- Artist: Leonardo da Vinci (1452–1519)
- Title: Salvator Mundi
- Genre religious art
- Description: Photographic reproduction of the painting after restoration by Dianne Dwyer Modestini, a research professor at New York University.
- Depicted people: Jesus Christ
- Date: circa 1500
- Medium: oil on walnut wood
- Dimensions: Height: 65.6 cm (25.8″); Width: 45.4 cm (17.8″)
- Collection: Ostensibly the Louvre Abu Dhabi
- Object history: 1958: auctioned 2007: restored
- November 2017: acquired by Abu Dhabi Tourism & Culture Authority
- 15 November 2017: auctioned
Leonardo da Vinci was one of history’s greatest artists and thinkers. Only about 15 of his paintings are known to exist and one, the “Salvator Mundi” (Savior of the World), was thought to be lost forever. Leonard painted it sometime around the year 1500.
About this image, via Wikipedia”
Salvator Mundi is one of Leonardo’s most copied paintings, with about 12 known examples executed by his pupils and others. Leonardo’s version was thought to have been lost after the mid-17th century. In 1978, Joanne Snow-Smith developed a compelling case that the supposed copy located in the Marquis Jean-Louis de Ganay Collection, Paris, was the lost original based on its similarity to Saint John the Baptist. Many art historians were convinced, as she was able to establish a direct historical connection between Leonardo da Vinci, the engraving by Wenceslaus Hollar and the painting in the Ganay collection.[30]
In 2005, a Salvator Mundi was presented and acquired at an auction for less than $10,000 (€8,450) by a consortium of art dealers that included Alexander Parrish and Robert Simon, a specialist in Old Masters. It was sold from the estate of Baton Rouge businessman Basil Clovis Hendry Sr., at the St. Charles Gallery auction house in New Orleans. It had been heavily over-painted so it looked like a copy, and was, before restoration, described as “a wreck, dark and gloomy”.
The consortium believed there was a possibility that the low-quality mess (with its excessive overpainting) might actually be the long-missing da Vinci original. They commissioned Dianne Dwyer Modestini at New York University to oversee the restoration. She began by removing the overpainting with acetone, leading her to discover that at some point, a stepped area of unevenness near Christ’s face had been shaved down with a sharp object, and also leveled with a mixture of gesso, paint and glue. Using infrared photographs Simon had taken of the painting, Modestini discovered a pentimento (earlier draft) of the painting which had the blessing hand’s thumb in a straight, rather than curved, position. The discovery that Christ had two thumbs on his right hand was crucial. This pentimento (literally ‘repent’) showed the artist had a second thought about the positioning of the thumb. Such a second thought is considered evidence that this is not a copy but indeed an original, since copiers would have no doubts about composition.
Modestini proceeded to have panel specialist Monica Griesbach chisel off a marouflaged wood panel which had been tunnelled through by worms, causing the painting to break into seven pieces. Griesbach reassembled the painting with adhesive and wood slivers. In late 2006, Modestini began her restoration effort.
The work was subsequently authenticated as a painting by Leonardo. From November 2011 through February 2012, the painting was exhibited at the National Gallery as a work by Leonardo da Vinci, after authentication by that facility. In 2012, it was also authenticated by the Dallas Museum of Art.
More about this painting:
In 2005 restoration by the eminent conservator, Dianne Dwyer Modestini. She commented in a video interview for the Robb Report, “This picture is a paradigm of everything that he (Da Vinci) knew technically about painting and much of what he thought about time, eternity, and the cosmos. It wasn’t just a portrait of Jesus Christ painted for the king. This was something that became very important to him.” READ MORE: http://bit.ly/LostDaVinci
Credits and Attributions:
Salvator Mundi, by Leonardo da Vinci / Public domain Circa 1490-1519, oil on panel, 45.4 cm × 65.6 cm (25.8 in × 17.9 in), private collection. (Photo by VCG Wilson/Corbis via Getty Images)
Wikimedia Commons contributors, “File:Leonardo da Vinci, Salvator Mundi, c.1500, oil on walnut, 45.4 × 65.6 cm.jpg,” Wikimedia Commons, the free media repository, https://commons.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?title=File:Leonardo_da_Vinci,_Salvator_Mundi,_c.1500,_oil_on_walnut,_45.4_%C3%97_65.6_cm.jpg&oldid=403092006 (accessed March 19, 2020).
Wikipedia contributors, “Salvator Mundi (Leonardo),” Wikipedia, The Free Encyclopedia, https://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Salvator_Mundi_(Leonardo)&oldid=946001422 (accessed March 19, 2020).
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