The Savior For Sale
April 7 2021
Picture: TAN
Posted by Adam Busiakiewicz:
The Art Newspaper have published a fascinating article on the new film by Antoine Vitkine entitled The Savior for Sale.
The film seems to reveal some very interesting details about the aborted attempt to exhibit the Salvator Mundi for the Louvre's Leonardo exhibition in 2019. Firstly, the film suggests from a source that Saudi owners of the painting had strong conditions on the work being exhibited. They supposedly had insisted that the work should hang next to the Mona Lisa and should be catalogued as a Leonardo 100% in full.
A little more murky is scientific analysis that the Louvre is said to have undertaken on the painting. It is claimed that initial investigations by the museum's technical laboratory C2RMF have concluded that Leonardo had only contributed to part of the painting. We'll have to wait for the film to hear more, as the article gives absolutely no details of how they came to this decision. There's also the matter of the book later and secretly published by the Louvre, which actually confirmed the authorship to Leonardo.
It is claimed that President Macron eventually took the decision to not go ahead with the Saudi's conditions.
The film will be broadcast on French television on 13th April 2021.
