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The Last Leonardo
The Last Leonardo: The Secret Lives of the World's Most Expensive Painting | Ben Lewis
5 posts | 4 read | 3 to read
"In 2017, Leonardo da Vinci's small oil painting the Salvator Mundi was sold at auction. In the words of its discoverer, the image of Christ as savior of the world is "the rarest thing on the planet." Its $450 million sale price also makes it the world's most expensive painting. For two centuries, art dealers had searched in vain for the Holy Grail of art history: a portrait of Christ as the Salvator Mundi by Leonardo da Vinci. Many similar paintings of greatly varying quality had been executed by Leonardo's assistants in the early sixteenth century. But where was the original by the master himself? In November 2017, Christie's auction house announced they had it. But did they? The Last Leonardo tells a thrilling tale of a spellbinding icon invested with the power to make or break the reputations of scholars, billionaires, kings, and sheikhs. Ben Lewis takes us to Leonardo's studio in Renaissance Italy; to the court of Charles I and the English Civil War; to Amsterdam, Moscow, and New Orleans; to the galleries, salerooms, and restorer's workshop as the painting slowly, painstakingly emerged from obscurity. The vicissitudes of the highly secretive art market are charted across six centuries. It is a twisting tale of geniuses and oligarchs, double-crossings and disappearances, in which we're never quite certain what to believe. Above all, it is an adventure story about the search for lost treasure, and a quest for the truth."--
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review
BookNAround
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Mehso-so

The story of a disputed daVinci painting, this is an exhaustive look at the Salvador Mundi itself and the art world a s a whole. I found pieces of it fascinating but other parts really bogged down for me. Full review at http://booknaround.blogspot.com/2022/08/review-last-leonardo-by-ben-lewis.html

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LMJenkins
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I love a good art discovery or art heist story. Looking forward to this one.

25 likes1 stack add
review
vlwelser
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Pickpick

This was super interesting. If you like non-fiction about art. 😍🎨

And Happy New Years from the panda bandit 🐼!

#ARC #goodreads

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vlwelser
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This is the next (and last 😥) holiday book. My flight's on a 3 hour delay. 🛫🎄 Anyone want to go to work for me tomorrow?

#ARC #goodreads

20 likes1 stack add
quote
Honeybeebooks
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"Our understanding of Leonardo's life and work rarely becomes more than a pool of theories, surrounded by a tangle of conjecture, suspended from a geometry of clues."