Sold for $450,312,500 (Euros 386.312.500) at Christie?s New York
?Leonardo is an artist who?s been in dialog with every artist who?s followed him?think Warhol, think Jean-Michel Basquiat?and as such, his work is absolutely timeless,? said Loic Gouzer, co-chairman of postwar and contemporary art at Christie?s, during an October 10 announcement of the inclusion of Leonardo?s stunning and evocative Salvator Mundi (1500) in its evening sale of postwar and contemporary art in New York on November 15. ?As you may know, at Christie?s we like to push boundaries. We like to disrupt things a bit.?
And disrupt they did Wednesday night at their Rockefeller Center headquarters. At 7:45 P.M., after a 20-minute bidding war, the rare-oil-on-panel (catalogue Lot 9B) was hammered in at $400 (Euros 338) million by auctioneer and global president of Christie?s Jussi Pylkkänen, more than quadrupling its unpublished presale estimate of $100 (Euros 84.66) million and easily surpassing the previous record for a work of art sold at auction, set by Pablo Picasso?s Les Femmes d?Alger (Version ?O?) (1955), which sold for $179.4 (Euros 151.55) million at the same house in May of 2015. Salvator Mundi headed to the block with the comfortable backing of a third-party financial guarantee.
The take home price: $450,312,500 (Euros 386.312.500) with an added buyer?s premium. The buyer was a telephone bidder on the line with Alex Rotter, chairman of the postwar and contemporary art department...