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Title details for The Last Leonardo by Ben Lewis - Available

The Last Leonardo

The Secret Lives of the World's Most Expensive Painting

by Ben Lewis
ebook
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An epic quest exposes hidden truths about Leonardo da Vinci’s Salvator Mundi, the recently discovered masterpiece that sold for $450 million—and might not be the real thing.
 
In 2017, Leonardo da Vinci’s small oil painting the Salvator Mundi was sold at auction. In the words of its discoverer, the image of Christ as savior of the world is “the rarest thing on the planet.” Its $450 million sale price also makes it the world’s most expensive painting.
 
For two centuries, art dealers had searched in vain for the Holy Grail of art history: a portrait of Christ as the Salvator Mundi by Leonardo da Vinci. Many similar paintings of greatly varying quality had been executed by Leonardo’s assistants in the early sixteenth century. But where was the original by the master himself? In November 2017, Christie’s auction house announced they had it. But did they?
 
The Last Leonardo tells a thrilling tale of a spellbinding icon invested with the power to make or break the reputations of scholars, billionaires, kings, and sheikhs. Ben Lewis takes us to Leonardo’s studio in Renaissance Italy; to the court of Charles I and the English Civil War; to Amsterdam, Moscow, and New Orleans; to the galleries, salerooms, and restorer’s workshop as the painting slowly, painstakingly emerged from obscurity. The vicissitudes of the highly secretive art market are charted across six centuries. It is a twisting tale of geniuses and oligarchs, double-crossings and disappearances, in which we’re never quite certain what to believe. Above all, it is an adventure story about the search for lost treasure, and a quest for the truth.
Praise for The Last Leonardo
“The story of the world’s most expensive painting is narrated with great gusto and formidably researched detail in Ben Lewis’s book. . . . Lewis’s probings of the Salvator’s backstory raise questions about its historical status and visibility, and these lead in turn to the fundamental question of whether the painting is really an autograph work by Leonardo.”—Charles Nicholl, The Guardian
“As the art historian and critic Ben Lewis shows in his forensically detailed and gripping investigation into the history, discovery and sales of the painting, establishing the truth is like nailing down jelly.”— Michael Prodger, The Sunday Times

  • Creators

  • Publisher

  • Release date

    June 25, 2019

  • Formats

    • Kindle Book

    • OverDrive Read

      • ISBN: 9781984819260

    • EPUB ebook

      • ISBN: 9781984819260
      • File size: 46382 KB

  • Languages

    • English

  • Reviews

    • Kirkus

      The journey of a Renaissance painting reveals secrets of the contemporary art world. Art critic and documentary filmmaker Lewis (Horizons, Zones and Outer Spaces: The Art of John Loker, 2019, etc.) crafts a richly detailed mystery surrounding one striking 15th-century portrait--"a piece of junk, a thrift-store picture sold at a rock-bottom price"--bought by two dealers in 2005 for $1,175, sold for $80 million in 2013, and, in 2017, auctioned at Christie's New York for $450 million, making it the world's most expensive painting. The work is Salvator Mundi, depicting Christ, his hand raised in blessing, holding a glowing orb: Christ as the Savior of the World. The mystery is its creator. To prove that the artist was Leonardo da Vinci, the dealers spent years investigating the work's provenance, a record of ownership that shows how it was identified, the esteem in which it was held, and its value through the years. They also consulted with da Vinci experts, art historians, and an esteemed restorer who took on the challenge of painstakingly bringing the relic back to life. The work of restoration proved central to the painting's fame and value. "The restorer," Lewis notes, "spends hours at a stretch in a closed-off world, peering through magnifying visors, engrossed in the most minuscule details of a painting." With the Salvator Mundi, though, the restorer's work broached a border "between conservation and invention." Controversy over attribution raged, inflamed by concern over the extent of the restoration, experts' evaluation of brushwork and style, and, not least, professional rivalries, academic ambitions, and financial interests. Even after London's National Gallery placed it in a da Vinci exhibition, some believed it at most da Vinci-esque, perhaps emanating from his studio. As Lewis chronicles the quest to attribute the painting to da Vinci, he uncovers an astoundingly dysfunctional world of museums, galleries, auction houses, collectors--a Russian oligarch and a Saudi prince among them--and unscrupulous middlemen, a world plagued by mistrust, suspicion, and the irresistible lure of financial rewards. Art, greed, and stealth make for a lively tale of intrigue.

      COPYRIGHT(2019) Kirkus Reviews, ALL RIGHTS RESERVED. (Online Review)

Formats

  • Kindle Book
  • OverDrive Read
  • EPUB ebook

subjects

Languages

  • English

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