NSR: What say you Ruffus - da Vinci or No?

[Stig / Major Tom]

Hello Ruffus,

So, You being closely related to an Italian  - thought I'd check with you for your opinion:

Is the Salvator Mundi by the hand (s) of Leonardo da Vinci or, no?

I've been interested in art, some Italians - mostly French - since reading Stone's Agony and Ecstasy as a kid, and skipping school way too many times in Paris to visit the Louvre and the Jeu de Paume. I prefer Michelangelo to Leonardo - but still curious about this 'new' da Vinci.
 Currently wading through The Last Leonardo - learning all about (too much!)  1500 Europe.

Was $450,000,000 too much - or not enough?
What say you and your wife?

Have a nice day....
Stig

[Neil955i]

The agony and the Ecstacy?  Favourite book from my teenage years too Tom!

[Ruffus]

@Stig, well, there is a mound of discussion right now about this "Salvator Mundi", 
I'm technican, a friend of us (artist/painter with a good reputation) would swear it's from Leonardos hand. But good Italian he is, he has too. On the other hand there have been copies in the past, which were created by scholars/students of L.
I think, all of his or Michelangelos pieces or walls are unique and simple epocal.
Most experts stick to that:

Salvator Mundi is a painting attributed in whole or in part to the Italian High Renaissance artist Leonardo da Vinci, dated to c.?1499–1510.[n
1] Long thought to be a copy of a lost original veiled with overpainting, it was rediscovered, restored, and included in Luke Syson's major Leonardo exhibition at the National Gallery, London, in 2011–12.
[2] Christie'sclaimed just after selling the work that most leading scholars consider it to be an original work by Leonardo, but this attribution has been disputed by other specialists, some of whom posit that he only contributed certain elements.

And the price, okay, if somebody has....

[Stig / Major Tom]

Just finished reading the 2019 book, THE LAST LEONARDO.
My favorite passage....
Overheard in a conversation at that night's auction, before a buyer paid $450,000,000 for it: "Why isn't the @Salvator Mundi in the OLD MASTERS portion of tonight's auction?"
"Because, most of it was painted in the last 10 years by *Dianne!"

Stig

A comprehensive restoration of the Salvator Mundi was undertaken by *Dianne Dwyer Modestini, Senior Research Fellow and Conservator of the Kress Program in Paintings Conservation at the Conservation Center of the Institute of Fine Arts, New York University.

@Latin for ''Savior of the World''

[Neil955i]

😂

[Ruffus]

@Stig, point to smile "Dianne".
We, best wife of all and me, were in Roma and Venezia many years ago. This was a time when you could take a pillow into Sixtine Chapels or Ufficis, lay down on your back at the floor and just let this paintings and ceilings take you away. After awhile you saw characters fly, move, talk to each other, so natural they seemed.

[Paco]

skipping school way too many times in Paris to visit the Louvre and the Jeu de Paume.

Did you notice the tiny carvings in the floor of the museum of Jeu de Paume? Very small hand carved into the wood?

[Carilinaa]

 

[Stig / Major Tom]

Did you notice the tiny carvings in the floor of the museum of Jeu de Paume? Very small hand carved into the wood?

Well, I'd only be guessing if I said yes. That was over half a century ago😊
But do remember the Monet series.
Stig