... that “Salvator Mundi,” is a Leonardo. Some poor sap paid $450 million for a non-Leonardo.
First, let me set out my expertise. First of all, I like art. I took not one, but two Art History courses in college. I won’t say what grade I got, ‘cause that would be bragging. I’ve been to many art museums in my life, too. I saw the Picasso exhibit in New York when I was just a teenager. I have personally seen not one, but two real Leonardos in the Louvre. And I watched a PBS mini-series on Leonardo when I was a kid, and read at least one book about him over the years.
My point being that if I can spot a phony excuse for a Leonardo, then anyone ought to be able to.
You can tell from just looking at this painting that it’s not a Leonardo. First of all, Leonardo’s paintings, particularly at the stage of his life when he was supposed to have painted this, are a quantum leap greater than anything other artists were doing at the time, mostly because of their ability to capture nuance in facial expressions.
The Christ depicted in Salvator Mundi has eyes as dead as a stone:
Jerry Saltz, writing for New York Magazine, agrees with my expert assessment:
Not only does it look like a dreamed-up version of a missing da Vinci, various X-ray techniques show scratches and gouges in the work, paint missing, a warping board, a beard here and gone, and other parts of the painting obviously brushed up and corrected to make this probable copy look more like an original.
Below the phony Leonardo to the right being ogled by some Christie’s employees--before they dumped it on some poor sucker-- is a sketch—a preliminary sketch--of one of the angels ultimately depicted in Leonardo’s Madonna of the Rocks. Even at this barely rudimentary stage in the process, the eyes of the angel are unusually acute. As most people are aware, Leonardo’s genius was astonishingly multifaceted. His knowledge of anatomy was probably unparalleled in Europe during this time frame. So his attention to such details as the eyes is a key characteristic of his art. Others have also pointed out that the glass ball in dashboard Jesus’ hand here doesn't distort the way we see his robe just behind it, which Leonardo in his attention to detail and knowledge of physics and optics at that time would have certainly foreseen.
Take a look at Leonardo’s last known “real” painting, “John the Baptist,” circa 1513-16.
This painting is on fire with nuance and mystery. It was so good Leonardo carried with it with him wherever he went. In fact, it was so good I had a print of it in my dorm room in college!
[F]or Leonardo, St. John represented "the eternal question mark, the enigma of creation", and noted the sense of "uneasiness" that the painting imbues.[2] Barolsky adds that: "Describing Saint John emerging from darkness in almost shockingly immediate relation to the beholder, Leonardo magnifies the very ambiguity between spirit and flesh. The grace of Leonardo's figure, which has a disturbingly erotic charge, nonetheless conveys a spiritual meaning to which Saint John refers when he speaks of the fullness of grace from God."[
Now ask yourself, why would Leonardo give such an awe-inspiring tribute to St. John the Baptist, but paint Jesus as someone who looks like he’s ordering two soft tacos and an orange soda?
Leonardo’s big rival during the time that Salvator Mundi is supposed to have been painted was none other than Michelangelo. These two hated each others guts, and tried to outdo each other constantly. Saltz points out that Leonardo even recommended Michelangelo’s David be relocated to some shed in the woods rather than where it has stood for centuries since:
When Leonardo sat on the committee to decide where the still-unfinished David was to be situated in Florence, he voted against giving it the pride of place it eventually won, next to the Palazzo Vecchio.
Does anyone think Leonardo would have risked making himself look like a laughingstock with Michelangelo peering over his shoulder? Dream on.
There's a story in some movie I can’t remember that goes something like this: A group of friends was sitting down to dinner in a nice, expensive restaurant. When the bill came, all of them discovered that they had forgotten their wallets. None of them could pay. The waiter and restaurant owner came out and were trying to decide whether they should just throw the people out or call the police.
Meanwhile some old guy sitting at the bar took note of their plight. He motioned over to the restaurant owner, and asked him for a paper napkin and a pencil. The owner, still fuming, complied. The old man took the pencil and scribbled a couple squiggly lines on the napkin and handed it back to the owner. The owner looked down at the napkin, then went over to the table of customers and told them their bill was paid in full, and that they should come back to the restaurant any time they pleased for a free meal.
The old man at the bar was Pablo Picasso.
Point being, there is no way in 1500, at the height of the Renaissance, that Leonardo would have “scribbled” a POS, demonstrably flawed painting like Salvator Mundi and held it out as his work product. He was far too meticulous and prideful for that. He just didn’t put out junk. If Leonardo was Led Zeppelin, he would never have released ”Coda."
But enough folks in the art world had already committed themselves to saying this was an original, so some credulous Billionaire of course bought into this this Bitcoin Leonardo and will go to his grave thinking he has something of value. I’ll let Saltz have the last word:
But all’s well that ends well, and this is bound to end well. By which I mean: poorly for Christie’s. No museum on Earth can afford an iffy picture like this at these prices — even if it’s true that any institution or collector who buys this painting for however much money will be able to foist it on viewers center stage as “the last da Vinci” and make bundles of money. And for any private collector who gets suckered into buying this picture and places it in their apartment or storage, it serves them right.
Happy Thanksgiving!