No, I think MBS is saying to MBZ, “I know it’s a gift, but Imma hold on to this until you get your museum built”.
To me, sort of like buying your 10-year-old a car for her high school graduation present, and driving it around instead of putting it into maintained storage.
Not sure Kenny Schachter is my kind of source tho…
A salami?
I had a remarkable chance to see the painting upclose. When it was touring before the auction, it stopped off in San Francisco at a gallery near my job. After work, i took one short Muni trip and walked up to the gallery about an hour before closing. A guard asked me if I was there to see the painting and pointed me to the stairs. I entered a room which had about 12 people and 4 guards. There were other works up for auction which were all amazingly recognizable such as a Calder mobile, a Kara Walker paper cutout, a Wayne Thebaud dessert painting etc… In a room by itself stood the Salvator Mundi. We were allowed to get within a foot and a half of it… and it was amazing. I have seen some of my favorite paintings close such as the Girl with the Pearl Earring but the first thing that struck me was how big it was. The figure is roughly life-size and spectacular in natural light. Personally, I have little time for the discussions of whether a painter must always paint in a specific way or whether restoration changes the essential nature of a work. It was a Da Vinci in my eye with the presence I would expect…
I want to point to s soulless work, the Next Rembrandt, which is a machine leaning artificially created painted work designed to emulate Rembrandt (https://www.nextrembrandt.com). The painting irritated me for the longest time until I figured out what I found wrong with it: the subject shows an average of several emotions so he looks vaguely drugged. The Salvator Mundi’s Jesus has a very moving subtle emotion which doesn’t show up well in reproduction but still haunts me.
I’m remembering the Basquiat painting that some guy bought for his yacht and his kids threw cornflakes at it because it was watching them eat. What’s the worst that can happen?
“Salvator Mundi”
Uhhh, that means “saviour of the world”. . . meaning Jesus Christ.
Just saying, as a Muslim maybe you shouldn’t be displaying pics of Jesus.
Or maybe someone more versed in Islam can school me on how this flies within a Muslim theocracy.
I assume he displays it next to his collection of rare French wine.
A quick google search: https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jesus_in_Islam?wprov=sfti1
Yes I’m familiar with the basics here, but what the Quran teaches and what specific Muslim branches believe, particularly today when religion has become politicized, is another thing-- Jesus was a Jew, and Jews are supposed to be respected as “people of the book” but typically aren’t. And why would it be OK to display the image of Christ, the penultimate prophet, but not Muhammad, the final prophet?
Of course we’re talking about a crown prince, who can basically do whatever he wants, including drink alcohol when he’s not in the Arabian peninsula.
what, you think that crate is not air-conditioned like a shopping mall?
Less vanished than the guys who own it refused to specify where it was, let anyone see it, or have it displayed after serious concerns about its authenticity were raised. IIRC the Louvre Louvre wanted it displayed as a workshop piece, basically the work of multiple assistants with some basic contributions by Leonardo. And an American museum refused to display it at all on the grounds that it wasn’t Leo’s work at all. There has also been some serious criticism about the extent and quality of the restoration, and whether much if any of the original work is even still there regardless of who painted it.
Basically every time a major authority dings the authenticity the value goes down a bit. And they can’t let it be displayed as anything but the solo work of the guy or its value plummets. And this is the single most expensive painting ever auctioned.
“Lost” in that there are historical records referring to a painting of this composition by Leonardo from various points in history (including near contemporaneous), and several students or assistants also painted versions that have at various points been credited as copies of an original by Leonardo. As did a lot of unrelated artists. But no extent, known original painting was locatable until sombody “found it” poorly painted over and in shit shape and had it “restored”.
So a version of this at least partially by Leonardo is known to have existed at one point. The people who discovered and sold it are just claiming that this particular painting, is that original. And don’t really have a lot in its weird “well maybe this person did that” chain of custody to back that up definitively. And in terms of examining the painting itself most experts don’t see enough to say “Leonardo did it”.
The Yacht guy bought the thing because a major auction house authenticated it, so they had an authority that was fooled enough to risk legal problems over selling it as real. And now he’s a bit stuck with a painting he probably massively, massively over paid for.
One of the more interesting things I learned reading up on this and other “lost” Leonardos (scare quotes for when some one claims they found them but probably didn’t). Is that Leonardo’s workshop was basically mass producing art. Not only were his many students and assistants doing their own works and copying Leonardo’s. But they were copying or iterating on each others art, visiting artists who were doing all that too, and other famous works from around Europe. As well as collaborating on collective works where everyone had a go and Leonardo’s only contribution was often sketching the hands since he was better at it than anyone else hanging around. And all that shit got sold.
The dissenting opinion on this thing seems to mostly be that it’s one of those workshop pieces with minimal actual contributions from Leonardo, but it is from his shop or one of his student’s shops after his death. Maybe he drew the hands and the orb, or laid down a rough sketch. Maybe its based on something he never finished, and there never was an original to copy. The harder core no-Leonardo stance is that whatever the fuck it was the restoration altered so much as to make it plausibly look like a Leonardo to the over excited.
I thought images of people were verboten in Islam. But that’s OK, because this isn’t a very good “image” anyway. Most of Leonardo’s real paintings are vastly better.
so what do billionaires do about pirates
Sorry, Leonardo was known to depict people with normally-shaped crania. I can’t believe anyone ever seriously considered this to be by him. Well, maybe because going along with the gag led to fat fees for all concerned explains it.
Dude is from the ruling class, and the ruling class always gets different rules… I think the real problem is that a priceless work of art is being hoarded by an asshole, not whether or not he’s right with his god. That’s literally between him and his conscious. And frankly, the Saudi family have a lot more to answer to Allah than whether or not they have a graven image in a yacht.
100% in agreement.
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