The last Leonardo Da Vinci painting still in the hands of a private collector will go under the hammer next month in New York, the Christie’s auction house said Tuesday, estimating its worth at $100 million. Dating from around 1500, “Salvator Mundi” — which depicts Jesus Christ as the world’s savior — was long believed to be a copy of an original by the Italian master, until it was eventually certified as authentic. Fewer than 20 works by Da Vinci, whose art was already highly sought after during his lifetime, have survived to this day — all of them held in museum or institutional collections, with the exception of “Salvator Mundi.” As a general rule, very few pre-19th-century artworks remain in private ownership, and it is extremely rare for one of them to be offered at auction. “For auction specialists, this is pretty much the Holy Grail, no pun intended, but it doesn’t really get better than that,” said Loic Gouzer, co-chairman of Christie\u2019s Americas post-war and contemporary ar<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
The last Leonardo Da Vinci painting still in the hands of a private collector will go under the hammer next […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","_links_to":"","_links_to_target":""},"categories":[97],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-10682","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-publications"],"yoast_head":"\n