The lost Leonardo? $450m or $1.5m?

Salvator Mundi, the world’s most expensive painting, will not be part of this year’s big Leonardo da Vinci show in Paris because curators at the Louvre do not believe it can be attributed solely to the artist, it has been claimed.

The art historian and writer Ben Lewis has charted the remarkable story of a painting which made headlines all over the world when it sold for $450m (£354m) at Christie’s in New York in 2017.

Some of the world’s leading Leonardo experts, including Martin Kemp, emeritus professor of art history at Oxford, insist it is genuinely the lost work of the master. Others are more circumspect or dismissive.

The display in Abu Dhabi was unexpectedly halted last year and its loan to Paris in the autumn will not happen, Lewis told the Hay literary festival. “My inside sources at the Louvre, various sources, tell me that not many curators think this picture is a Leonardo da Vinci. If that’s the case, the value will go down to somewhere north of $1.5m (£1.2m).”

https://www.theguardian.com/artanddesign/2019/may/26/the-lost-leonardo-louvre-show-ditches-salvator-mundi-over-authenticity-doubts