Salvator Mundi: once was lost but now is found

The lost Leonardo



London's National Gallery will exhibit 'Salvator Mundi' in a show of Leonardo da Vinci. The painting has attributes suggesting it's of the period, and experts have weighed in positively.

By Noah Charney

November 6, 2011
On Nov. 9, London's National Gallery will open a highly anticipated exhibition, "Leonardo da Vinci: Painter at the Court of Milan." While Leonardo shows are reliable blockbusters, this one will have a particular appeal because it will feature what many believe to be a "lost" Leonardo painting.

"Salvator Mundi" (Savior of the World) shows a distinctly spooky half-length image of Christ against an amorphous dark background. His features are slightly ghosted, an effect called sfumato that Leonardo brought to the fore, in which a dry brush is swept over nearly dry paint in order to gently blur lines and meld colors. Christ has ginger-tinged ringlets, a cleft chin, bee-stung lips and slightly protruding dark eyes, lightly red and moist, as if he has just been crying. His garment, of loose blue cloth with delicate strips of decorative embroidery, and a gemstone over his sternum are handled in a more precise manner. With his raised right hand he gestures in benediction, while his left hand cups a transparent orb, symbolizing the world.

But is it by Leonardo?

In art history, "lost" is a term applied to works that have been destroyed, stolen or misattributed. Occasionally, a lost work surfaces seemingly from nowhere. More often, works are lost in plain sight. In 1993, Caravaggio's "Taking of Christ" was discovered hanging in a dark corner of a Jesuit seminary in Dublin, grimy with age and long thought a copy rather than the original it proved to be.

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