A French documentary has cast fresh doubts over the world’s most expensive painting, the Salvator Mundi credited to Leonardo da Vinci, revealing a resulting diplomatic tussle between France and its Saudi owner.
The painting of Jesus Christ, nicknamed the “male Mona Lisa,” was sold at a 2017 Christies auction in New York for a record US$450 million.
Its secret buyer was later revealed to be Saudi crown prince Mohammed bin Salman, though this is still denied in Riyadh. But there have long been questions over whether it was entirely the work of da Vinci.
Photo: AP
The issue resurfaced when the painting failed to appear as planned at the Louvre Abu Dhabi museum in 2018, and then at a blockbuster da Vinci show by the Louvre in Paris the following year. Now a documentary, The Savior for Sale by filmmaker Antoine Vitkine, to be premiered on French TV next week, sets out to reveal what was going on behind the scenes.
In the film, senior officials from President Emmanuel Macron’s government, appearing under pseudonyms, confirm that the Louvre’s scientific analysis of the painting concluded that while it was produced in da Vinci’s workshop, the master himself only “contributed” to the painting. This apparently went down badly with the Saudis.
ROW OVER AUTHENTICITY
“Things turned incomprehensible,” says one of the French officials in the film. “The request by “MBS” [bin Salman] was very clear: show the Salvator Mundi next to the Mona Lisa, and present it as 100 percent a da Vinci.”
The Saudis offered various deals, the official says, but his recommendation to the Elysee was that this would amount to “laundering a US$450 million artwork.”
The documentary alleges that some members of the French government, including Foreign Minister Jean-Yves Le Drian, lobbied on behalf of bin Salman’s request. They were concerned about the impact on France’s wide-ranging strategic and economic relationship with Saudi Arabia.
But Macron ultimately decided to reject bin Salman’s request, leaving it to the Louvre to negotiate with the Saudis on how the painting should be presented in their retrospective, said the documentary. No deal was concluded and the museum has refused to comment on the case.
“The Saudis are afraid of this debate on the authenticity,” says Chris Dercon, who heads one of France’s top museum bodies and advises the Saudi government on art, in the documentary. “They are afraid that people will say, both at home and abroad, ‘You spent all this money for something that is not a da Vinci.’”
The painting was initially bought in 2005 for just US$1,175 by a New York art dealer and restored in the US. Several British experts authenticated the painting as a long-lost da Vinci and it was presented as such at London’s National Gallery in 2011 before being sold to a Russian oligarch for US$127.5 million two years later.
Last week Joseph Nye, the well-known China scholar, wrote on the Australian Strategic Policy Institute’s website about how war over Taiwan might be averted. He noted that years ago he was on a team that met with then-president Chen Shui-bian (陳水扁), “whose previous ‘unofficial’ visit to the US had caused a crisis in which China fired missiles into the sea and the US deployed carriers off the coast of Taiwan.” Yes, that’s right, mighty Chen caused that crisis all by himself. Neither the US nor the People’s Republic of China (PRC) exercised any agency. Nye then nostalgically invoked the comical specter
April 15 to April 21 Yang Kui (楊逵) was horrified as he drove past trucks, oxcarts and trolleys loaded with coffins on his way to Tuntzechiao (屯子腳), which he heard had been completely destroyed. The friend he came to check on was safe, but most residents were suffering in the town hit the hardest by the 7.1-magnitude Hsinchu-Taichung Earthquake on April 21, 1935. It remains the deadliest in Taiwan’s recorded history, claiming around 3,300 lives and injuring nearly 12,000. The disaster completely flattened roughly 18,000 houses and damaged countless more. The social activist and
Over the course of former President Ma Ying-jeou’s (馬英九) 11-day trip to China that included a meeting with Chinese Communist Party (CCP) leader Xi Jinping (習近平) a surprising number of people commented that the former president was now “irrelevant.” Upon reflection, it became apparent that these comments were coming from pro-Taiwan, pan-green supporters and they were expressing what they hoped was the case, rather than the reality. Ma’s ideology is so pro-China (read: deep blue) and controversial that many in his own Chinese Nationalist Party (KMT) hope he retires quickly, or at least refrains from speaking on some subjects. Regardless
Approaching her mid-30s, Xiong Yidan reckons that most of her friends are on to their second or even third babies. But Xiong has more than a dozen. There is Lucky, the street dog from Bangkok who jumped into a taxi with her and never left. There is Sophie and Ben, sibling geese, who honk from morning to night. Boop and Pan, both goats, are romantically involved. Dumpling the hedgehog enjoys a belly rub from time to time. The list goes on. Xiong nurtures her brood from her 8,000 square meter farm in Chiang Dao, a mountainous district in northern Thailand’s