A PAINTING of Christ by the Renaissance master Leonardo da Vinci has sold for a record $450 million at auction, smashing previous records for artworks sold at auction or privately.
The painting, called Salvator Mundi, Italian for Savior of the World, is one of fewer than 20 paintings by Leonardo known to exist and the only one in private hands. It was sold by Christie’s auction house, which did not immediately identify the buyer.
The highest price ever paid for a work of art at auction had been $179.4m, for Picasso’s Women of Algiers (Version O) in May 2015, also at Christie’s in New York.
The highest known sale price for any artwork had been $300m, for Willem de Kooning’s painting Interchange, sold privately in September 2015 by the David Geffen Foundation to hedge fund manager Kenneth C Griffin.
A backer of the Salvator Mundi auction had guaranteed a bid of at least $100m, the opening bid of the auction, which ran for 19 minutes. The price hit $300m about halfway through the bidding.
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.
The painting was sold on Wednesday by Russian billionaire Dmitry Rybolovlev.
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