This is the most expensive painting in the world

 

Did you Know ? Salvator Mundi, Leonardo da Vinci, is the most expensive painting ever sold as of 2017

It was probably commissioned around 1500, shortly after Louis conquered the Duchy of Milan and took control of Genoa in the Second Italian War. Leonardo himself moved from Milan to Florence in 1500 It may have come to England with Henrietta Maria when she married Charles I of England in 1625, and it seems to have remained in her private chambers at the Queen's House in Greenwich. Wenceslaus Hollar made an engraving of the painting, published in Antwerp in 1650 with the inscription Leonardus da Vinci pinxit (Latin for 'Leonardo da Vinci painted it')

In 2005, the painting was acquired for less than $10,000 (€8,450) at an auction in New Orleans by a consortium of art dealers that included Robert Simon, a specialist in Old Masters. It had been heavily overpainted so it looked like a copy, and was, before restoration, described as "a wreck, dark and gloomy" The consortium believed there was a possibility that the low quality mess (with its excessive over painting) might actually be the long missing da Vinci original. They spent the next few years having the painting restored by Dianne Dwyer Modestini at New York University and authenticated as a painting by Leonardo. In May 2013, the Swiss dealer Yves Bouvier purchased the painting for just over US$75 million (in a private sale brokered by Sotheby’s, New York). 

The painting was then sold to Russian collector Dmitry Rybolovlev for US$127.5 million It was exhibited in Hong Kong, London, San Francisco and New York in 2017, and then sold at auction at Christie's in New York on 15 November 2017 for $450,312,500, a new record price for an artwork (hammer price $400 million plus $50.3 million in fees) The purchaser was identified as Saudi Arabian prince Badr bin Abdullah. In December 2017, the Wall Street Journal reported that Prince Bader was in fact an intermediary for Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman, the true buyer.[24] owever, Christie's confirmed that Prince Bader acted on behalf of Abu Dhabi’s Department of Culture and Tourism for display at the Louvre Abu Dhabi.