By Chris Hastings Art Correspondent For The Mail On Sunday
Published: 09:25 BST, 13 April 2019 | Updated: 01:22 BST, 14 April 2019
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It depicts Jesus Christ as the saviour of the world and fetched a world-record £350 million at auction – but now experts say the Salvator Mundi might not have been painted by Leonardo da Vinci after all.
The doubts over the famous artwork come two years after it was bought by Saudi Arabia’s Crown Prince Mohammad bin Salman.
The record price was paid in the belief that it was Leonardo’s work, although even at the time, several specialists said the artist may have made only a small contribution to the painting.
The value of the Salvator Mundi rocketed from $1,175 to sell for an eye-watering $450million when a panel of five experts apparently declared it as an original in 2008
Now, a new book by art scholar Ben Lewis claims the National Gallery in London asked five experts to examine the portrait in 2008, before its inclusion in the gallery's blockbuster Leonardo exhibition three years later.
In The Last Leonardo, Lewis writes that just two of the experts were willing to verify that the painting was a genuine Leonardo, a third said it wasn't and two refused to comment.
But the gallery failed to include any of the
