Rediscovered Da Vinci painting to go on show in London

A paint­ing sold for as little as 45 pounds ($70) in the 1950s but since hailed as a lost mas­ter­piece by Leonardo Da Vinci and now worth mil­lions is to go on show in November.

The paint­ing, “Sal­vator Mundi” (Saviour of the World), dat­ing from around 1500, was recor­ded in 1649 as being part of King Charles I of England’s art col­lec­tion but had long been con­sidered lost.

When it was sold in 1958, it was believed to be a piece by Da Vinci’s stu­dent Gio­vanni Boltraffio.

It was dis­figured by over­paint­ing and hall­marks of the Da Vinci-style such as the coiled ring­lets of Christ’s hair and the qual­ity of paint­ing of a glass orb in his left hand were hid­den by lay­ers of dirt and varnish.

A con­sor­tium acquired the paint­ing from an Amer­ican estate in 2005 and took it to New York art his­tor­ian Robert Simon. Although Simon thought it unlikely the paint­ing was a Da Vinci, its poten­tial interest led to an extens­ive res­tor­a­tion pro­ject and now experts agree the paint­ing is indeed genu­ine, with a value of around 120 mil­lion pounds ($192 million).

Schol­ars cite the sim­il­ar­ity to the style of other Da Vinci paint­ings, includ­ing the Vir­gin of the Rocks from around the same date, the qual­ity of exe­cu­tion and the like­ness to a Sal­vator Mundi found in a 1650 etch­ing by Wence­slaus Hol­lar as the main reas­ons why they believe the paint­ing is genuine.

Images of Christ giv­ing his bless­ing to the world were com­mon dur­ing the Renais­sance, but experts say it is the reflec­tion of the light in the glass globe that points to Da Vinci, who was also a sci­ent­ist and inter­ested in how to cap­ture light effectively.

The last Da Vinci dis­cov­ery was in 1909, when the Benois Madonna was found. Sev­eral other known works by Da Vinci, includ­ing the Mona Vanna, a nude Mona Lisa, remain lost.

The Sal­vator Mundi will be dis­played at the “Leonardo Da Vinci: Painter at the Court of Milan” exhib­i­tion at the National Gal­lery in Lon­don from Novem­ber 9.

via Reu­ters

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