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After the controversial "Salvator Mundi" award attributed to Leonardo da Vinci was sold for a record $ 450 million in November 2017 at Christie's in New York, the situation is rather calm.
The Louvre Abu Dhabi was to exhibit the painting last September, but the exhibition was postponed inexplicably and the painting fell into limbo.
On Monday, however, an opinion article by Artnet quoted sources as saying that the painting resided in the superyacht of its owner, the crown prince of Saudi Arabia and de facto ruler Mohammed bin Salman.
Citing "two persons involved in the transaction", Kenny Schachter, of Artnet, stated that "Salvator Mundi" had been "taken away in the middle of the night in the MBS plane and transferred to his yacht, the Serene ".
The crown prince's superyacht, Serene, has a slightly larger value than "Salvator Mundi" – the king bought the boat from Russian vodka mogul Yuri Shefler for 500 million euros after the day. to have spotted in France in 2015, said the New York Times, citing two sources.
The boat had already been rented to Bill Gates for the princely sum of $ 5 million a week, Schachter said. .
According to Schachter sources, the painting will remain on board the Serene until the crown prince "finishes transforming the former Saudi Arabian compound of Al-Ula into a vast cultural center" .
Using MarineTraffic, an application that tracks ships, including superyachts, The Guardian was able to track the location of Serene up to Port Said, an Egyptian city located at the north end of the Suez Cbad.
Storing art on yachts is part of a growing trend among the ultrarichs of the world.
More: The owners of a billionaire's yachts are desperately seeking advice to protect their priceless art from bursts of champagne and corn flakes
In an interview granted At The Observer in February, British art historian and curator Pandora Mather-Lees said that there were superyachts with "better collections than some national museums".
This is a problem in itself because the paints can easily be damaged on board. Mather-Lees, consultant to yacht crews occupying high-end works of art, told a horror story of children throwing flakes of corn to Jean-Michel Basquiat, a multimillion-dollar man, because they "thought it was scary". worse by trying to wipe it off.
Similarly, a drink of choice for the wealthy – Champagne – can be a real problem, the damage caused by cork resulting in expensive restorations. in one case, after the projectile struck a multi-million dollar work of art.
"Salvator Mundi", which means "savior of the world" in Latin, has been the subject of much controversy since its discovery, while experts were fiercely debating it.
Although Christie's claimed that a painting exhibition at the National Gallery in London in 2011 "sealed his acceptance as a fully dedicated work of Leonardo da Vinci", all the experts do not agree.
Last month, the Louvre in Paris gave up the painting for its exhibition celebrating 500 years of Vinci because the conservatives did not think it could be attributed solely to the artist.
One of Vinci's leading world experts also criticized Christie's after stating that she was one of the scholars who had awarded the painting to the artist.
Carmen Bambach, curator at the Metropolitan Museum of Art in New York, told The Guardian: "This is not representative of my opinion."
Indeed, according to the art historian and writer who wrote a book on "Salvator Mundi", the Crown Prince may not have an interest in exposing it.
"My sources inside the Louvre, various sources, tell me that few conservatives believe that this image is an autograph of Leonardo da Vinci," he told the literary festival Hay, according to The Guardian.
He stated that it would be perfectly logical to expose the art as a "workshop", but that this would risk making the value "go down" north of $ 1.5 million (£ 1.2 million) ".
"It's the painting that does not dare to show its face," Lewis added.
To find out more: Leonardo da Vinci's painting, worth $ 450 million, which would be seated on a Saudi prince's yacht has already been purchased for 1,000 dollars. This is how it has invaded the art world.
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