New Delhi: A new French feature-length documentary on the Salvator Mundi, the costliest painting, seems to have solved one of the key mysteries surrounding the enigmatic and controversial painting: why it never appeared in the Musee du Louvre\u2019s blockbuster Leonardo da Vinci show.<\/p>\n
Antoine Vitkine\u2019s film, which The Art Newspaper gained exclusive access to, was entitled The Savior for Sale and was released on April 13th.<\/p>\n
In the film, an anonymous senior official in French President Emmanuel Macron\u2019s government, codenamed \u201cJacques\u201d, tells Vitkine that the Louvre\u2019s extensive scientific examination of the painting, conducted in secret, concluded that Leonardo da Vinci himself \u201conly contributed\u201d to the picture and that its \u201cauthenticity\u201d could not be confirmed, reported The Art Newspaper.<\/p>\n
The painting\u2019s owner, the Crown Prince of Saudi Arabia, Mohammed bin Salman (MBS), had acquired the painting (through a proxy) for USD 450 million\u2013the largest price ever paid for a work of art\u2013at Christie\u2019s, New York in November 2017, reported The Art Newspaper.<\/p>\n
As per some media reports, MBS pressured bosses at the Louvre to lie about the authenticity of a supposed Leonardo da Vinci painting in order to save his own face, a new documentary alleges.<\/p>\n
The documentary alleged that some members of the French government, including Foreign Minister Jean-Yves Le Drian, lobbied on behalf of bin Salman\u2019s request. They were concerned about the impact on France\u2019s wide-ranging strategic and economic relationship with Saudi Arabia.<\/p>\n
But Macron ultimately decided to reject bin Salman\u2019s request, leaving it to the Louvre to negotiate with the Saudis on how the painting should be presented in their retrospective, said the documentary.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
New Delhi: A new French feature-length documentary on the Salvator Mundi, the costliest painting, seems to have solved one of the key mysteries surrounding the enigmatic and controversial painting: why it never appeared in the Musee du Louvre\u2019s blockbuster Leonardo da Vinci show. Antoine Vitkine\u2019s film, which The Art Newspaper gained exclusive access to, was […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":6355,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[12],"tags":[],"class_list":{"0":"post-6354","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-international"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/ncrfrontlinenews.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/6354","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/ncrfrontlinenews.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/ncrfrontlinenews.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/ncrfrontlinenews.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/ncrfrontlinenews.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=6354"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/ncrfrontlinenews.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/6354\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":6356,"href":"https:\/\/ncrfrontlinenews.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/6354\/revisions\/6356"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/ncrfrontlinenews.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/media\/6355"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/ncrfrontlinenews.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=6354"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/ncrfrontlinenews.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=6354"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/ncrfrontlinenews.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=6354"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}