Salvator Mundi, Latin for Saviour of the World, is a subject in iconography depicting Christ with his right hand raised in blessing and his left hand holding an orb (frequently surmounted by a cross), known as a globus cruciger . The latter symbolizes the Earth, and the whole composition has strong eschatological undertones.
The theme was made popular by Northern painters such as Jan van Eyck, Hans Memling, and Albrecht Dürer. There are also several versions of the theme attributed to Titian, notably the one in the Hermitage Museum.
One painting of the subject, simply titled Salvator Mundi , was attributed or reattributed to Leonardo da Vinci in 2011. This painting disappeared from 1763 until 1900 when it was acquired from Sir Charles Robinson. It was at the time thought to be a work by Leonardo's follower, Bernardino Luini, and was purchased for the Doughty House in Richmond, London by Sir Francis Cook. [1] By this time Christ's face and hair had been extensively repainted. A photograph taken in 1912 records the work's altered appearance. [2] In 2017, this painting sold at auction for US$450,300,000, the highest price ever paid for a painting. [3]
Salvator Mundi is represented as a central motif in artworks since the 15th century such as:
Bernardino Luini was a north Italian painter from Leonardo's circle during the High Renaissance. Both Luini and Giovanni Antonio Boltraffio were said to have worked with Leonardo directly; he was described as having taken "as much from Leonardo as his native roots enabled him to comprehend". Consequently, many of his works were attributed to Leonardo. He was known especially for his graceful female figures with elongated eyes, called Luinesque by Vladimir Nabokov.
La Belle Ferronnière is a portrait of a lady, usually attributed to Leonardo da Vinci, in the Louvre. It is also known as Portrait of an Unknown Woman. The painting's title, applied as early as the seventeenth century, identifying the sitter as the wife or daughter of an ironmonger, was said to be discreetly alluding to a reputed mistress of Francis I of France, married to a certain Le Ferron. Later she was identified as Lucretia Crivelli, a married lady-in-waiting to Duchess Beatrice of Milan, who became another of the Duke's mistresses.
In painting, a pentimento is "the presence or emergence of earlier images, forms, or strokes that have been changed and painted over".
The Madonna Litta is a late 15th-century painting, traditionally attributed to Leonardo da Vinci, in the Hermitage Museum, Saint Petersburg. It depicts the Virgin Mary breastfeeding the Christ child, a devotional subject known as the Madonna lactans. The figures are set in a dark interior with two arched openings, as in Leonardo's earlier Madonna of the Carnation, and a mountainous landscape in aerial perspective can be seen beyond. In his left hand Christ holds a goldfinch, which is symbolic of his future Passion.
Jan Provoost, or Jean Provost, or Jan Provost was a Belgian painter born in Mons.
Martin John Kemp is a British art historian and exhibition curator who is one of the world's leading authorities on the life and works of Leonardo da Vinci. The author of many books on Leonardo, Kemp has also written about visualisation in art and science, particularly anatomy, natural sciences and optics. Instrumental in the controversial authentication of Salvator Mundi to Leonardo, Kemp has been vocal on attributions to Leonardo, including support of La Bella Principessa and opposition of the Isleworth Mona Lisa.
Giovanni Antonio Boltraffio was an Italian painter of the High Renaissance from Lombardy, who worked in the studio of Leonardo da Vinci. Boltraffio and Bernardino Luini are the strongest artistic personalities to emerge from Leonardo's studio. According to Giorgio Vasari, he was of an aristocratic family and was born in Milan.
The decade of the 1480s in art involved some significant events.
Giampietrino, probably Giovanni Pietro Rizzoli, was a north Italian painter of the Lombard school and Leonardo's circle, succinctly characterized by S. J. Freedberg as an "exploiter of Leonardo's repertory."
The Musée des Beaux-Arts de Strasbourg is the old masters paintings collection of the city of Strasbourg, located in the Alsace region of France. The museum is housed in the first and second floors of the baroque Palais Rohan since 1898. The museum displays works by non-Upper Rhenish artists from between the 14th century and 1871 and by Upper Rhenish artist from between 1681 and 1871. The museum owned 1,934 works as of 31 December 2015, this number has substantially increased since. The old masters from the upper-Rhenish area until 1681 are exhibited in the neighboring Musée de l’Œuvre Notre-Dame.
Sir Francis Cook, 1st Baronet, 1st Viscount Montserrate was a British merchant and art collector.
Alexander Parish is a New York art dealer and the joint former owner of the Salvator Mundi by Leonardo da Vinci; he appears in the 2021 film, The Lost Leonardo.
Salvator Mundi is a painting attributed in whole or in part to the Italian High Renaissance artist Leonardo da Vinci, dated to c. 1499–1510. Long thought to be a copy of a lost original veiled with overpainting, it was rediscovered, restored, and included in a major exhibition of Leonardo's work at the National Gallery, London, in 2011–2012. Christie's claimed just after selling the work that most leading scholars consider it to be an original work by Leonardo, but this attribution has been disputed by other leading specialists, some of whom propose that he only contributed certain elements; and others who believe that the extensive damage prevents a definitive attribution.
The Prado Mona Lisa is a painting by the workshop of Leonardo da Vinci and depicts the same subject and composition as Leonardo's better known Mona Lisa at the Louvre, Paris. The Prado Mona Lisa has been in the collection of the Museo del Prado in Madrid, Spain since 1819, but was considered for decades a relatively unimportant copy. Following its restoration in 2012, however, the Prado's Mona Lisa has come to be understood as the earliest known studio copy of Leonardo's masterpiece.
Earthly Vanity and Divine Salvation is a 1480s painting by the German-born citizen of Bruges, Hans Memling. It is on display in the Musée des Beaux-Arts of Strasbourg, France. Its inventory number is 185.
Salvator Mundi is a religious painting by Italian Renaissance artist Palma Vecchio, dated to c. 1518-1522. It is on display in the Musée des Beaux-Arts of Strasbourg, France. Its inventory number is 585.
Christ Triumphant over Sin and Death, also known as Christ Triumphant over Death and Sin, or sometimes as Salvator Mundi, is a circa 1618 oil painting by the Flemish Baroque artist Peter Paul Rubens. It is on display in the Musée des Beaux-Arts of Strasbourg, France. Its inventory number is 235.
Luke Syson is an English museum curator and art historian. Since 2019, he has been the director of the Fitzwilliam Museum at the University of Cambridge, prior to which he held positions at the British Museum (1991–2002), the Victoria and Albert Museum (2002–2003), the National Gallery (2003–2012) and the Metropolitan Museum of Art (2015–2019). In 2011 he curated the acclaimed Leonardo da Vinci exhibition at the National Gallery: Leonardo da Vinci: Painter at the Court of Milan, which included his pivotal role in the controversial authentication by the National Gallery of da Vinci's Salvator Mundi.
Robert B. Simon is an American art historian and art dealer most known for rediscovering Leonado Da Vinci's picture, Salvator Mundi.
Media related to Salvator mundi at Wikimedia Commons