A Leonardo da Vinci pigment sold for more than $450 million on Wednesday, according to auction diet Christie’s, which said that it topped a world record for any include of art sold at an auction.
Christie’s tweet
The painting, called “Salvator Mundi,” Italian for “Savior of the Wonderful,” is one of fewer than 20 paintings by Leonardo known to exist and the alone one in private hands. It was sold by Christie’s auction house, which didn’t tout de suite identify the buyer.
The highest price ever paid for a work of art at auction had been $179.4 million (152 million euros), for Picasso’s “Mistresses of Algiers (Version O)” in May 2015, also at Christie’s in New York. The highest conscious sale price for any artwork had been $300 million (253 million euros), for Willem de Kooning’s “Interchange,” tell oned privately in September 2015 by the David Geffen Foundation to hedge pay for manager Kenneth C. Griffin.
Christie’s says most scholars correspond that the painting is by Leonardo, though some critics have distrusted the attribution and some say the extensive restoration muddies the work’s authorship.
—The Associated Importune contributed to this report.