Salvator Mundi - not Leonardo, but Luini? (ctd.)

September 3 2018

Picture: TAN

There was a flurry of excitement last month when the Oxford art historian Matthew Landrus said he could 'prove' that Bernardo Luini painted 'most' of the Salvator Mundi now in the Louvre Abu Dhabi. In The Art Newspaper, Landrus now sets out some of that proof. And I must say I'm not entirely convinced.

Landrus' case relies in part on the fact that if (using Photoshop, above) you overlap the head in the Salvator Mundi with a copy of the painting (called the 'De Ganay' version) and the head of Christ in Luini's Christ Among the Doctors, all three faces 'compare remarkably well.' But since Luini's Christ Among the Doctors was almost certainly painted after the Salvator Mundi, such analysis only tells us that Luini, like so many artists, was highly influenced by Leonardo. Landrus also now writes that the Salvator Mundi is 'by Leonardo da Vinci and his studio'. And even if we accept that as the basis of the case for Luini's involvement in the picture, we need first to address whether Leonardo would have left the most significant part of the picture to assistants. 

Landrus' new book on Leonardo is published later this month by Carlton.

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