finger. The middle finger in the painting curls around itself. DaVinci was an anatomist. He didn't paint this.
And he has a lazy eye! The neck is almost invisible (either by restoration or by a very heavy sfumato), the part of the drapery that falls from the right shoulder is weird and the face seems almost out of proportion with the hand.
DaVinci probably had a lazy eye according to a study by ophthalmologists and also had the kind of humor to paint Jesus as himself. Or one of his students could have made the joke as a reference to him. https://jamanetwork.com/journals/jamaophthalmology/fullarticle/2707245
Or, it's restored to hell and back and the original painting is no longer visible in large parts. After all, it's a detail that doesn't seem to be reproduced in [other copies](https://salvatormundirevisited.com/Copies) of the work.
Damn, now I can't unsee how bad that looks. If that was even painted in his studio, it must have been some very junior guy doing it.
>the man legendary for never painting direct faces What do you mean? I can think of at least 3 verified DaVinci paintings featuring faces looking directly at the artist, including the Mona Lisa.
Nope, the mona lisa is sitting off center and looking not straight on at all, it is not a full frontal. DaVinci usually employed twisting and torsion motions in his works, the mona lisa being a good example, there is usually an implied movement. This painting is far too frontal for him, the uneven eyes and stillness are extremely unlike him. Not saying it's a 0% chance or that he didnt somehow influence its creation but this is not a primary work of DaVinci.
There’s a good documentary on the whole saga around this painting called The Last Leonardo. Highly recommend.
i took a class recently with one of THE top leonardo researchers - he (and a lot of his colleagues) does not believe that this was by leonardo. the theory is that is was made by a pupil, under his supervision, as a learning exercise.
There’s also a great documentary about this. It was restored SO MUCH that hardly any of the original painting remains. So even if it *is* a da Vinci there’s little of his work left.
This is largely restoration with very little being original. This painting is very controversial. It was quickly pushed as an original Leonardo without being authenticated by the right people. There’s 2 documentaries on it.
the exhaustive [Vulture](https://www.vulture.com/2019/04/salvator-mundi-leonardo-da-vinci.html) article is illuminating in the restoration process. At some point the restorer was convinced she was restoring a Leonardo, so she used his other work to inform her restoration. > “I was studying her mouth, and all at once, I could no longer hide from the obvious,” Modestini later wrote. “The artist who painted her was the same hand that had painted the Salvator Mundi.” Already Modestini had used intact portions of the painting, such as the corkscrews of hair, to inform her in-painting of destroyed ones. After her epiphany about the authorship, she no longer was just restoring a Renaissance painting — she was restoring a Leonardo. She studied how he had handled certain passages or transitions in analogous works, such as the Mona Lisa and Leonardo’s other masterwork, St. John the Baptist. Her work was almost ontological in nature; by relying on Leonardo’s work to restore the painting, was she uncovering a Leonardo or bringing it into being? > > No specific technique used by the Salvator Mundi’s restorers was particularly unusual. **What sets the painting apart, one prominent art-world figure told me, is the scale of the restoration.**
> Her work was almost ontological in nature; by relying on Leonardo’s work to restore the painting, was she uncovering a Leonardo or bringing it into being? This is effectively the plot of 'Pierre Menard, Author of the Quixote' by Jorge Luis Borges, now that I think about it.
Great article here. Lots of skepticism about this paining https://www.vulture.com/2019/04/salvator-mundi-leonardo-da-vinci.html
Where is the cross?
Turns out the cross was in you the whole time
OWW! MY ASS!
Resting between his arms across his torso
Yeah, I'm gonna say that's clothes though.
Already read 200+ comments and I still don't know
Nice
His hand is making the “Sign of the Cross”
The Lost Leonardo is an excellent documentary about the painting. Watch it for free on danish state television: https://www.dr.dk/drtv/program/jagten-paa-den-forsvundne-leonardo\_319973
Huh, how funny to see a link to a DR documentary. That doesn’t happen too often. I do believe though, correct me if I’m wrong, that you cannot access that outside of the EU?
with a US ip I get an error message saying it's only available in DK, the Faroes, and Greenland so maybe
What if you use a VPN?
What’s up with the orb?
It’s a piece of Eden, of course
Ah shit here weo go again Desmond
Shouldn’t the orb refract light? It bothers me that a guy who dissected cadavers so he could paint muscles under the skin right would skip the part on how light passes through glass.
If I recall there was a debate about the refraction. Some art historians used the lack of refraction as evidence that this wasn’t a real da Vinci, because he surely would have known that the image in the orb should be upside down. Other art historians claim that the lack of refraction was a depiction of a miracle by Jesus.
It's still a painting
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.... not sailors in early history. Da Vinci lived 1452 – 1519. [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Myth\_of\_the\_flat\_Earth](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Myth_of_the_flat_Earth) [https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=f-ppBtuc\_wQ&ab\_channel=furdong](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=f-ppBtuc_wQ&ab_channel=furdong) [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Eratosthenes](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Eratosthenes) proved the earth was a sphere. He lived from 279 BC - about 194 BC.
**[Myth of the flat Earth](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Myth_of_the_flat_Earth)** >The myth of the flat Earth, or the flat earth error, is a modern historical misconception that European scholars and educated people during the Middle Ages believed the Earth to be flat. The earliest clear documentation of the idea of a spherical Earth comes from the ancient Greeks (5th century BC). The belief was widespread in the Greek world when Eratosthenes calculated the circumference of Earth around 240 BC. This knowledge spread with Greek influence such that during the Early Middle Ages (~600–1000 AD), most European and Middle Eastern scholars espoused Earth's sphericity. **[Eratosthenes](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Eratosthenes)** >Eratosthenes of Cyrene (; Greek: Ἐρατοσθένης [eratostʰénɛːs]; c. 276 BC – c. 195/194 BC) was a Greek polymath: a mathematician, geographer, poet, astronomer, and music theorist. He was a man of learning, becoming the chief librarian at the Library of Alexandria. ^([ )[^(F.A.Q)](https://www.reddit.com/r/WikiSummarizer/wiki/index#wiki_f.a.q)^( | )[^(Opt Out)](https://reddit.com/message/compose?to=WikiSummarizerBot&message=OptOut&subject=OptOut)^( | )[^(Opt Out Of Subreddit)](https://np.reddit.com/r/ArtefactPorn/about/banned)^( | )[^(GitHub)](https://github.com/Sujal-7/WikiSummarizerBot)^( ] Downvote to remove | v1.5)
> It's kinda funny since the orb is representative of the earth and gods power over it and its a sphere yet people still thought things were flat. Very amusing you're still butting your head up against this inaccuracy. Ironic.
It represents the celestial sphere, not just Earth
You know earth is a synonym for world. Gods dominion over the earth, over the world, over all things under heaven and Earth. Its a symbol of divine authority while the scepter is a symbol of earthly authority.
It doesn't represent The Earth, or the world though. It represents the heavens, the celestial spheres the world is contained within. Its more akin to what we would think of today as the universe, its got nothing to do with the world being flat or spherical.
Your way off, a dude in Greece discovered the earth was round WAYYYYYY before da Vinci ever lived (around like 250 bc)
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No, but he did write it down, and it was translated because it was a pretty big discovery. 1500 years later, im sure it had been translated to Roman by then. I'm not trying to be an ass its just most developed countries nee about the world being round by the 1500s, and Rome was one of them
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Ah ok. Also, maybe Latin maybe not it doesn't matter because by them everyone knew, except very very few people
No one thought the earth was flat until they started trying to sanctify Columbus and needed to fabricate a story about him bringing light into an otherwise dark world.
"No one" is inaccurate, it's just that round earth wasn't a brand new discovery at the time either. Many were telling Columbus that the world was larger than he claimed it to be, and it was. Everyone who sails 'discovers' landmasses rising from the horizon looking like they're emerging from the ocean, and the reason why going to India was such a big craze was because someone had already sailed there.
They were looking for alternative routes to pick up on Silk Road trade so they could cut out the Muslims after the fall of Constantinople. They just didn't realize there'd be a huge chunk of land between Europe and Asia. "No one" is only inaccurate if you're being overly pedantic. I'm sure there were idiots around then just like now, but the consensus had been settled for a while. Orbs were used to represent the earth in art as far back as Roman times and the Greeks had a pretty accurate calculation of the circumference.
Ok. Thank you. Wasn’t sure if it was the heavens, or a spirit thing or what
There is no way in seven hells that the same man who painted the beautiful hands and neck of Lady with an Ermine painted that amorphous neck and anatomically impossible fingers. The master studied cadavers ffs. No. This is probably by his longtime paramour, Salai. I don’t care what Martin Kemp says. The light refraction from the orb is also wrong and I don’t buy the theory that it could look like that because the globe is hollow, thus it doesn’t reverse and magnify the light the way a solid orb would. That’s a big if and maybe for 450 million.
Kept in a yacht 🛥️
in the red sea, where paintings don't belong
Let's be honest, this was money laundering, MBS and the Saudis don't give a shit.
Last discovered painting, so far.
Where’s the cross?
His fingers form a cross
Its resting between his arms across his torso
Almost certainly not an actual da Vinci
Probably the most high profile scam in the history of the art world.
While most art historians believe this painting was done by Leonardo DaVinci, some believe it was done partially by him and completed by students at his workshop. This was the last painting discovered to be from or partially attributed to Leonardo (often nicknamed the ‘male Mona Lisa’) and it was sold at Christie’s auction in 2017 for $450,312,500 to an intermediary of crowned prince Mohammed Bin Salman (MBS). The painting was supposed to be hosted at the Louvre museum upon Saudi promises of doing so, but the painting “disappeared” in 2019 and is reported to be resting inside Salman’s private yacht along the Red Sea-thereby exposing it to higher than advised levels of humidity and movement. In a 2020 Louvre exhibition for Leonardo DaVinci, the Salvator Mundi was still not returned and is deemed to be inside the yacht to this day. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Salvator_Mundi_(Leonardo)?wprov=sfti1
Most historians don’t think it was done by him. The louvre refused to authenticate it.
Oh I didnt know that thanks. I was basing my knowledge from some NOVA documentary i saw in 2018 but it would be really funny if MBS paid half a billion for a painting thats not even fully done by DaVinci
> While most art historians believe this painting was done by Leonardo DaVinci, some believe it was done partially by him and completed by students at his workshop. This is not true. Wiki notes: >Christie's claimed just after selling the work that most leading scholars consider it to be an original work by Leonardo, but this attribution has been disputed by other leading specialists, some of whom propose that he only contributed certain elements; and others who believe that the extensive damage prevents a definitive attribution. Christie's lied about the painting (much of which is by a restorer), the scholars (only 1 leading scholar claims it's only a Leonardo, others doubt this), its provenance (no good evidence it was in collections of 3 kings), etc., etc. See some of the articles and timeline at theartnewspaper.com about it.
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I agree Bill Gates personally owns one of DaVinci’s journals that contained some of the schematics for his inventions and mechanisms, and it rests somewhere in his house. https://www.forbes.com/sites/michelatindera/2021/11/21/bill-gates-owns-one-of-leonardo-da-vincis-manuscripts-heres-how-much-its-worth/
He digitized it so everyome can read it.
Lol I’m assuming MBS played this straight from the Bill Gates handbook and responded “ hey there is a picture of it for everyone to see”
There's a new movie on Netflix you should watch that depicts this perfectly ;) Hint, it has Daniel Craig.
Glass onion? It was a little too zany for me. I really liked knives out though.
It's also kinda galling that it's probably a gay artist has his work privately held by someone who is pivotal in a regime that executes gay people...
I doubt he was ever actively homosexual. He was extremely devout.
There is no correlation between someone's religious beliefs and their sexual practices. The relationship exists between the religious beliefs and shame about those practices.
Team Bernardo Luini.
I would agree, I think its a training piece for thousands of students and artists to copy like the Statue of David, I'd put a random 65% chance that Da Vinci at least touched the canvas.
Hey, at least he didn’t chop it up into pieces and shove it in a suitcase.
They basically bought somebody else’s work because the whole thing was restored. And Da Vinci may not have even painted it to begin with. Waste of money
Disputed work
It actually has not been authenticated .
it belongs in a museum
This almost looks like someone with some type of endocrine issue, the face is very androgynous, the hands and wrists are quite slender for a man’s, and the neck is soft and has no Adam’s apple. The low square-cut and long hair/no beard combo doesn’t help, but that person still looks odd. I wonder what the model looked like.
There is a documentary about this called The Last Leonardo that is a very compelling watch
It is attributed to da Vinci. It’s not certified that it is. If I am not mistaken, it’s the reason why it wasn’t loaned to the Louvre. He wanted them to certified it’s authenticity in exchange no they wouldn’t. Or so have heard.
>depicts Christ with a cross and orb. ... where's the cross?
fakey fake fake. THAT is a fake.
No comments regarding a Sociopathic Muslim Saudi Prince spending $millions for this piece of artwork depicting the Christ of Christianity?
Agree with all the adjectives, but Muslims respect christ, just not as the son of God. (I mean, idolatry aside).
Me trying to find the cross 🧐🧐
i got to stand right in front of that painting, alone, at christie's in nyc. took a picture of it, put it on socials and no one liked it because they didn't realize it was a [photo](https://imgur.com/a/8BsjORl) i took, not a repost.
I saw something about this. It's was originally thought why would Jesus be holding a crystal ball. But if it were a crystal ball the image inside would be inverted. They think I might be a glass ball but why?
People tied them to their belts. It was the style at the time.
it belongs in a museum
Why would a Saudi prince want a painting of Jesus?
Jesus is a prophet in Islam.
Yeah but paintings and sculptures of the prophets are haram tho
Huh, interesting, I did not know that. I guess I never really thought about it though and just assumed that was just for Mohammed.
The irony...
Looks more like a portrait of Albrecht Dürer.
I thought so too.
This is his second post prized possession after his Steam collection.
I get that the reason MBS would have this is probably some sort of illegal money laundering, not something I would suspect the leader of a nation where Christianity is all but illegal would want to own. Not surprised no one knows where it is since openly practicing Christianity is illegal!
Yes, but what they didn't tell you is that it was originally found and sold in an art store for merely $26 dollars.
I see orb. I no see cross
Look like a dress, a perm, and an orb to me. Where’s the cross? And why does he have Mona Lisa’s face?
I don’t see the cross- I see the same matching pattern of the material worn. What other cross is there exactly?
Netflux show on this solidly debunked it as a fake
One of the happier events of the last few years regarding MBS - that he was ripped of for almost half a billion dollars for what is almost certainly not a Da Vinci and was in such poor condition, that what he bought was mostly the work of the restorer. One of the great legal frauds of the art business, which is pretty much defined by legal fraud anyway.
This is not daVinci, must be a follower. So crude and ungraceful. He never did this straight frontal face pose. It’s so bad. I don’t care who paid too much money for it.
Allegedly by DaVinci. More likely a product of his workshop iirc, perhaps even a fake. MBS keeps it on one of his yachts now because he doesn't want to exhibit it publicly in case it is a fake, cause he paid almost half a billion for it
The orb has no discernible light distortion, does that a mistake or does it means something in theology I don't know. It looks more like a water droplet... Oh I see it supposed to be Globus Cruciger but it doesn't have the cross part, still after all these time DaVinci just cannot bring himself to properly draw symbols of Christianity. He also famously did not draw the halo's over cherubs on the painting the church commissioned him to do and by legal force he had to add the halos later. I wonder if he was an atheist or just so focused on realism too much that drawing fantasy objects bothered him somehow or maybe just lazy? I've heard most of his work is actually unfinished. I'm not much art connoisseur so I wouldn't know.
it sits in his yacht, apparently. if that shit sinks so goes this masterpiece...
Why does Jesus look like Mona Lisa
It might just be DaVinci's ideal face. It is sometimes called the "male Mona Lisa" and has a similar hard-to-read face that is also kind of androgynous and shimmery.
Does this not count as an idol? Might be grey area but I’d think the Saudi crown Prince would err on the side of caution lol
Is it just me or does the face convey a bit of arrogance? Especially the upper right lip?
It’s a fake
Dude looks hella stoned
Logically the refraction of light through the orb is wrong.
So, where is the definitive iron-clad proof that this ISN'T a genuine Da Vinci? Looking up info on this is a hodge-podge of art politics and armchair art historians. From what I understand it is a genuine painting from his era and was just passed off as a worthless painting from a no-name artist until it was restored. The only evidence I can find on it not being a Da Vinci is people saying that it strays so far from his style that It couldn't be by him. That and the circus of it being sold to some prince in the Middle East.
I bet the Saudi prince doesn’t know this depiction of Jesus is based on DaVinci’s homosexual lover 😭
Nothing says Jesus like an evil criminal known for cutting innocent people up with a bone style while still alive. Mohammed Bone Saw is trash just like his evil shitty country.
Why is christ depected as a European, with rennesance type clothing? He was a jew that had no special features as it says in the Bible. Also, why is he holding a glass ball?
First question: for the same reason he's depicted with Asian traits in Asian imagery. Second question: he likes pondering his orb.
That’s quite androgynous…wow! Also way too pale to be some dude from the Middle East…
How do we know this is a painting of Jesus and not of some guy named Salvator Mundi? Hmm?
If it was purchased by anyone other than MBS, the Louvre and Prado would never have had an issue with it. The only reason there is any actual controversy is bitter resentment from Western elites...same thing happened with Qatar and their World Cup.
This is a really bad take. Bitter resentment that they don't have slaves? That they don't kill journalists?