The Lost Leonardo

This art world doco, by Dane Andreas Koefoed, is a nicely constructed look at the most expensive painting in the world, Salvator Mundi, by Leonardo Da Vinci - or is it? By Da Vinci, I mean. The film begins with a preamble about how a group of fellas bought this painting at an auction in New Orleans in 2005 for $1175 USD, and the film then sets up the chapters by starting with The Art Game. This section talks about the 're-discovery', the level of overpainting that took place and questions on its provenance.

Following is The Money Game, which shows how the original (2005) guys ended up selling the painting to a Swiss businessman called Yves Bouvier for $83 million, who then sold it on to a Russian oligarch for $127.5 million. Nice little earner. This part is probably the most interesting, as it also explores Bouvier's interests in freeports (the thing a plane was driven into in Tenet), where he houses millions of dollars worth of goods that rich knobs don't want to pay taxes on. The oligarch, Dmitry Rybolovlev, eventually got wind of Bouvier's stunt and took him to many courts, but not before giving him the task of selling his art collection.

The Global Game looks at the putrid amount of money floating about the industry as the painting is sold at Christie's Auction House for the tidy sum of $450 million. With questions on its authenticity still queering the pitch, it seems surprising that someone would fork out that much for it. Maybe not when it's revealed that the buyer was one Mohammed bin Salman, notoriously iffy Saudi crown prince, with more moolah than morals. The presumed reasoning being that this push for 'soft power' will give the Saudi regime some semblance of agency, or even respect in the world outside of simply oil and beheadings. Something like their recent purchase of Newcastle United football club, only the 'sports-washing' exchanged for 'art-washing' in this case.

The film is a well paced, maddening look at the state of the high-end art caper, with many folk coming out of it looking less than pearly. And the central question regarding the veracity of Salvator Mundi isn't really solved - but I guess the point is that this doesn't matter when the value moves into the stratosphere.

The Lost Leonardo is now showing at Luna cinemas and Palace cinemas.

See also:

Another 'Is it legit or not?' art film, My Rembrandt (2019), directed by Oeke Hoogendijk, and Chris Nolan's Tenet (2020), for the freeport stuff. It's a cracking film, too.