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A sleeper is a painting
that's being offered

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almost entirely at auction...

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Which is clearly by a much better artist

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than the auction house has recognized.

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A sleeper hunter is someone
who looks for these mistakes.

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And that's what I do. That's what I do.

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So I find this painting
that's cataloged as after Leonardo.

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It's a copy after the lost salvator mundi,

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the savior of the world,
that we know Leonardo did.

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Jesus is not an easy sell.

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But for whatever reason...

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This picture attracts my attention.

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And I call Robert Simon.

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We have purchased paintings together.

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We've done very well with them.

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He enjoys the same hunt.

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Alex called me and said...

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"Have you seen this picture
down in New Orleans auction?"

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He said, "yeah, lsawit too.
What shall we do?"

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And we decided to buy it.
We're gonna buy it.

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We agreed on a price.

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Alex arranges for the shipment.

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I think it was sent ups
on a truck to New York.

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And we're rolling.

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- Rolling.
- Yeah.

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- Rolling.
- Good.

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I'm gonna open with a very broad question.

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Why do you think the salvator mundi
has caused so much fuss?

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First, let me say this.

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This is the most improbable story

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that has, I think,
ever happened in the art market.

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Everybody wanted it to be a Leonardo.

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And so everybody took
the most optimistic view they could

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of it as a Leonardo.

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And perhaps it is a Leonardo.

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It's not even a good painting!

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I believe that a picture has its own power

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and that power is experienced only truly

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when you're standing in front of it.

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This is simply a matter of economics
when you boil down to it.

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And greed. Basic human, uh, foibles.

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Money.

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The picture came in a cardboard box,

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which is kind of what you'd expect
for the sort of money we spent.

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And I took it out...

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And two things are immediately apparent.

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And I mean... within five seconds.

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One, there's clearly
a great deal of overpaint.

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Restoration on the face of Christ.

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There's clearly a large swath
of the painting...

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That is untouched, UN-restored...

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And absolutely period.

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By that, I mean circa 1500.

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I'm thinking,
"this is an extraordinary object."

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But what it is, I don't know.
But we have to find out.

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It's a work from around the year 1500,

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probably by one of these artists
so close to the master

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that it deserved, really,
to have, um, the best possible care.

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I'm Evan beard.

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I, uh, run the art services group
at bank of america.

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We 're the largest lender against art.

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We manage about 100 museum endowments
around the country.

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This picture,
it tells both an art historical story,

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but it also tells the history
of financial markets,

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tells the history of the rise
of social and cultural capital.

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So they bring the picture to probably
the top art conservation professional

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in the entire field,

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dianne modest/hi.

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He comes over
carrying this painting in, um...

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A black plastic garbage bag.

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And I take the painting out of the bag
and put it on an easel.

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There are very lovely passages

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and other passages
are very damaged, overpainted.

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I still didn't know what it was

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and I brought it to Mario in the bedroom.

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Mario modestini is a celebrated
painting conservator of all time.

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He also vetted the ginevra de' benci
for the national gallery.

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The only Leonardo
in the western hemisphere.

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This is a man who's seen
a lot of Leonardo

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and he might be interested
in seeing the picture.

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At the time, he was 98 years old
and housebound.

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I said, "Mario, look at this picture.

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What do you think of it?"

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And he suddenly
kind of paid attention to it.

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And he said,
"this is by a very great artist."

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And he said, "I don't know who it is,
but it's the generation after Leonardo."

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I took some solvents from the cabinet,
acetone and mineral spirits,

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and I rolled cotton wool on a stick.

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Then I began slowly to remove
the varnish and some retouching.

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And one of the things
that immediately appears

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a first position of the thumb.

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This is called "pentiment."
It's an artist's first idea.

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The thumb was subsequently moved
to a different position.

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And you don't usually find that in a copy,

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but it's not proof
that it's definitely the original.

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Uh, at least it wasn't proof for me.

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As I remove retouching,

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the thumb appears immediately,

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as does, um...

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A, um, lot of damage in the head.

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I notice that there's
a very wide white fill,

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quite recent, that is covering a crack.

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This crack that runs through the panel

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is actually from a knot

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that's low down in the center.

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Next day, dianne calls me.

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"Bob, I've cleaned the picture.

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And you have to come over and see it."

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I'm faced with two things.

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One is a picture that I see
is severely damaged,

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but all of the very amateurish,

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brownish, reddish paint that was
an attempt to create a beard is gone.

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So I knew that it really
needed conservation treatment

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at the very highest level.

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Mario dies in January.

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And I began to work on the salvator mundi
in my studio.

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Alone.

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I would...

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Carry on a conversation
with Mario the entire time.

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I didn't talk to him out loud.

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Except maybe once or twice.

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But I would just have
this dialogue with him in my head.

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I could hear him say,
"he looks like he has a toothache."

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And I would do it over again.

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Or he would say, "nose is crooked."

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Mario's face
and the salvator mundi's face, you know,

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they kind of shift back and forth
in my mind.

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One evening, I am wrestling
for the tenth time

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with retouching a small loss,

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which is just above the lip, right here.

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And there is a transition in this area

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from the lip to the upper lip,

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um, that is imperceptible.

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There is no line there,
for the edge of the lip

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is exactly what is present

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in the same area of the Mona Lisa.

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My hands are shaking.

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No one except Leonardo
could have painted this picture.

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I leave the building
and call Robert and say,

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"the painting is by Leonardo."

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I think at that point...

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"What can we do?
What is there to do with this picture?"

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There are only,
by most people's count,

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about 15 leonardos known.

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And to say,
"I have found a picture like this,"

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is, in our circles, akin to saying,

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"I had a spaceship on my lawn last night
and I saw some unicorns."

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It's just so far-fetched.

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Don't even try to convince yourself
that it's right,

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because you're just gonna
look like a fool.

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"The most famous artist
of the high renaissance."

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Those paintings are heavily documented.

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And, all of a sudden, we have this one.

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It disappears for hundreds of years.

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And then it turns up in america?

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In New Orleans?

159
00:14:27,575 --> 00:14:30,411
Oh! I see.

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00:14:31,829 --> 00:14:35,833
Here's the lost Leonardo that somebody
once mentioned in a book.

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00:14:38,086 --> 00:14:40,088
When you go back to old masters,

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the provenance is very important

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because that line of ownership
tells its story.

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Where did this object come from,
and in what context

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00:14:49,972 --> 00:14:52,975
did it land in the moment
it's in right now?

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00:14:54,143 --> 00:14:58,940
So, you know, Robert spent
a lot of time going through archives

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and starting to piece together
a provenance,

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because any picture, if it doesn't
have a provenance, there's doubt.

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00:15:06,823 --> 00:15:10,952
There's reasons for people
not to believe what it is.

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I was able to trace the
painting's whereabouts to the year 1900,

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when it was sold at a London auction
as attributed to luini.

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00:15:22,046 --> 00:15:24,465
But then the trail went cold.

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00:15:26,467 --> 00:15:30,138
I looked through old British inventories
from the 17th century

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00:15:30,805 --> 00:15:35,184
and I found two possible citations
in the collection of Charles I.

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00:15:35,726 --> 00:15:40,857
And my colleague Margaret dalivalle
found one in the collection of Charles ii.

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Our painting does not have
the royal brand on its reverse,

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as the panel has been
thinned and rebacked.

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It seems possible, but not provable,
that this is the same painting.

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00:15:54,454 --> 00:15:57,582
But still today, we don't know exactly
which one it might be.

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Particularly in the old masters' space,

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opinions matter more
than facts at any one time.

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00:16:09,760 --> 00:16:12,597
And you always start
with the two or three

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00:16:12,680 --> 00:16:16,058
who are most willing
to potentially listen to you

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that this could be
by the hand of the master.

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00:16:19,854 --> 00:16:21,564
When you're a museum curator,

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you quite often get sent images
by e-mail,

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00:16:25,943 --> 00:16:28,321
transparencies, whatever they might be,

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00:16:28,404 --> 00:16:33,701
of pictures that people hope might be
lost or forgotten masterpieces.

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00:16:33,784 --> 00:16:36,746
And I have to say that for the most part,

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they are, to put it politely,
somewhat disappointing.

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00:16:40,416 --> 00:16:46,923
So when I was sent a transparency
of the salvator mundi,

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I was, [have to say, somewhat skeptical
about what one would see.

193
00:16:54,138 --> 00:16:56,224
And I looked at it and I thought,

194
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"gosh, this feels powerful."

195
00:17:01,479 --> 00:17:06,192
And I felt it needed
to be seen in the flesh.

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00:17:07,276 --> 00:17:11,864
So he suggested that he would invite

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00:17:11,948 --> 00:17:16,077
the leading scholars on Leonardo
to see the painting

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in kind of the neutral territory

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00:17:19,455 --> 00:17:22,500
of the painting conservation lab
at the national gallery.

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00:17:23,084 --> 00:17:29,549
What I was hoping to do in gathering
the scholars at the national gallery

201
00:17:29,632 --> 00:17:33,219
was to look carefully at the picture

202
00:17:33,302 --> 00:17:36,138
and how it spoke to that group of people.

203
00:17:39,308 --> 00:17:40,434
I'm Martin kemp,

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00:17:40,518 --> 00:17:43,980
emeritus professor of the history of art,
University of Oxford.

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00:17:46,524 --> 00:17:50,236
The salvator mundi came out of the blue
literally as a surprise,

206
00:17:50,319 --> 00:17:54,490
because there's been no authentic
Leonardo painting for over 100 years.

207
00:17:54,574 --> 00:17:59,036
So you don't sit there waiting
for one to come along.

208
00:18:00,413 --> 00:18:05,585
We knew that Leonardo had been involved
with the subject of the salvator mundi.

209
00:18:05,668 --> 00:18:07,878
We also have two drawings at windsor,

210
00:18:07,962 --> 00:18:10,756
very beautiful red chalk drawings
for draperies,

211
00:18:10,840 --> 00:18:12,925
one for the chest
with the gathered drapery,

212
00:18:13,009 --> 00:18:15,761
and the other for the arm and sleeve.

213
00:18:15,845 --> 00:18:18,556
So we know he was involved
in planning that.

214
00:18:22,184 --> 00:18:26,188
There are quite a lot of copies.
I think we're now up to plus 20.

215
00:18:29,692 --> 00:18:33,029
But I thought that if Leonardo
had painted an original,

216
00:18:33,112 --> 00:18:35,781
the chance of it turning up
was very small.

217
00:18:37,116 --> 00:18:39,327
A Leonardo
can be several different things.

218
00:18:39,410 --> 00:18:42,663
There's works that are fully accepted
from the hand of the master,

219
00:18:42,747 --> 00:18:45,750
and you will see them labeled by Leonardo.

220
00:18:48,461 --> 00:18:51,005
But there are also workshop of Leonardo.

221
00:18:52,131 --> 00:18:55,217
He was guiding perhaps
a student on the work,

222
00:18:55,301 --> 00:18:57,845
but there's not firm agreement
that the entire work

223
00:18:57,928 --> 00:18:59,889
is from the hand of the author.

224
00:19:02,141 --> 00:19:04,310
You have circle of Leonardo 's,

225
00:19:04,393 --> 00:19:08,522
followers that did work
in their style and in their manner.

226
00:19:09,190 --> 00:19:12,610
And then finally,
follower of Leonardo,

227
00:19:12,693 --> 00:19:15,738
who is doing his picture
in the artist's style.

228
00:19:18,949 --> 00:19:23,037
If this picture was the follower
of a follower of Da Vinci,

229
00:19:23,120 --> 00:19:28,417
it would be worth
what Mr. Simon paid for it, $1100.

230
00:19:28,501 --> 00:19:31,754
If it was a student of,

231
00:19:32,254 --> 00:19:36,884
say he was working under Da Vinci
at the time, like boltraffio was,

232
00:19:36,967 --> 00:19:40,930
it would be exponentially
more valuable than that.

233
00:19:41,013 --> 00:19:43,683
And if it was by the hand of the master,

234
00:19:43,766 --> 00:19:46,394
then it would be, not exponentially,

235
00:19:46,477 --> 00:19:50,231
but exponentially
upon exponentially more valuable.

236
00:19:50,314 --> 00:19:52,733
Uh, the curve is rather absurd.

237
00:19:54,527 --> 00:19:59,198
We had already begun
to plan the Leonardo exhibition,

238
00:19:59,281 --> 00:20:02,576
which had some major loans
already agreed.

239
00:20:05,621 --> 00:20:07,915
The issue was how
to take this picture to London.

240
00:20:07,998 --> 00:20:12,128
It was unframed
and a special box was built for it,

241
00:20:12,211 --> 00:20:15,798
and it was small enough
so that it could be hand-carried

242
00:20:15,881 --> 00:20:18,843
and go through the X-ray machine.

243
00:20:31,814 --> 00:20:34,358
The next day,
I go to the national gallery,

244
00:20:34,442 --> 00:20:40,156
where it awaits the arrival
of the invited scholars.

245
00:20:41,615 --> 00:20:46,412
You're dealing with the ego
and dreams of academics.

246
00:20:46,495 --> 00:20:50,207
Every academic wants to make a discovery.

247
00:20:51,459 --> 00:20:57,798
I'm trying, when I'm going to London,
not to set up expectations.

248
00:20:57,882 --> 00:20:59,425
Expectations are dangerous

249
00:20:59,508 --> 00:21:01,844
because you end up
seeing what you want to see.

250
00:21:05,556 --> 00:21:08,017
I decided to play it as cool as I could,

251
00:21:08,100 --> 00:21:13,522
and looked at it,
and clearly, it's got a presence.

252
00:21:13,606 --> 00:21:15,983
Leonardos have a strange presence.

253
00:21:16,066 --> 00:21:19,904
They are very assertive,
but at the same time very ambiguous.

254
00:21:20,988 --> 00:21:23,616
And Leonardo does that.
Other people can't.

255
00:21:27,411 --> 00:21:29,205
I'm Maria Teresa fiorio.

256
00:21:29,288 --> 00:21:34,168
I worked in the museums
of the city of Milano.

257
00:22:13,833 --> 00:22:16,293
I always have a magnifying glass with me,

258
00:22:16,377 --> 00:22:17,837
which may seem pretentious,

259
00:22:17,920 --> 00:22:21,090
but it actually serves me well
in these circumstances.

260
00:22:21,173 --> 00:22:24,885
It means I can shut up
and just get on with looking at something,

261
00:22:24,969 --> 00:22:29,598
rather than having to ramble on about it.

262
00:22:29,682 --> 00:22:32,852
So there's an amazing moment.

263
00:22:40,150 --> 00:22:44,405
I didn't really get any answer,
I didn't get any direct answer from them.

264
00:22:44,488 --> 00:22:48,284
They were... I also knew not to insist.

265
00:22:49,034 --> 00:22:51,662
So did you get to talk
to all of the scholars

266
00:22:51,745 --> 00:22:55,207
and did you ask them directly,
"is it Leonardo?"

267
00:22:55,958 --> 00:23:00,880
I sometimes think that it's better
to hear opinions over...

268
00:23:01,505 --> 00:23:03,215
The course of a conversation.

269
00:23:03,299 --> 00:23:06,802
So there was certainly
no moment where we voted,

270
00:23:06,886 --> 00:23:10,848
or where I put this question
to people directly.

271
00:23:10,931 --> 00:23:14,560
It was much more a kind of sense
of what their response was.

272
00:23:16,145 --> 00:23:19,857
To me at least, the response
in the room felt very positive.

273
00:23:19,940 --> 00:23:24,945
It felt as if there'd been...
That discovery was confirmed in a way,

274
00:23:25,029 --> 00:23:31,285
and that this group of scholars, um,
was as excited as I had been.

275
00:23:31,368 --> 00:23:36,248
Nobody asked me
a formal opinion about this painting.

276
00:23:36,332 --> 00:23:42,212
It was just... I shouldn't say a chat,
but something like that.

277
00:23:42,838 --> 00:23:45,758
So the scholars were just brought in
for an afternoon to look at it?

278
00:23:45,841 --> 00:23:46,841
Brought in, yes.

279
00:23:46,884 --> 00:23:48,844
They looked at it and said,
"looks good to me"?

280
00:23:48,928 --> 00:23:53,349
Well, they were open
to the fact that it was a Da Vinci.

281
00:23:54,642 --> 00:23:57,811
They named the scholars and said,
"these people authenticated the painting"?

282
00:23:57,895 --> 00:24:00,481
- Yes.
- Oh, god.

283
00:24:04,401 --> 00:24:06,862
There is a suspicious aspect to it,

284
00:24:06,946 --> 00:24:11,075
in that the provenance
of the painting is very murky.

285
00:24:11,158 --> 00:24:13,786
It's ghostlike, from where it came from.

286
00:24:13,869 --> 00:24:15,537
So there's a question there.

287
00:24:18,958 --> 00:24:21,168
Maybe it was a week
or week and a half later,

288
00:24:21,251 --> 00:24:24,964
the national gallery called me
to tell me that basically

289
00:24:25,047 --> 00:24:29,802
everyone had agreed
that the picture was indeed by Leonardo.

290
00:24:35,182 --> 00:24:38,560
This was the moment we had to say,

291
00:24:38,644 --> 00:24:41,855
not only to each other, but to ourselves,

292
00:24:42,648 --> 00:24:45,859
"this is real. This really is real.

293
00:24:46,485 --> 00:24:51,907
This is a Da Vinci
and we're currently the owners of it."

294
00:24:55,703 --> 00:24:59,331
How long would you queue
to see an exhibition?

295
00:25:00,457 --> 00:25:03,877
These Da Vinci fans
stood in the cold for hours.

296
00:25:05,087 --> 00:25:08,132
It's like watching your child
go out into the world

297
00:25:08,215 --> 00:25:11,218
and just hoping that they don't fall down,
scrape their knee,

298
00:25:11,301 --> 00:25:13,012
that nobody hurts their feelings.

299
00:25:13,095 --> 00:25:17,266
This is Leonardo's
rediscovered salvator mundi

300
00:25:17,349 --> 00:25:21,520
that has astonishingly turned up
in the United States of America.

301
00:25:22,980 --> 00:25:27,151
It sort of seduces your soul.
It's calming just to be near it.

302
00:25:27,234 --> 00:25:31,488
Finding a Leonardo is not something
that you can do every day.

303
00:25:36,452 --> 00:25:39,121
So they presented it as a Leonardo.

304
00:25:39,204 --> 00:25:40,456
As Leonardo. Yes.

305
00:25:40,539 --> 00:25:43,625
Okay, so that was their own decision.

306
00:25:43,709 --> 00:25:45,753
- Yes.
- Okay, so...

307
00:25:45,836 --> 00:25:50,424
We found it as a Leonardo
in the exhibition.

308
00:25:51,341 --> 00:25:56,388
Before the exhibition,
the national gallery makes a press release

309
00:25:56,472 --> 00:26:01,101
where it's described as a sort of test,
but when the exhibition opens,

310
00:26:01,185 --> 00:26:05,064
the painting is labeled
as a full-autographed Leonardo.

311
00:26:05,147 --> 00:26:06,648
Why this difference?

312
00:26:07,691 --> 00:26:10,819
So putting "attributed to,"

313
00:26:10,903 --> 00:26:15,240
or "ascribed to,"
or "possibly by, " or one of these phrases,

314
00:26:15,324 --> 00:26:18,702
would, I think,
have been to distort my own view,

315
00:26:18,786 --> 00:26:21,371
and, um, to really,

316
00:26:21,455 --> 00:26:24,792
in a way, confuse the issue still further

317
00:26:24,875 --> 00:26:30,547
that this was the lost picture
by Leonardo of the salvator mundi.

318
00:26:31,840 --> 00:26:34,218
I felt the national gallery
was in a good place

319
00:26:34,301 --> 00:26:36,512
to put this picture on view,

320
00:26:36,595 --> 00:26:39,681
and I have to say, had I felt
anything differently at that point,

321
00:26:39,765 --> 00:26:41,642
we would have made
a very different decision.

322
00:26:45,854 --> 00:26:48,982
My name is frank zdllner.
I'm working on renaissance art,

323
00:26:49,066 --> 00:26:51,485
Leonardo da Vinci, Michelangelo.

324
00:26:52,528 --> 00:26:55,656
I saw the salvator
in the exhibition in London,

325
00:26:55,739 --> 00:26:58,992
and my first impression basically said,

326
00:26:59,076 --> 00:27:01,537
"okay, this is an interesting painting,

327
00:27:01,620 --> 00:27:05,332
uh, but there's something very strange."

328
00:27:06,166 --> 00:27:09,169
For example, the curls
are sort of very schematic

329
00:27:09,253 --> 00:27:15,217
and the blessing hand, the flesh tones,
looks like a pupil to me.

330
00:27:15,300 --> 00:27:20,097
And then you have this overall aura,
the overall light.

331
00:27:21,306 --> 00:27:24,810
It's something which is very, very good.

332
00:27:24,893 --> 00:27:28,981
But this is exactly the part
which has been restored.

333
00:27:29,064 --> 00:27:31,567
So this is a quite paradoxical situation.

334
00:27:31,650 --> 00:27:35,028
You have the old parts
of the painting which are original.

335
00:27:35,112 --> 00:27:36,613
These are by pupils.

336
00:27:36,697 --> 00:27:40,075
And you have the new part of the painting,
which look like Leonardo,

337
00:27:40,159 --> 00:27:42,035
but they are by the restorer.

338
00:27:43,745 --> 00:27:48,417
In some part, it's a masterpiece
by dianne modestini.

339
00:27:48,500 --> 00:27:52,796
But that's ridiculous,
because I can't paint like Leonardo.

340
00:27:54,423 --> 00:27:56,717
I mean, it's very flattering,
but it's absurd.

341
00:27:56,800 --> 00:28:00,637
I think she has done a great job on it
as a painter.

342
00:28:00,721 --> 00:28:04,766
But one can ask
if she maybe has overdone it a bit.

343
00:28:04,850 --> 00:28:09,062
I think it's more leonardesque
than Leonardo had done it.

344
00:28:15,194 --> 00:28:17,154
Well, to me, the work is not by Leonardo

345
00:28:17,196 --> 00:28:20,490
because I don't recognize his technique.

346
00:28:20,574 --> 00:28:23,577
What struck me first was the hand.

347
00:28:23,660 --> 00:28:28,123
Because the lifted fingers
were absolutely wrong

348
00:28:28,207 --> 00:28:31,043
because, notably this one,

349
00:28:31,126 --> 00:28:36,173
because it seems to rotate over itself,
which, of course, is impossible.

350
00:28:37,466 --> 00:28:41,678
He studied human anatomy extensively.

351
00:28:43,305 --> 00:28:45,098
Imagining that...

352
00:28:46,308 --> 00:28:49,728
Such a work led him
to paint wrong hands...

353
00:28:50,604 --> 00:28:53,815
Can't be thought about. It's unthinkable.

354
00:28:56,985 --> 00:29:00,781
We need a little distance
to judge this painting.

355
00:29:00,864 --> 00:29:06,370
Attribution issues are not decided
in one or in ten years.

356
00:29:06,453 --> 00:29:10,207
They are decided in ten,
in 20, in 30 years.

357
00:29:10,290 --> 00:29:15,921
And it may turn out
that in 50 years' time, people say,

358
00:29:16,004 --> 00:29:18,340
"okay, how could these idiots

359
00:29:18,423 --> 00:29:23,512
at the early 21st century
see this as a Leonardo painting?"

360
00:29:28,016 --> 00:29:31,270
There's been a lot of noise and so on.

361
00:29:31,353 --> 00:29:33,897
How has it been for you
to be through that?

362
00:29:35,065 --> 00:29:36,149
Fine.

363
00:29:40,654 --> 00:29:46,493
What do you feel is at stake
for you, personally, in this case?

364
00:29:46,576 --> 00:29:48,370
- Nothing.
- No?

365
00:29:49,413 --> 00:29:51,039
You're not gonna get anywhere. Sorry.

366
00:29:51,123 --> 00:29:52,123
Okay.

367
00:30:08,432 --> 00:30:10,267
You could say I'm a maximalist.

368
00:30:10,976 --> 00:30:15,564
There's not much wall space left,
but there's always somewhere else.

369
00:30:15,647 --> 00:30:17,482
I haven't used the ceiling yet.

370
00:30:18,483 --> 00:30:21,153
Everyone in this country now,
and I guess the world,

371
00:30:21,236 --> 00:30:24,072
talks about fake news,
and all lies and politics,

372
00:30:24,156 --> 00:30:27,367
and all of the hypocrisy that you see.

373
00:30:27,451 --> 00:30:32,331
But the thing is, what scares people
the most, in my business, is the truth.

374
00:30:33,540 --> 00:30:36,752
What's the reason that the national museum
would show this painting?

375
00:30:36,835 --> 00:30:40,881
Simple. Unfortunately,
it's to boost the visitors.

376
00:30:40,964 --> 00:30:42,966
They have no right to exhibit a painting

377
00:30:43,050 --> 00:30:46,928
that hasn't been 150% scrutinized

378
00:30:47,012 --> 00:30:52,184
and, uh, vefled
that it is what it purports to be.

379
00:30:52,267 --> 00:30:54,186
And in this case,
that painting was nowhere

380
00:30:54,269 --> 00:30:56,938
near that stage of authentication

381
00:30:57,022 --> 00:30:59,733
where it would be warranted
to be exhibited

382
00:30:59,816 --> 00:31:02,361
in such a tremendously reputable

383
00:31:02,444 --> 00:31:04,696
and influential museum.
It's just not right.

384
00:31:06,990 --> 00:31:09,159
I mean, whenever
there's a lot of money involved,

385
00:31:09,242 --> 00:31:10,869
the world becomes a bunch of worms

386
00:31:10,952 --> 00:31:13,080
intertwined when you pick up a rock.

387
00:31:13,163 --> 00:31:16,416
There was no doubt in anyone's mind
where this painting

388
00:31:16,500 --> 00:31:19,461
was ultimately going to end up,
which was for sale.

389
00:31:26,802 --> 00:31:30,430
I'm Warren adelson,
and I've been an art dealer

390
00:31:30,514 --> 00:31:32,432
for most of my adult life.

391
00:31:32,516 --> 00:31:36,311
My first encounter
was at a lunch with Bob Simon,

392
00:31:36,395 --> 00:31:39,856
and he was grinning and he was grinning.

393
00:31:39,940 --> 00:31:43,026
And I said, "what's with you?
What's going on with you?"

394
00:31:43,110 --> 00:31:45,362
He said, "I've got to tell you,
nobody knows this,

395
00:31:45,445 --> 00:31:49,741
but we just had this picture by Leonardo

396
00:31:49,825 --> 00:31:53,954
in London at the national gallery,
and it's been authenticated."

397
00:31:54,496 --> 00:31:57,541
And I said,
"wow, can I see an image of it?"

398
00:31:58,083 --> 00:32:01,086
And he showed me a photograph of it.

399
00:32:01,169 --> 00:32:03,088
And I thought it was incredible.

400
00:32:03,171 --> 00:32:06,591
I said, "you know, maybe
there's some role for me here.

401
00:32:06,675 --> 00:32:11,388
[Have a history, as you know,
of selling expensive pictures."

402
00:32:12,013 --> 00:32:14,724
80 Warren became our third partner.

403
00:32:17,519 --> 00:32:19,646
When you had to figure out the price,

404
00:32:19,729 --> 00:32:20,981
how did you come about that?

405
00:32:21,064 --> 00:32:23,733
I came up...
Certainly, we came up with an idea

406
00:32:23,817 --> 00:32:26,528
that it was worth in excess
of $200 million.

407
00:32:27,737 --> 00:32:31,241
You know, the desire was not
to put it on the market, essentially.

408
00:32:31,324 --> 00:32:36,496
The desire was for it
to be, um, acquired by a museum.

409
00:32:38,874 --> 00:32:44,504
I made an attempt
to sell the painting to museums.

410
00:32:44,588 --> 00:32:47,924
I'm from Boston.
I went to the Boston museum.

411
00:32:48,008 --> 00:32:50,886
I was close to the Houston museum

412
00:32:50,969 --> 00:32:53,263
through my great friend Meredith long.

413
00:32:53,346 --> 00:32:55,307
I tried the Dallas museum

414
00:32:55,390 --> 00:32:57,559
and the painting was there for nine months

415
00:32:57,642 --> 00:33:00,020
and they tried to raise the money.

416
00:33:00,103 --> 00:33:01,980
So why didn't they buy it?

417
00:33:02,522 --> 00:33:06,359
Um, it was completely an issue of, uh...

418
00:33:06,443 --> 00:33:09,654
Inability to raise the sufficient funds
to acquire it.

419
00:33:19,915 --> 00:33:22,626
My name is bernd lindemann.

420
00:33:22,709 --> 00:33:26,630
I was the director
of the geméildegalerie here in Berlin.

421
00:33:27,672 --> 00:33:31,676
One day I got a telephone call.
It was a dealer,

422
00:33:31,760 --> 00:33:35,722
and he said he has something
which could be interesting

423
00:33:35,805 --> 00:33:38,517
for the gemaldegalerie.
Well, and that was the painting.

424
00:33:45,357 --> 00:33:48,527
Most of the painting is a remake,

425
00:33:48,610 --> 00:33:51,530
and this was, for me, the argument to say,

426
00:33:51,613 --> 00:33:55,492
"no, this is not a painting
for the gemaldegalerie."

427
00:33:57,244 --> 00:33:59,913
I was surprised to see the painting

428
00:33:59,996 --> 00:34:03,583
in the exhibition
at the national gallery in London.

429
00:34:03,667 --> 00:34:05,585
It is a problematic painting,

430
00:34:05,669 --> 00:34:10,674
and I think it's not the role
of serious museums

431
00:34:11,299 --> 00:34:16,137
to present a painting
which is so heavily discussed.

432
00:34:19,724 --> 00:34:23,520
It was very frustrating.
It was a very frustrating thing.

433
00:34:23,603 --> 00:34:27,274
I felt I had the rarest painting
in the world

434
00:34:28,024 --> 00:34:30,652
by the greatest artist in the world,

435
00:34:30,735 --> 00:34:32,195
and I couldn't sell it.

436
00:34:36,449 --> 00:34:40,161
There were so many issues
that are like red flags popping up.

437
00:34:42,163 --> 00:34:43,665
Da Vinci paints on wood.

438
00:34:43,748 --> 00:34:46,918
When he's making these paintings,
he's such a perfectionist.

439
00:34:47,002 --> 00:34:50,046
He's not gonna paint it
on a piece of shit wood

440
00:34:50,130 --> 00:34:51,756
with a big knot right in the middle,

441
00:34:51,840 --> 00:34:55,343
which inherently
makes the painting unstable.

442
00:34:55,427 --> 00:34:57,429
It's just not the way he operates.

443
00:34:58,096 --> 00:35:01,057
I mean, the joke circulating
around the contemporary art world

444
00:35:01,141 --> 00:35:04,019
was that the painting was a contemporary
painting because 90% of it

445
00:35:04,102 --> 00:35:08,481
was painted within the last ten years,
during the restoration process.

446
00:35:16,573 --> 00:35:20,785
Mario and I had a house southeast
of Florence that we restored together.

447
00:35:20,869 --> 00:35:22,495
It's bittersweet

448
00:35:22,579 --> 00:35:24,247
because there are
so many memories there

449
00:35:24,331 --> 00:35:25,707
and so many ties.

450
00:35:30,795 --> 00:35:36,009
Mario used to like to use these little,
you know, small boards to paint on.

451
00:35:36,092 --> 00:35:40,013
Oh, that's one of his.
That's a little picture that he painted.

452
00:35:41,306 --> 00:35:44,434
I think that's Mario.
Maybe it's me. I'm not sure.

453
00:35:44,517 --> 00:35:45,393
Well, yeah.

454
00:35:45,477 --> 00:35:47,854
I had never really painted when I met him.

455
00:35:47,937 --> 00:35:49,898
So he was, um...

456
00:35:50,607 --> 00:35:52,859
Yeah, so he began teaching me to draw,

457
00:35:52,942 --> 00:35:54,653
and to paint, and to draw from these...

458
00:35:58,615 --> 00:36:01,284
I know there are rumors
that I was part owner of the picture,

459
00:36:01,368 --> 00:36:03,119
but that's completely untrue.

460
00:36:03,662 --> 00:36:07,290
People may think that
because my husband was...

461
00:36:07,374 --> 00:36:11,086
He absolutely did own shares
in pictures all the time,

462
00:36:11,169 --> 00:36:13,421
because Mario was also a dealer.

463
00:36:17,258 --> 00:36:18,843
He worked with the best dealers.

464
00:36:18,927 --> 00:36:20,720
That's why I have money,
pictures, things.

465
00:36:20,804 --> 00:36:24,265
No, Mario bought pictures
and shares with dealers,

466
00:36:24,349 --> 00:36:26,559
but he was such a great connoisseur,

467
00:36:26,643 --> 00:36:30,355
apart from being a restorer,
that he was so valuable to them,

468
00:36:30,438 --> 00:36:32,607
but it was with the top of the top.

469
00:36:36,403 --> 00:36:37,737
But I'm not a dealer.

470
00:36:38,530 --> 00:36:42,367
Art dealers, the whole art world
is very tricky and, you know...

471
00:36:43,410 --> 00:36:44,661
You know? And it's, um...

472
00:36:45,745 --> 00:36:47,038
And I'm not...

473
00:36:47,122 --> 00:36:51,418
I'm not that kind of tricky person.
So I don't...

474
00:36:51,501 --> 00:36:54,671
I would never get into that. Never.

475
00:36:55,255 --> 00:36:58,133
And I certainly didn't have anything
to do with this. Uh...

476
00:37:00,135 --> 00:37:03,680
And why do you say
it was more than just a restoration?

477
00:37:03,763 --> 00:37:06,725
I was also involved with the whole process

478
00:37:06,808 --> 00:37:08,476
of attributing the painting

479
00:37:08,560 --> 00:37:10,687
and being a spokesman for the picture,

480
00:37:10,770 --> 00:37:13,064
which I did
because I absolutely believe in it.

481
00:37:15,442 --> 00:37:17,110
I said to Robert one day,

482
00:37:17,193 --> 00:37:20,822
"I don't know how to charge you for this.
It's more than just a restoration."

483
00:37:20,905 --> 00:37:22,532
He said, "when we sell it,"

484
00:37:22,615 --> 00:37:24,367
he said, you know...

485
00:37:25,160 --> 00:37:28,496
"I'll give you what, you know,
I believe you deserve."

486
00:37:30,373 --> 00:37:33,877
Hm.
So it was not like a fixed percentage?

487
00:37:33,960 --> 00:37:35,170
It was never fixed.

488
00:37:35,837 --> 00:37:39,132
He paid me generously, but yeah.

489
00:37:46,973 --> 00:37:51,519
Geneva, historically,
is a place you go to disappear.

490
00:37:53,021 --> 00:37:57,734
This is a place where nations
negotiate peace treaties.

491
00:37:57,817 --> 00:38:01,696
This is a place where diplomats
and intelligence agents go

492
00:38:01,780 --> 00:38:03,573
to have a neutral territory.

493
00:38:03,656 --> 00:38:05,116
And this is also a place

494
00:38:05,200 --> 00:38:09,287
where businessmen
are able to run sensitive operations

495
00:38:09,370 --> 00:38:13,666
in a very low-voltage, safe environment.

496
00:38:15,627 --> 00:38:19,881
So the painting is sold to yves bouvier.

497
00:38:50,203 --> 00:38:53,665
There are many versions
of yves bouvier.

498
00:38:54,374 --> 00:38:58,795
And the more I have gotten to know him,

499
00:38:58,878 --> 00:39:00,755
the less I think I know him.

500
00:39:03,800 --> 00:39:07,470
The bouvier affair was a bit
the elephant in the room

501
00:39:07,554 --> 00:39:09,931
for investigative journalists
in Switzerland.

502
00:39:10,014 --> 00:39:17,021
And we were able to get access
to a lot of court documents,

503
00:39:17,105 --> 00:39:22,402
and that enabled us to build a narrative,

504
00:39:22,485 --> 00:39:26,948
a storyline that was as close
to the truth as we could have.

505
00:39:34,372 --> 00:39:38,668
Yves bouvier is a quiet guy

506
00:39:38,751 --> 00:39:40,753
who, I think, at the time,

507
00:39:40,837 --> 00:39:43,756
you probably would not have said
is a major player

508
00:39:43,840 --> 00:39:47,760
in the art world, um,
but he played a major role.

509
00:39:49,137 --> 00:39:52,557
He meets a Russian transplant

510
00:39:52,640 --> 00:39:56,811
who really exiles himself in Geneva,

511
00:39:56,895 --> 00:39:59,939
Mr. Dmitry rybolovlev.

512
00:41:40,248 --> 00:41:44,085
We were contacted, uh, by sotheby's...

513
00:41:45,586 --> 00:41:48,172
About a client they had.

514
00:43:17,720 --> 00:43:20,765
Part of the agreement in the sale

515
00:43:20,848 --> 00:43:26,437
was that I'm not supposed
to talk about the trip to Paris.

516
00:43:45,414 --> 00:43:49,585
I can say that I was glad
that it was finally over.

517
00:43:50,670 --> 00:43:55,883
Uh, it was a very trying
and difficult situation.

518
00:43:56,467 --> 00:43:59,011
And I'm really glad I got back,

519
00:43:59,095 --> 00:44:03,432
and the best thing I could say
about it was that it was over.

520
00:44:03,516 --> 00:44:07,186
We were paid the next day.
And from that point of view,

521
00:44:07,270 --> 00:44:09,313
it was cleaned up.

522
00:44:09,397 --> 00:44:10,397
Cleaned up.

523
00:44:39,760 --> 00:44:43,472
Yves bouvier is trying
to convince Mike sazonov.

524
00:44:56,736 --> 00:45:00,114
What he omits to say
is that he already bought it.

525
00:46:10,434 --> 00:46:16,399
That was the
whole negotiation, and all of it is fake.

526
00:46:32,248 --> 00:46:36,544
Bouvier has made this
really quite extraordinary markup

527
00:46:36,627 --> 00:46:40,423
of $47.5 million on a transaction

528
00:46:40,506 --> 00:46:42,216
that took him less than two days.

529
00:46:43,426 --> 00:46:47,722
It's extraordinary and quite frankly,
pretty unheard of in the art world.

530
00:46:52,476 --> 00:46:54,103
New part of the free port.

531
00:47:05,698 --> 00:47:09,994
Yves bouvier inherited a shipping business
from his father.

532
00:47:11,662 --> 00:47:15,541
But yves bouvier realized
that there was increasing demand

533
00:47:15,624 --> 00:47:18,961
for places to store high-value goods.

534
00:47:20,921 --> 00:47:26,385
So he expanded his business
by creating armored warehouses

535
00:47:26,469 --> 00:47:29,680
generally within the perimeter
of an airport,

536
00:47:29,764 --> 00:47:31,682
and these are free ports.

537
00:47:32,558 --> 00:47:35,269
The Geneva freeport is supposed to hold

538
00:47:35,353 --> 00:47:39,357
literally billions
of dollars' worth of art.

539
00:47:41,275 --> 00:47:42,943
My name is Doug patteson.

540
00:47:43,027 --> 00:47:46,113
A former clandestine service officer
with the CIA.

541
00:47:46,906 --> 00:47:51,744
The history of the salvator mundi
and how it's grown in value

542
00:47:51,827 --> 00:47:57,541
is opening eyes to how money
can be moving in different ways

543
00:47:58,209 --> 00:47:59,502
through the free port system.

544
00:48:01,504 --> 00:48:05,549
A free port is a tax-free haven...

545
00:48:06,550 --> 00:48:11,764
Where very wealthy people will often
keep items secret from tax authorities.

546
00:48:15,851 --> 00:48:19,522
So objects can be bought
and sold within a free port,

547
00:48:20,106 --> 00:48:25,277
but no taxes apply because the objects
are considered still in transit.

548
00:48:44,547 --> 00:48:47,508
One of the things
that we've really observed recently

549
00:48:47,591 --> 00:48:53,305
is that paintings are increasingly used
as collateral for loans, bank loans.

550
00:48:54,807 --> 00:48:58,310
A whole infrastructure
has sprung up around this

551
00:48:58,394 --> 00:49:00,396
that allows you, the collector,

552
00:49:00,479 --> 00:49:03,065
who've put millions of dollars
in your art,

553
00:49:03,149 --> 00:49:06,902
you can keep your art
within the free port facility,

554
00:49:06,986 --> 00:49:12,116
get the capital you have invested
in the art out of there and redeploy.

555
00:49:13,492 --> 00:49:16,996
It's not about art and love.
It's about money.

556
00:49:17,079 --> 00:49:18,914
It's about transferring funds.

557
00:49:24,378 --> 00:49:29,550
There's one thing that you cannot remove
from the human beings,

558
00:49:29,633 --> 00:49:31,177
is the greed.

559
00:49:33,220 --> 00:49:38,642
If you sit on valuable goods
and you don't trust your own country,

560
00:49:38,726 --> 00:49:41,187
because, you know,
the fiscal guys are on your back...

561
00:49:42,188 --> 00:49:48,277
Why not store it in the free port
and store it in a so-called whatever safe?

562
00:49:49,570 --> 00:49:52,781
That gorilla is a big smoker.

563
00:49:52,865 --> 00:49:53,991
Interesting guy.

564
00:49:57,953 --> 00:50:02,666
If taxes were reasonable,
people would not have to play that game.

565
00:50:05,961 --> 00:50:09,757
You know, there is this saying
that after drugs and prostitution,

566
00:50:09,840 --> 00:50:13,761
that the art market is the most
unregulated market in the world.

567
00:50:13,844 --> 00:50:19,141
A very opaque world in which you very
often don't know who owns something,

568
00:50:19,225 --> 00:50:23,145
how much it's worth,
who's buying it or who's selling it.

569
00:50:23,229 --> 00:50:25,940
Most of the transactions
are very, very dark.

570
00:50:27,024 --> 00:50:29,318
It's another Avenue to store money.

571
00:50:29,944 --> 00:50:33,113
It's the last vestiges
of the wild wild west.

572
00:50:38,869 --> 00:50:44,291
Russia in the 19903 is the wild west.

573
00:50:44,375 --> 00:50:48,671
And this is also a time
where businessmen had an opportunity

574
00:50:48,754 --> 00:50:53,259
to become exorbitantly wealthy
by taking ownership

575
00:50:53,342 --> 00:50:58,764
in the transitioning of bureaus
that became businesses.

576
00:50:58,847 --> 00:51:03,727
So out of this comes
Mr. Dmitry rybolovlev,

577
00:51:03,811 --> 00:51:07,189
a man who becomes a billionaire
literally overnight

578
00:51:07,273 --> 00:51:12,152
when he floats this potash company
on the London stock exchange.

579
00:51:29,295 --> 00:51:34,216
What you had was someone
who needed to get money out of Russia,

580
00:51:34,300 --> 00:51:37,886
and he found someone
who was quiet, discreet,

581
00:51:37,970 --> 00:51:40,472
and who he felt
he could trust with his life.

582
00:51:57,531 --> 00:52:01,744
The Russian on the run
and the quiet Swiss man,

583
00:52:01,827 --> 00:52:07,124
they forge this alliance
around the acquisition of art.

584
00:52:21,555 --> 00:52:24,391
Yves bouvier had built a network

585
00:52:24,475 --> 00:52:27,394
allowing him to get
all kinds of information

586
00:52:27,478 --> 00:52:31,482
on who owned the paintings,
what was its real value.

587
00:52:33,359 --> 00:52:37,696
And that was priceless in order
to conduct his business.

588
00:52:39,031 --> 00:52:43,410
He was the king because
he was in possession of information

589
00:52:43,494 --> 00:52:44,787
that no one else had.

590
00:53:03,430 --> 00:53:05,110
He made a billion dollars' profit.

591
00:53:06,350 --> 00:53:07,434
That's a good dealer.

592
00:53:08,769 --> 00:53:12,272
Yeah, it's good business.

593
00:53:18,195 --> 00:53:21,657
It's safer to buy a painting
than a piece of real estate

594
00:53:21,740 --> 00:53:24,993
because a piece of real estate
you can always seize it to jump on it.

595
00:53:25,077 --> 00:53:28,664
A painting is buried somewhere
in a free port around the world.

596
00:53:28,747 --> 00:53:31,875
Nobody knows where it is.
Look at the salvator mundi.

597
00:53:37,756 --> 00:53:39,758
Right now, I don't know where it is.

598
00:53:39,842 --> 00:53:43,929
I am so anxious for it

599
00:53:44,012 --> 00:53:46,849
to finally find a home

600
00:53:46,932 --> 00:53:50,978
where people can experience
the extraordinary power of this painting.

601
00:53:52,396 --> 00:53:55,232
Art, to me, is the only truth, really.

602
00:53:56,608 --> 00:54:00,529
And it's really a way of living life,
to communicate with people.

603
00:54:01,947 --> 00:54:04,241
Art doesn't exist in a vacuum.

604
00:54:04,324 --> 00:54:07,828
If it's existing in these great
warehouses that are free ports

605
00:54:07,911 --> 00:54:10,122
as a kind of financial asset...

606
00:54:10,956 --> 00:54:16,628
It would be a shame because it's
something that could be seen by people.

607
00:54:16,712 --> 00:54:18,964
It could have an effect on people.

608
00:54:21,925 --> 00:54:24,511
The whole world is trying to...

609
00:54:24,595 --> 00:54:27,598
Is discussing,
"where the hell is that painting?"

610
00:54:27,681 --> 00:54:29,224
Nobody knows where it is.

611
00:54:31,310 --> 00:54:34,271
The buyer doesn't have to tell
where he puts his painting.

612
00:54:34,354 --> 00:54:36,607
They do whatever they want
with their money.

613
00:54:36,690 --> 00:54:37,690
Who cares?

614
00:54:38,358 --> 00:54:40,569
Only the press, the bad press,

615
00:54:41,445 --> 00:54:43,280
and the people who are curious

616
00:54:43,363 --> 00:54:46,784
are caring about something
that doesn't even concern them.

617
00:54:50,829 --> 00:54:56,960
2014 was really the beginning of the end
for bouvier and rybolovlev.

618
00:54:59,046 --> 00:55:05,761
An article was published that indicated
the price of the final sale,

619
00:55:05,844 --> 00:55:10,599
which, of course, was different
than what rybolovlev had paid.

620
00:55:33,997 --> 00:55:40,212
So once Mr. R. Found out,
he was pretty pissed off.

621
00:55:42,881 --> 00:55:45,884
And that really sparked the actions

622
00:55:45,968 --> 00:55:49,137
that were taken against bouvier
that moved quite quickly after that.

623
00:55:52,015 --> 00:55:55,227
Mr. R. Couldn't look at any
of his art collection the same.

624
00:55:55,727 --> 00:55:57,771
Every time he looked at a painting,

625
00:55:57,855 --> 00:56:00,691
if it was the greatest
masterpiece ever painted,

626
00:56:00,774 --> 00:56:05,195
all he saw was the fact
that he was abused and taken advantage of

627
00:56:05,279 --> 00:56:08,574
by Mr. Bouvier, who was now
the world's richest free port owner.

628
00:57:11,511 --> 00:57:14,890
His markup was 100%.
That's not a crime, it's greedy.

629
00:57:16,266 --> 00:57:19,353
What he was trying to do to screw bouvier

630
00:57:19,436 --> 00:57:21,271
was to destroy his reputation,

631
00:57:21,355 --> 00:57:24,399
to sue him in every courthouse
that would entertain the suit.

632
00:58:11,947 --> 00:58:14,783
He is really very angry,
like a Russian bear

633
00:58:14,866 --> 00:58:17,035
that somebody had stuck something into.

634
00:58:17,119 --> 00:58:18,620
He was furious!

635
00:58:20,622 --> 00:58:23,875
What he wanted to do
was dump all of his art

636
00:58:23,959 --> 00:58:28,255
that were great, fantastic pieces,
but he radically overpaid for them.

637
00:58:28,338 --> 00:58:32,050
So, what he was fully expecting to do
was to lose money.

638
00:58:34,219 --> 00:58:39,808
People think of auction houses
as sort of a passive repository of objects

639
00:58:39,891 --> 00:58:44,354
to sell on behalf of collectors
who decide it's time to sell.

640
00:58:44,938 --> 00:58:49,067
Most of the actual
high-end objects they sell

641
00:58:49,151 --> 00:58:51,570
don't actually come to market in that way.

642
00:58:52,487 --> 00:58:53,697
Sold.

643
00:58:54,906 --> 00:58:56,616
They are actually out there.

644
00:58:56,700 --> 00:58:59,536
Their specialists
are in the living room of collectors

645
00:58:59,619 --> 00:59:03,749
and telling them it's the right time
to sell this work...

646
00:59:03,832 --> 00:59:06,460
Seventy-one, 72...

647
00:59:06,543 --> 00:59:08,462
It's a hot market for this work,

648
00:59:08,545 --> 00:59:11,548
and they're trying to actually
pull in those objects.

649
00:59:12,215 --> 00:59:16,094
Thank you, all of you,
for one million six. To you, sir.

650
00:59:17,012 --> 00:59:21,141
If they've got the best art for sale,
they'll find the buyers.

651
00:59:21,224 --> 00:59:25,979
So the competition is at the level
of getting the consignments.

652
00:59:26,063 --> 00:59:27,981
You have it. What's your number?

653
00:59:29,066 --> 00:59:34,696
The guy at the auctioneer is always
European with a vague accent.

654
00:59:34,780 --> 00:59:37,491
"Do I have 2 million?

655
00:59:38,116 --> 00:59:42,037
Oh, John, I saw you bid 3 million before.

656
00:59:42,120 --> 00:59:44,956
Oh, wait. I say!

657
00:59:45,040 --> 00:59:47,751
We have 5 million."

658
00:59:47,834 --> 00:59:50,128
Sold.
Thank you very much indeed.

659
00:59:52,672 --> 00:59:54,132
So once rybolovlev,

660
00:59:54,216 --> 00:59:57,719
when he does start selling,
he sells them through christie's.

661
00:59:57,803 --> 01:00:00,639
And, of course,
that is where salvator mundi ends up.

662
01:00:05,644 --> 01:00:08,563
Nothing was wrong with his art,
except for the Da Vinci.

663
01:00:08,647 --> 01:00:11,942
All of the other pieces in his collection
were fantastic pieces.

664
01:00:12,025 --> 01:00:16,238
This was the one black swan in his
collection that had questions around it.

665
01:00:16,321 --> 01:00:19,324
But there is a massive
billion-dollar collection behind it

666
01:00:19,407 --> 01:00:23,078
that could be potential future business
for the auction house.

667
01:00:25,080 --> 01:00:27,958
So christie's had to keep
their client happy.

668
01:00:29,876 --> 01:00:32,045
They went all-in on this picture.

669
01:00:34,923 --> 01:00:39,386
The term "male Mona Lisa"
is used for this object.

670
01:00:39,469 --> 01:00:43,348
The Mona Lisa is insured
for over $800 million.

671
01:00:43,431 --> 01:00:48,311
So I think calling it the male Mona Lisa
makes sense as a marketer.

672
01:00:49,563 --> 01:00:53,441
On a financial front,
it helps to explain the value.

673
01:00:53,525 --> 01:00:59,322
The Mona Lisa, in the early 20th century,
was of secondary importance...

674
01:01:00,699 --> 01:01:05,495
Until 1961, when John F. Kennedy

675
01:01:05,579 --> 01:01:09,624
makes his way to the Vienna summit
and makes a stop off in Paris.

676
01:01:11,251 --> 01:01:16,882
And their culture minister, Andre' malraux,
is completely entranced by Jacqueline.

677
01:01:16,965 --> 01:01:20,302
Jackie whispers in his ear
at one of the evening events

678
01:01:20,385 --> 01:01:23,805
that, "I'd love for you to take
the Mona Lisa to the United States

679
01:01:23,889 --> 01:01:27,642
so we could show our population
this cultural masterpiece."

680
01:01:28,476 --> 01:01:31,771
Mr. Minister,
we in the United States

681
01:01:31,855 --> 01:01:33,857
are grateful for this loan...

682
01:01:35,025 --> 01:01:38,570
From the leading artistic power
in the world, France.

683
01:01:38,653 --> 01:01:41,364
And lines go down the block.

684
01:01:41,448 --> 01:01:43,742
Most of the people
that were coming to see it

685
01:01:43,825 --> 01:01:46,286
were not coming to see the painting.

686
01:01:46,369 --> 01:01:50,790
They were coming to have seen the picture,
to say they saw the celebrity.

687
01:01:52,375 --> 01:01:56,254
Christie's understood they had
to accomplish the same thing,

688
01:01:56,338 --> 01:01:58,715
where this is the male Mona Lisa,

689
01:01:58,798 --> 01:02:04,054
we need to convince the potential buyer
that you're now buying a global celebrity

690
01:02:04,137 --> 01:02:07,974
that will play into the power
and prestige of your acquisition.

691
01:02:10,769 --> 01:02:14,481
Their primary marketing video
was brilliant in a way

692
01:02:14,564 --> 01:02:17,651
because it never actually
showed the object.

693
01:02:17,734 --> 01:02:21,696
What they show instead
is a series of people

694
01:02:21,780 --> 01:02:26,034
going up to the object
and having an emotional reaction to it.

695
01:02:27,452 --> 01:02:30,497
They even had Leonardo DiCaprio.

696
01:02:33,667 --> 01:02:38,672
They realized that they needed to show
whatever collector bought this thing,

697
01:02:38,755 --> 01:02:41,424
there was a mass following

698
01:02:41,508 --> 01:02:44,970
and that people
were buying into this celebrity.

699
01:02:46,888 --> 01:02:51,268
Christie's released a ton of marketing

700
01:02:51,351 --> 01:02:53,687
that generated traffic, generated hype.

701
01:02:53,770 --> 01:02:58,441
It brought the salvator mundi
into the mind's eye

702
01:02:58,525 --> 01:03:01,486
of so many people very quickly.

703
01:03:04,864 --> 01:03:09,786
This is some kind of an homage
to an artist, the first viral artist,

704
01:03:09,869 --> 01:03:14,040
who was the first
real image maker, who's...

705
01:03:14,124 --> 01:03:17,544
You know, who would have images
that would go all around the world

706
01:03:17,627 --> 01:03:19,045
and be recognized by anyone.

707
01:03:22,048 --> 01:03:24,092
Christie's is in the business of selling.

708
01:03:24,175 --> 01:03:27,220
It's not in the business
of authenticating.

709
01:03:27,304 --> 01:03:29,556
And they did a great job

710
01:03:29,639 --> 01:03:33,184
on the back of that amazing
marketing campaign,

711
01:03:33,268 --> 01:03:37,814
which everybody,
without hesitation, gives plaudits to

712
01:03:37,897 --> 01:03:40,442
as a sort of cynical marketing exercise.

713
01:03:40,525 --> 01:03:42,652
Any serious questions
about its authenticity?

714
01:03:42,736 --> 01:03:43,987
None, really. Uh...

715
01:03:44,070 --> 01:03:46,281
It was, as I said,
almost completely overpainted.

716
01:03:46,364 --> 01:03:49,492
But once that was removed,
after its rediscovery,

717
01:03:49,576 --> 01:03:53,246
the quality of it became very evident,

718
01:03:53,330 --> 01:03:56,166
and, really, there hasn't been
any real question.

719
01:03:56,249 --> 01:03:58,126
Why is it called the male Mona Lisa?

720
01:03:58,209 --> 01:04:00,754
Well, it's painted around
the same time as Mona Lisa.

721
01:04:00,837 --> 01:04:02,672
It's painted around 1500.

722
01:04:02,756 --> 01:04:06,301
And this and the painting
of Mona Lisa probably overlap.

723
01:04:08,428 --> 01:04:12,223
The salvator mundi global tour
took on a life of its own,

724
01:04:12,307 --> 01:04:16,728
to London, to Hong Kong, where there
may be clusters of potential buyers.

725
01:04:16,811 --> 01:04:19,564
I was very opposed to them doing that.

726
01:04:19,647 --> 01:04:20,857
It was reckless...

727
01:04:21,691 --> 01:04:25,320
Uh, to send it around
the world that way. But they...

728
01:04:26,321 --> 01:04:27,906
I couldn't stop them from doing it.

729
01:04:27,989 --> 01:04:29,574
Christie's is mercenaries.

730
01:04:29,657 --> 01:04:32,786
That's a business.
You expect that behavior from them,

731
01:04:32,869 --> 01:04:35,914
and if you're a client of christie's,
you want them to do anything

732
01:04:35,997 --> 01:04:40,210
as ruthlessly as possible to get you
the greatest price for your asset.

733
01:04:42,921 --> 01:04:46,633
In the time I've been at this,
I never remember a picture

734
01:04:46,716 --> 01:04:49,135
becoming sort of a pop culture icon

735
01:04:49,219 --> 01:04:51,930
where lines were literally
around the corner.

736
01:04:52,013 --> 01:04:54,766
This was a cultural event
in its own right.

737
01:04:55,308 --> 01:04:59,646
By the time it came here to New York,
everyone wanted a piece of it.

738
01:05:02,273 --> 01:05:07,112
So christie's, their tag line
is "the last Leonardo."

739
01:05:07,612 --> 01:05:10,156
Normally, what you'd do with an old master

740
01:05:10,240 --> 01:05:12,826
is you'd talk about
the provenance, its composition.

741
01:05:12,909 --> 01:05:15,161
None of that was required here.

742
01:05:15,245 --> 01:05:18,873
They knew they were gonna be appealing
to a subset of the collector base

743
01:05:18,957 --> 01:05:21,292
that was thinking about power and legacy.

744
01:05:22,293 --> 01:05:25,505
"Hey, Mr. Billionaire,
this is your last chance to acquire

745
01:05:25,588 --> 01:05:28,341
the greatest artist
of western civilization."

746
01:05:28,425 --> 01:05:30,105
You have to know your audience,

747
01:05:30,135 --> 01:05:33,179
because it was a trophy
to end all trophies.

748
01:05:33,263 --> 01:05:39,227
It is a work...
That's very subject is power.

749
01:05:41,771 --> 01:05:44,732
The morning of the sale,
I woke up at 6 am.

750
01:05:44,816 --> 01:05:50,113
And had a car fetch me and took me
to cnbc's headquarters in midtown.

751
01:05:50,738 --> 01:05:54,242
The last privately owned Leonardo
Da Vinci painting is going to auction...

752
01:05:54,325 --> 01:05:57,662
You know, there was so much
interest from the financial world.

753
01:05:57,745 --> 01:05:59,581
What would this thing actually make?

754
01:06:00,457 --> 01:06:02,625
- Who are those bidders?
- It's a good question.

755
01:06:02,709 --> 01:06:06,296
I think the bidders are gonna be
a contemporary collector,

756
01:06:06,379 --> 01:06:10,508
a trophy hunter, a private equity
executive, a hedge fund individual,

757
01:06:10,592 --> 01:06:14,471
or a syndicate from the middle east,
Chinese wealthy.

758
01:06:14,554 --> 01:06:17,348
This is a global trophy,
and we'll see where it goes.

759
01:06:17,432 --> 01:06:21,811
I think it has a fighting chance
to make 180 million or more.

760
01:06:23,730 --> 01:06:27,442
The most expensive painting ever sold
in the history of the art world.

761
01:06:31,571 --> 01:06:33,948
Welcome to rockefeller center
here in New York.

762
01:06:34,032 --> 01:06:37,076
You had a completely packed room.

763
01:06:37,160 --> 01:06:42,040
They had to bring in extra chairs,
people were pushed to every corner,

764
01:06:42,123 --> 01:06:45,084
corralled there to try
and take in the action.

765
01:06:46,586 --> 01:06:47,946
Ladies and gentlemen,

766
01:06:48,004 --> 01:06:50,798
we move to the Leonardo da Vinci,
the salvator mundi.

767
01:06:53,384 --> 01:06:55,803
Previously in the collections
of three kings of england.

768
01:06:56,596 --> 01:06:58,765
Going over here to take 125.

769
01:06:58,848 --> 01:07:00,558
Last chance, 125 then.

770
01:07:00,642 --> 01:07:02,477
130? 130 with...

771
01:07:11,736 --> 01:07:13,571
Phones started to go up.

772
01:07:14,197 --> 01:07:16,533
At 180 million,
ladies and gentlemen.

773
01:07:18,284 --> 01:07:22,330
Because that was the most
valuable price ever achieved at auction,

774
01:07:22,413 --> 01:07:24,916
and you could hear an audible gasp

775
01:07:24,999 --> 01:07:28,336
as everyone was sort of waiting
for that final hammer to come down.

776
01:07:30,296 --> 01:07:33,424
Give me 200, 190 is bid. Who...?

777
01:07:33,508 --> 01:07:36,469
200 million is bid. At 200 million.

778
01:07:36,553 --> 01:07:38,429
There it is at 205.

779
01:07:39,472 --> 01:07:45,270
It was hard to tell how much
of the loss of composure was genuine

780
01:07:45,353 --> 01:07:48,273
and how much of it was for the crowd.

781
01:07:49,357 --> 01:07:52,777
At one point, he even has
the hammer held in the air.

782
01:07:52,860 --> 01:07:56,155
There is a certain courtesy
about how long you wait

783
01:07:56,239 --> 01:07:58,449
for someone to decide
if they're gonna make the bid.

784
01:07:58,533 --> 01:08:01,578
In the weeks leading up to the auction,

785
01:08:01,661 --> 01:08:04,289
the team at christie's are receiving calls

786
01:08:04,372 --> 01:08:06,082
from some of the world's richest people.

787
01:08:06,165 --> 01:08:08,084
At the very end of this list

788
01:08:08,167 --> 01:08:11,629
is this one bidder
that they've never heard of before.

789
01:08:11,713 --> 01:08:13,756
They needed to make sure
he was a real bidder.

790
01:08:13,840 --> 01:08:16,342
So they told him and his team,

791
01:08:16,426 --> 01:08:19,345
"listen, if you want to be
a bidder in this auction,

792
01:08:19,429 --> 01:08:22,098
you're gonna have to transfer 10%

793
01:08:22,181 --> 01:08:25,184
of what is the maximum amount
you would be willing to pay."

794
01:08:25,268 --> 01:08:27,562
The next morning,
the accounting department came over

795
01:08:27,645 --> 01:08:29,731
and said, "you won't believe this,

796
01:08:29,814 --> 01:08:33,860
but that guy just transferred $100 million
into our account overnight."

797
01:08:35,361 --> 01:08:39,741
Oftentimes, there is
a predetermined price of sorts.

798
01:08:39,824 --> 01:08:43,745
Very few people,
or sometimes only one person,

799
01:08:43,828 --> 01:08:46,331
knows what that final amount will be.

800
01:08:47,707 --> 01:08:52,086
220 is bid,
a casual hand goes up at 220 million.

801
01:08:55,632 --> 01:08:57,842
Are you all done here, sir? Are you out?

802
01:09:00,345 --> 01:09:01,763
240 million?

803
01:09:03,222 --> 01:09:04,390
So we're all done?

804
01:09:05,725 --> 01:09:06,725
Maybe not.

805
01:09:09,145 --> 01:09:11,064
Don't take the photograph quite yet.

806
01:09:17,320 --> 01:09:19,113
Still two of you in the game here.

807
01:09:19,906 --> 01:09:23,743
It became clear that,
okay, we're in a duel.

808
01:09:23,826 --> 01:09:28,289
On one telephone, you had someone
who wanted to be completely incremental,

809
01:09:28,373 --> 01:09:30,291
that was playing with his own money.

810
01:09:30,375 --> 01:09:33,670
And then you had someone
who was using house money.

811
01:09:33,753 --> 01:09:37,131
And that house money
was probably not an individual,

812
01:09:37,215 --> 01:09:40,051
but maybe, maybe even a country.

813
01:09:41,052 --> 01:09:42,178
I thought so.

814
01:09:42,261 --> 01:09:44,639
300 million.

815
01:09:56,234 --> 01:09:58,945
Salvator mundi by Leonardo da Vinci.

816
01:10:00,488 --> 01:10:02,615
320 million, we're still not done.

817
01:10:02,699 --> 01:10:04,992
At 330 million now.

818
01:10:10,039 --> 01:10:11,374
Back to francois.

819
01:10:11,457 --> 01:10:12,667
Three-fifty.

820
01:10:17,964 --> 01:10:19,632
350? Okay.

821
01:10:22,844 --> 01:10:26,472
At 350 million
for Leonardo's salvator mundi.

822
01:10:26,556 --> 01:10:28,808
- 400.
- 400 million!

823
01:10:38,985 --> 01:10:41,237
Salvator mundi selling here at christie's.

824
01:10:41,320 --> 01:10:46,576
$400 million is the bid,
and the piece is... sold.

825
01:10:56,711 --> 01:10:58,755
The art world is stunned,
they are shocked,

826
01:10:58,838 --> 01:11:00,423
they can't believe it this morning

827
01:11:00,506 --> 01:11:04,343
after the astonishing record-breaking
sale of a rare masterpiece.

828
01:11:06,679 --> 01:11:09,265
Who paid 450 million?

829
01:11:11,350 --> 01:11:13,150
Probably a billionaire that bought it.

830
01:11:13,227 --> 01:11:14,771
Your response to me was, "well, duh!"

831
01:11:16,355 --> 01:11:19,525
It's a very anonymous world,

832
01:11:20,485 --> 01:11:22,737
and people aren't always
quick to say, "it's me.

833
01:11:22,820 --> 01:11:25,406
I spent all this money,
I have all this money.

834
01:11:25,490 --> 01:11:27,450
Come to my house,
take whatever you want."

835
01:11:27,533 --> 01:11:29,952
You know, there's privacy
because there's fear

836
01:11:30,036 --> 01:11:32,830
around showing your wealth to that degree.

837
01:11:32,914 --> 01:11:37,794
We'll not comment on the identity
and the geography of the buyer.

838
01:11:38,336 --> 01:11:42,089
Even if it's decided months,
years, decades later

839
01:11:42,173 --> 01:11:44,675
that it's not really by Leonardo da Vinci,

840
01:11:45,468 --> 01:11:49,138
those $450 million
will live out in eternity

841
01:11:49,222 --> 01:11:52,975
as a value put upon this work of art.

842
01:12:01,359 --> 01:12:04,862
This director of metropolitan
museum of art

843
01:12:04,946 --> 01:12:08,407
wrote on his Instagram page
after the sale:

844
01:12:09,575 --> 01:12:14,288
"Watch out, 85% of the painting
is by dianne modestini."

845
01:12:15,706 --> 01:12:19,919
And that then was picked up by...

846
01:12:20,795 --> 01:12:24,090
A whole lot of people
who didn't know anything.

847
01:12:24,173 --> 01:12:28,010
There were people of all walks,
museum curators,

848
01:12:28,094 --> 01:12:30,596
art historians and regular people,
just chiming in.

849
01:12:30,680 --> 01:12:35,226
People who had never had
any weight, or interest even,

850
01:12:35,309 --> 01:12:40,106
were suddenly decrying this image
as false and a fraud.

851
01:12:40,189 --> 01:12:43,192
Then all these, you know,
Internet trolls started saying,

852
01:12:43,276 --> 01:12:46,153
"oh, that's because
it's not really by Leonardo,

853
01:12:46,237 --> 01:12:48,281
and nobody accepts the attribution."

854
01:12:49,198 --> 01:12:55,121
This is just for self-publicity
and to create a scandal,

855
01:12:55,204 --> 01:12:58,124
and nobody really cares what the truth is.

856
01:12:58,833 --> 01:13:01,794
One of the people that spoke most vocally

857
01:13:01,878 --> 01:13:06,048
about the salvator mundi
being fake was Jerry saltz.

858
01:13:06,132 --> 01:13:09,385
I've been looking at art for 40 years,

859
01:13:09,468 --> 01:13:12,889
and this is a made-up piece ofjunk.

860
01:13:15,141 --> 01:13:16,142
In drag.

861
01:13:23,149 --> 01:13:28,487
The salvator mundi, it is no more real...

862
01:13:29,363 --> 01:13:35,411
Than any of the other
dreamed-up scams and schemes

863
01:13:35,494 --> 01:13:41,876
by people that may not mean
to be flimflamming...

864
01:13:44,462 --> 01:13:48,507
But in the end,
they all went along for the ride.

865
01:13:49,967 --> 01:13:53,012
Which is the lesson of our time.

866
01:13:53,638 --> 01:13:56,140
I go along with the lie,

867
01:13:56,223 --> 01:13:59,936
I don't say anything because
I don't want to be kicked off

868
01:14:00,019 --> 01:14:04,023
the island of love, of power,

869
01:14:04,106 --> 01:14:06,901
of money, of influence.

870
01:14:06,984 --> 01:14:09,487
So you have museum people,

871
01:14:10,029 --> 01:14:15,326
you have collectors,
curators, art historians.

872
01:14:16,160 --> 01:14:20,706
Of course, the auction houses
who make a big deal about everything.

873
01:14:20,790 --> 01:14:24,710
"Oh, it's our dream painting."
Always pushing.

874
01:14:24,794 --> 01:14:27,338
Everybody was complicit

875
01:14:27,421 --> 01:14:31,467
in dreaming up this beautiful dream

876
01:14:31,550 --> 01:14:34,887
of a lost Leonardo da Vinci.

877
01:14:41,644 --> 01:14:45,523
People can get lots of media attention

878
01:14:45,606 --> 01:14:49,610
by saying something
outrageous about this painting.

879
01:14:58,661 --> 01:15:02,707
Anyway, so I'm just kind of
trying to make a case for myself.

880
01:15:07,044 --> 01:15:11,382
I have continued to study
the salvator mundi.

881
01:15:12,091 --> 01:15:17,221
I went to Naples to look at a copy
of the salvator mundi.

882
01:15:34,822 --> 01:15:39,660
I've tried to explain some of
the questions about the painting.

883
01:15:48,586 --> 01:15:53,507
There is all this documentation,
so I put everything up on a website.

884
01:15:54,925 --> 01:15:59,638
And I want to give anyone
who is interested

885
01:15:59,722 --> 01:16:02,850
all the information that I have

886
01:16:02,933 --> 01:16:07,563
so that they can
make up their own mind.

887
01:16:09,774 --> 01:16:12,109
After this, I will have my life back.

888
01:16:12,193 --> 01:16:14,737
Because everything I know,

889
01:16:14,820 --> 01:16:18,491
or probably ever will know,
about this painting

890
01:16:18,574 --> 01:16:20,117
is on this website.

891
01:16:21,952 --> 01:16:24,580
Let's hear it for salvator mundi.

892
01:16:27,458 --> 01:16:30,461
Do you feel that you have
to defend yourself in your work?

893
01:16:32,880 --> 01:16:33,880
No, I don't.

894
01:16:44,600 --> 01:16:48,020
A $450 million purchase price,

895
01:16:48,104 --> 01:16:50,272
and nobody knows who's buying it?

896
01:16:50,356 --> 01:16:54,151
The intelligence community
is absolutely gonna want to understand

897
01:16:54,235 --> 01:16:56,946
where did the funds come from,
where are they going.

898
01:16:57,029 --> 01:16:58,656
It's very difficult to check auctions.

899
01:16:58,739 --> 01:17:00,866
The reason for that
is because of the opaqueness.

900
01:17:02,535 --> 01:17:04,453
Is there money laundering taking place?

901
01:17:04,537 --> 01:17:07,873
Is there a shifting of assets
to support terrorists?

902
01:17:07,957 --> 01:17:09,416
Is it state money?

903
01:17:11,794 --> 01:17:13,796
That anyone would pay
that kind of money

904
01:17:13,879 --> 01:17:16,132
for a piece that had questions about it

905
01:17:16,215 --> 01:17:17,591
is very strange.

906
01:17:19,343 --> 01:17:22,513
The intelligence community
knew very quickly

907
01:17:22,596 --> 01:17:25,432
who had bought it
and how they'd bought it,

908
01:17:26,058 --> 01:17:29,019
and chooses to release that information.

909
01:17:33,524 --> 01:17:38,320
Around the end of 2017,
I'm based in London.

910
01:17:38,404 --> 01:17:40,614
An old contact of mine
from the middle east

911
01:17:40,698 --> 01:17:42,825
gets in touch and wants to meet.

912
01:17:42,908 --> 01:17:47,538
He refuses to tell me why we're meeting,

913
01:17:47,621 --> 01:17:49,582
but when we sit down together,

914
01:17:49,665 --> 01:17:52,835
he shows me some rather
extraordinary documents.

915
01:17:53,627 --> 01:17:59,008
And these documents are the details
of the arrangements for the sale

916
01:17:59,091 --> 01:18:02,261
between the christie's
auction house and the buyer.

917
01:18:02,344 --> 01:18:03,596
Reports suggest

918
01:18:03,679 --> 01:18:06,807
that the Saudi Arabia's crown prince
is the mysterious buyer

919
01:18:06,891 --> 01:18:09,768
of a rare Leonardo da Vinci painting.

920
01:18:13,063 --> 01:18:16,442
Prince Mohammed bin salman,
who has recently become

921
01:18:16,525 --> 01:18:19,028
the effective ruler of Saudi Arabia.

922
01:18:20,529 --> 01:18:24,450
What was so extraordinary
about this purchase

923
01:18:24,533 --> 01:18:27,828
is that prince Mohammed bin salman
had made this splurge

924
01:18:27,912 --> 01:18:33,209
at the same time that he was
cracking down on the Saudi elite,

925
01:18:33,292 --> 01:18:35,502
including many of his own royal cousins.

926
01:18:37,796 --> 01:18:40,633
He had imprisoned many of them
in the ritz-Carlton,

927
01:18:40,716 --> 01:18:43,928
forcing them to try to turn over
hundreds of millions of dollars

928
01:18:44,011 --> 01:18:47,723
that he said had been stolen from
the Saudi government that he wanted back.

929
01:18:47,806 --> 01:18:49,767
His family, by the way,
is the Saudi government.

930
01:18:53,646 --> 01:18:59,443
Right around the same time, he had spent
half a billion dollars on a yacht,

931
01:18:59,526 --> 01:19:04,240
and a short time later,
$300 million on a French chateau.

932
01:19:08,494 --> 01:19:11,622
And then there's one more wrinkle,
which is the content of this work.

933
01:19:13,165 --> 01:19:16,877
Most islamic scholars,
including the ones that are dominant

934
01:19:16,961 --> 01:19:19,046
in the kingdom of Saudi Arabia,

935
01:19:19,129 --> 01:19:25,010
believe that islam forbids the depiction
in art of any of the prophets.

936
01:19:25,094 --> 01:19:27,888
So it's a sacrilegious painting.

937
01:19:29,932 --> 01:19:34,103
And Saudi Arabia has never yet
publicly acknowledged

938
01:19:34,186 --> 01:19:38,899
that he or the government of Saudi Arabia
is the owner of that work of art.

939
01:19:38,983 --> 01:19:42,027
Have you been able to obtain
any information about

940
01:19:42,111 --> 01:19:45,239
when and where
this piece of art will be revealed?

941
01:19:45,322 --> 01:19:48,784
No. No one knows.
It remains a complete mystery.

942
01:19:51,620 --> 01:19:56,000
I had unequivocal confirmation
that the painting was on the boat.

943
01:20:00,004 --> 01:20:04,717
I got this story and, like,
all of a sudden it was in one newspaper,

944
01:20:04,800 --> 01:20:06,552
then it was in another newspaper,

945
01:20:06,635 --> 01:20:10,681
then it was translated into
one, two, three, four languages.

946
01:20:10,764 --> 01:20:13,309
CNN is on the phone.
Time magazine is on the phone.

947
01:20:13,392 --> 01:20:15,853
I didn't think it would strike
an international nerve

948
01:20:15,936 --> 01:20:20,107
and become the most-read article
I've written in my entire life, 30 years.

949
01:20:21,608 --> 01:20:22,608
The art newspaper,

950
01:20:22,651 --> 01:20:25,738
after I wrote the article
disclosing where the painting was,

951
01:20:25,821 --> 01:20:28,198
they literally tracked
the boat to the Netherlands

952
01:20:28,282 --> 01:20:31,785
and it was just a few-hour drive
from the louvre.

953
01:20:36,540 --> 01:20:39,835
And now to the blockbuster
exhibition of the year,

954
01:20:39,918 --> 01:20:44,214
perhaps of many years,
a celebration of Leonardo da Vinci,

955
01:20:44,298 --> 01:20:46,342
500 years after his death.

956
01:21:02,232 --> 01:21:05,694
This is the 500th anniversary
of Leonardo's death.

957
01:21:05,778 --> 01:21:07,488
This is the big show.

958
01:21:08,405 --> 01:21:11,367
There is huge expectation
that if it does turn up,

959
01:21:11,450 --> 01:21:16,997
the curator, Vincent delieuvin, will have
a chance to nail the attribution.

960
01:21:37,935 --> 01:21:41,230
Everybody's really talking
about the salvator mundi.

961
01:21:41,313 --> 01:21:42,314
Wrrr it show up?

962
01:21:42,398 --> 01:21:47,736
And we 're dealing with an owner
that is very secretive.

963
01:22:11,718 --> 01:22:15,139
The missing u. S.-Based journalist
is no longer alive.

964
01:22:15,222 --> 01:22:18,058
The coalition's airstrikes
may amount to war crimes.

965
01:23:20,120 --> 01:23:25,042
The arabian states, they want
to sort of be seen as cultural nations,

966
01:23:25,125 --> 01:23:28,045
and for this cultural nation building,

967
01:23:28,128 --> 01:23:34,510
they need to place the salvator mundi
in the Paris louvre show

968
01:23:34,593 --> 01:23:36,178
because it's a political thing.

969
01:23:36,803 --> 01:23:38,683
That's what art is being used for today,

970
01:23:38,722 --> 01:23:41,433
this kind of soft political capital,

971
01:23:41,517 --> 01:23:45,145
where we may have sliced up a journalist
or all of these terrible things,

972
01:23:45,229 --> 01:23:49,858
and then you cover it
with a nice painting and it's a diversion.

973
01:24:05,207 --> 01:24:09,753
If the louvre says it's an
autographed Leonardo, that is a big deal.

974
01:24:10,712 --> 01:24:13,757
It's not just art history,
it's world politics.

975
01:24:18,554 --> 01:24:21,034
The curator of the louvre
at this moment has a problem

976
01:24:21,098 --> 01:24:25,936
because, politically,
he cannot refuse the salvator mundi.

977
01:24:26,019 --> 01:24:29,982
He cannot refuse the attribution
to Leonardo,

978
01:24:30,065 --> 01:24:33,944
but nobody at the moment knows
what's going on there.

979
01:24:36,905 --> 01:24:41,451
We know that the painting
was brought to Paris in June, 2018,

980
01:24:41,535 --> 01:24:46,248
where it was taken to the louvre
laboratory for a top-secret examination.

981
01:24:47,708 --> 01:24:50,335
So it's just about six days
before the opening

982
01:24:51,044 --> 01:24:55,382
and I receive the plan
for the installation of the exhibition.

983
01:24:56,049 --> 01:25:02,347
And on that plan is the salvator mundi
given pride of place in the final room.

984
01:25:03,849 --> 01:25:06,977
If it were to be presented
as a true Leonardo,

985
01:25:07,060 --> 01:25:09,896
he would make the institution ridiculous.

986
01:25:09,980 --> 01:25:14,359
So I wrote to the president
of the French republic:

987
01:25:33,462 --> 01:25:38,216
So we're all waiting to see
if the salvator mundi shows up.

988
01:25:40,636 --> 01:25:44,014
It would be good if the
salvator mundi belonged to the public.

989
01:25:46,224 --> 01:25:49,394
The louvre has all the latest
imaging equipment

990
01:25:49,478 --> 01:25:52,397
to examine the painting,
and that would be wonderful.

991
01:26:00,781 --> 01:26:04,117
And I arrive
at the advance press preview

992
01:26:04,201 --> 01:26:08,121
and immediately run
through the entire exhibition to see,

993
01:26:08,205 --> 01:26:10,916
is the salvator mundi in the last room?

994
01:26:18,632 --> 01:26:23,720
And there on the wall is a bare spot
with three picture hooks.

995
01:26:26,640 --> 01:26:28,517
We think, "are they about to hang it?

996
01:26:28,600 --> 01:26:32,813
Is this a moment of theater
that they have planned for the press?"

997
01:26:33,355 --> 01:26:38,193
And we then,
to our huge disappointment...

998
01:26:38,860 --> 01:26:41,488
We get a shrug of the shoulders
from the louvre.

999
01:26:54,584 --> 01:26:59,214
One painting not here,
the still controversial salvator mundi.

1000
01:26:59,297 --> 01:27:02,843
Here instead,
a copy from the same period.

1001
01:27:03,510 --> 01:27:07,013
People were transfixed, and I kept...
I said to a couple that...

1002
01:27:07,097 --> 01:27:10,892
I said, "it's a copy.
Don't you know that this is a copy?"

1003
01:27:10,976 --> 01:27:15,230
Some of them looked a little confused,
but they kept taking pictures of it.

1004
01:27:16,606 --> 01:27:19,985
I was hoping up until the last minute
that it would turn up.

1005
01:27:21,862 --> 01:27:25,657
The most notorious
no-show is the salvator mundi.

1006
01:27:36,793 --> 01:27:38,462
It's actually shrouded in mystery,

1007
01:27:38,545 --> 01:27:41,757
because no one has seen it
since the sale in 2017.

1008
01:27:48,555 --> 01:27:50,724
People can say whatever they want.

1009
01:27:51,308 --> 01:27:53,268
It's like putting out wildfires.

1010
01:27:55,729 --> 01:28:00,108
You know, one goes away and another one
immediately crops up somewhere else.

1011
01:28:01,026 --> 01:28:03,612
It never, never stops.

1012
01:28:13,663 --> 01:28:17,125
A few days ago,
I had a really strange experience.

1013
01:28:19,085 --> 01:28:24,966
I visited an art historian at his house
and he had some books on the table.

1014
01:28:25,884 --> 01:28:31,348
Among them was a small catalog
of the salvator mundi.

1015
01:28:32,224 --> 01:28:33,558
Published by the louvre.

1016
01:28:35,018 --> 01:28:38,188
And I was really taken aback and I said...

1017
01:28:38,855 --> 01:28:41,233
I said,
"what is this? I've never seen it."

1018
01:28:41,316 --> 01:28:43,610
He said,
"oh, I bought it at the exhibition."

1019
01:28:44,194 --> 01:28:46,238
And I said, "oh, that's strange."

1020
01:28:49,199 --> 01:28:52,285
I started to look for it.
Not for sale anywhere.

1021
01:28:52,369 --> 01:28:56,206
I asked our librarian
if he could track it down,

1022
01:28:56,790 --> 01:29:00,377
and, uh, he said,
"it doesn't seem to exist."

1023
01:29:02,504 --> 01:29:05,465
I have heard nothing about this book,

1024
01:29:05,549 --> 01:29:10,595
and I find out that
it is produced by the louvre

1025
01:29:10,679 --> 01:29:12,931
on the occasion of the exhibition.

1026
01:29:13,473 --> 01:29:17,143
And it is full of some
new technical examination

1027
01:29:17,227 --> 01:29:18,770
they have done of the picture.

1028
01:29:20,438 --> 01:29:24,109
The book recapitulates
the history of the painting,

1029
01:29:24,609 --> 01:29:30,949
then goes on to attribute it
securely to Leonardo.

1030
01:29:35,495 --> 01:29:40,417
This is the first time that we have
an independent body, really,

1031
01:29:40,500 --> 01:29:43,461
doing a thorough analysis of the picture.

1032
01:29:45,630 --> 01:29:47,549
But it's difficult to know
what to believe

1033
01:29:47,632 --> 01:29:52,596
when you've got a lost painting,
a lost book,

1034
01:29:52,679 --> 01:29:56,683
and no access to the scientific
examinations themselves.

1035
01:31:07,379 --> 01:31:13,218
Let me say something about
institutional knowledge and authority.

1036
01:31:14,886 --> 01:31:18,640
It's not as real and as foolproof,

1037
01:31:19,140 --> 01:31:22,185
and as clean, immaculate...

1038
01:31:23,395 --> 01:31:24,521
As you think.

1039
01:31:24,604 --> 01:31:26,314
It is never neutral.

1040
01:31:26,940 --> 01:31:30,235
Power is never neutral.

1041
01:31:49,462 --> 01:31:53,800
You know people at the louvre.
What do they say about the rumors?

1042
01:32:38,094 --> 01:32:41,056
So why did mbs pull the work
at the last minute?

1043
01:32:42,223 --> 01:32:45,727
What he wanted to do
was elevate the salvator mundi

1044
01:32:45,810 --> 01:32:47,771
to the level of the Mona Lisa

1045
01:32:47,854 --> 01:32:51,441
by placing it not amongst
the lesser da vincis,

1046
01:32:51,524 --> 01:32:54,944
where the work would be subjected
to every academic

1047
01:32:55,028 --> 01:32:58,615
who wanted to make a name for themselves
by opining on the work.

1048
01:33:00,241 --> 01:33:06,498
He wanted it opposite the Mona Lisa
as a civilizational masterpiece.

1049
01:33:17,300 --> 01:33:19,969
It was just a raw power, you know,

1050
01:33:20,053 --> 01:33:24,224
"we own this thing, we're gonna
show it to the world when we're ready."

1051
01:33:29,270 --> 01:33:31,731
For shit sure
the painting's gonna turn up again.

1052
01:33:31,815 --> 01:33:34,025
You can stick it
in some place in the desert

1053
01:33:34,109 --> 01:33:37,529
and start to lure tourists
from all over the world to see it

1054
01:33:37,612 --> 01:33:39,823
and stand in front of it like Disneyland.

1055
01:33:40,448 --> 01:33:41,616
That's gonna happen.

1056
01:34:34,210 --> 01:34:37,338
At this moment, it is a Da Vinci,

1057
01:34:37,422 --> 01:34:41,801
and even the debate
adds some attractive force to it.

1058
01:34:42,385 --> 01:34:44,888
Even that there are folks
that may disagree

1059
01:34:44,971 --> 01:34:48,183
makes you want to go look in its eye
and see for yourself

1060
01:34:48,266 --> 01:34:50,351
what all the fuss is about.

1061
01:34:55,440 --> 01:34:59,861
My greatest regret is that
it did not go to a museum.

1062
01:35:01,446 --> 01:35:05,033
And of course, everyone's idea
of the picture is now formed

1063
01:35:05,116 --> 01:35:08,620
by mystery and legend and speculation.

1064
01:35:08,703 --> 01:35:10,997
I still have lots of art supplies here.

1065
01:35:14,667 --> 01:35:19,005
It would be very surprising
if all the experts suddenly said,

1066
01:35:19,547 --> 01:35:22,217
"oh, yes, this is absolutely by Leonardo."

1067
01:35:24,719 --> 01:35:26,638
And there are no documents.

1068
01:35:26,721 --> 01:35:32,435
It cannot be proven, you know,
factually, beyond a doubt.

1069
01:35:42,403 --> 01:35:43,529
You okay?

1070
01:35:53,456 --> 01:35:56,918
Of course I wish that I could move on.

1071
01:36:01,673 --> 01:36:06,678
But the salvator mundi is always with me
because I'm never allowed to forget.

1072
01:36:10,139 --> 01:36:14,143
The mystery is sort of solved,
but not really.

1073
01:36:14,227 --> 01:36:18,690
And this, again, is a whole new
sort of rabbit hole, hall of mirrors.

1074
01:36:24,570 --> 01:36:27,407
The painting hasn't been seen
since it was sold.

1075
01:36:27,490 --> 01:36:31,411
Once described as the
greatest discovery of the 21st century,

1076
01:36:31,494 --> 01:36:35,123
the mystery surrounding
salvator mundi continues today...