Dianne Modestini and Ashok Roy inspecting the Naples copy of the Salvator Mundi (2019).
Copyright The Lost Leonardo – Photo by Adam Jandrup. Courtesy of Sony Pictures Classics.
“This is the most improbable story that has ever happened in the art world,” is how the subject of the documentary The Lost Leonardo is described by one of its expert interviewees. Few artworks as valuable as those by Leonardo DaVinci, so the possibility that a known but long lost painting by the great master has been found generates headlines far beyond the art world. But an interest in art is not needed to be fascinated by the twisty, shocking tale told by The Lost Leonardo, a tale more about money and power than art. This top-notch documentary documentary takes us deep into the murky, hidden world of Old Masters art, a story involving extreme wealth, shady financial dealing, greedy institutions, ambition academics, clever auction houses,...
Copyright The Lost Leonardo – Photo by Adam Jandrup. Courtesy of Sony Pictures Classics.
“This is the most improbable story that has ever happened in the art world,” is how the subject of the documentary The Lost Leonardo is described by one of its expert interviewees. Few artworks as valuable as those by Leonardo DaVinci, so the possibility that a known but long lost painting by the great master has been found generates headlines far beyond the art world. But an interest in art is not needed to be fascinated by the twisty, shocking tale told by The Lost Leonardo, a tale more about money and power than art. This top-notch documentary documentary takes us deep into the murky, hidden world of Old Masters art, a story involving extreme wealth, shady financial dealing, greedy institutions, ambition academics, clever auction houses,...
- 9/3/2021
- by Cate Marquis
- WeAreMovieGeeks.com
In 2005, an art scavenger named Alexander Parish bought a High Renaissance painting from a small New Orleans auction house for $1,175. In 2017, Christie’s sold a heavily restored version of that same painting — the provenance of which had since become the art world’s hottest controversy — to the crown prince of Saudi Arabia for a cool $450,300,000 (presumably outbidding Kenneth Branagh’s character from “Tenet”). Mohammad bin Salman’s record-shattering purchase consecrated the idea that “Salvator Mundi” is an original Da Vinci better than any historian ever could, but if the origins of this oil-on-walnut portrait weren’t so intensely disputed, perhaps no one would have spent as much to assert its value. If only Orson Welles were still alive to have a hearty chuckle over the whole thing.
So did it come from the master’s hand, or is it a “fake”? Spoiler alert: Andreas Koefoed’s “The Lost Leonardo” is...
So did it come from the master’s hand, or is it a “fake”? Spoiler alert: Andreas Koefoed’s “The Lost Leonardo” is...
- 8/10/2021
- by David Ehrlich
- Indiewire
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