The grandson of a man who sold Leonardo da Vinci’s £340million masterpiece Salvator Mundi for just £45 says he would love it hanging on his dining room wall.
Sir Francis Cook sold the Italian master’s painting of Jesus for a fraction of its value in 1958 when it was dismissed as the work of one of da Vinci’s students.
But yesterday that decision came back to haunt to family when it became the most expensive art work ever sold after a furious 20-minute telephone bidding war in New York.
Salvator Mundi, an ethereal portrait of Jesus Christ by Leonardo da Vinci which dates to about 1500, has sold for a record price
Today Sir Francis’ grandson Richard Cook was philosophical about £340million slipping through his family’s fingers.
He told MailOnline: ‘I really hope that the new buyers exhibit it in a museum like I would.
‘I think it’s absolutely wonderful news. Old masters have been undervalued for a very long time. I am an Art Historian myself and used to work for Christie’s New York.
‘Well, I have not let anything slip through my fingers, it was Leonardo’s painting!
‘We can all wonder if something is real or not, but I trust the historians and curators that this is real.
‘The painting would look great over the dining room left-wing wall.
‘I haven’t had a chance to speak with my family yet about it all, I certainly will.’
The painting, Italian for ‘Savior of the World’, was purchased by an unidentified buyer at the auction house.
Its price was double the previous record set by Pablo Picasso’s painting ‘Women of Algiers (Version O)’ (‘Les Femmes D’Alger) which sold for $179.4 million in May 2015.
Christie’s auctioneer Jussi Pylkannen, taps the gavel as he ends bidding at $400 million for the painting at Christie’s, Wednesday
The highest known sale price for any artwork had been £230million for Willem de Kooning’s painting ‘Interchange,’ which was sold privately in September 2015 by the David Geffen Foundation to hedge fund manager Kenneth C. Griffin.
The oil on wood panel painting, Salvator Mundi, depicts Christ with his right hand raised in blessing and his left hand holding a globe.
Commissioned by Louis XII of France in 1506, it later ended up in possession of Charles I of England and following his execution it went to Charles II and it remained in London for 400 years.
It eventually ended up in Sir Francis Cook’s collection – but was sold for £45 in 1958 by Sotheby’s after it was incorrectly attributed to Italian painter Giovanni Boltraffio.
A consortium of US art dealers, Robert Simon Fine Art in New York bought the painting in 2004 for £10,000.
An international panel of art experts assessed the work, which had been heavily overpainted, and gone dark and gloomy during years of neglect.
After being cleaned, experts found it had not been painted by Boltraffio – but by the master, da Vinci, himself, and went on display to the public at the National Gallery in London in 2011.
Members of Christie’s staff admire the work – the last privately owned Leonardo da Vinci painting
Bidding representatives react after Leonardo da Vinci’s ‘Salvator Mundi’ sold for $400 million at Christie’s
Paris-based dealer, Yves Bouvier purchased the work at a Sotheby’s private sale for £53 million in 2013.
The dealer once represented Russian oligarch Dmitry Rybolovlev, 50, who has accused him of cheating him out of $1 billion by misrepresenting sale prices on some 38 artworks – including the sale of the da Vinci when Rybolovlev acquired it for £100 million.
The oligarch’s sale on Wednesday marks his biggest ever.
During Wednesday’s auction, a backer of the ‘Salvator Mundi’ auction had guaranteed a bid of at least £75million, the opening bid of the auction, which ran for 19 minutes. The price hit £220 million about halfway through the bidding.
People in the auction house gallery applauded and cheered when the bidding reached £227million and when the hammer came down on the final bid, £303million. The record sale price of £342million includes the buyer’s premium, a fee paid by the winner to the auction house.
The 26-inch-tall Leonardo painting dates from around 1500 and shows Christ dressed in Renaissance-style robes, his right hand raised in blessing as his left hand holds a crystal sphere.
Its path from Leonardo’s workshop to the auction block at Christie’s was not smooth. Once owned by King Charles I of England, it disappeared from view until 1900, when it resurfaced and was acquired by a British collector. At that time it was attributed to a Leonardo disciple, rather than to the master himself.
The painting was sold again in 1958 and then was acquired in 2005, badly damaged and partly painted-over, by a consortium of art dealers who paid less than $10,000 (8,445 euros). The art dealers restored the painting and documented its authenticity as a work by Leonardo.
The painting was sold Wednesday by Russian billionaire Dmitry Rybolovlev, who bought it in 2013 for $127.5 million (108 million euros) in a private sale that became the subject of a continuing lawsuit.
Christie’s said most scholars agree that the painting is by Leonardo, though some critics have questioned the attribution and some say the extensive restoration muddies the work’s authorship.
One bidder even turned up with a mask of da Vinci’s Salvator Mundi for the Post-War & Contemporary Art Evening Sale at Christie’s
Christie’s capitalized on the public’s interest in Leonardo, considered one of the greatest artists of all time, with a media campaign that labeled the painting ‘The Last Da Vinci.’
The work was exhibited in Hong Kong, San Francisco, London and New York before the sale.
In New York, where no museum owns a Leonardo, art lovers lined up outside Christie’s Rockefeller Center headquarters on Tuesday to view ‘Salvator Mundi.’
Svetla Nikolova, who is from Bulgaria but lives in New York, called the painting ‘spectacular.’
‘It’s a once-in-a-lifetime experience,’ she said. ‘It should be seen. It’s wonderful it’s in New York. I’m so lucky to be in New York at this time.’