Move over, Salvator Mundi. That holy image, marketed as a rediscovered masterpiece by Leonardo da Vinci, sold for $450.3m (£335m) six years ago and holds the record for the most expensive painting ever sold at auction – in spite of scepticism about its authorship, quality and history. Now there is potentially an even more sellable Leonardo doing the rounds, with similarly questionable claims being made as it goes on public view in Turin. Although it is not currently for sale, it’s hard not to believe that the private owners aren’t sorely tempted. Is this painting’s exhibition in Italy the start of a campaign that will end in Leonardo beating his own world record?
Salvator Mundi became known as “the male Mona Lisa”, lending it the glamour of Leonardo’s most well-known work. But the Mona Lisa Foundation in Zurich, which is championing the painting showing in Turin on behalf of its anonymous owners, is suggesting that it is the original Mona Lisa. It argues that it’s the first version of the famous painting, depicting a younger Lisa than the one Leonardo worked on all his life and had with him at the chateau of Amboise where he spent his last years, and which now attracts an unending selfie-snatching crowd in the Louvre.
