The Lost Leonardo – 7.5

The saga of “Salvador Mundi” by (perhaps) Leonardo da Vinci is the art story of the decade, and this documentary sufficiently marshaled the critical talking heads and visual evidence so that the viewer (i.e., me) felt he could make intelligent sense of what happened and, more importantly, what the painting is. Other than the slippery Yves Bouvier, who misleadingly flipped the painting for a $47 million profit, everyone–discoverer, restorer, dealer, curator, auctioneer–had reason to believe in what they were doing, and it wasn’t their fault that a Saudi prince paid a ridiculous $450 million for damaged goods. (Who was the underbidder?, one wonders.) My conclusion [spoiler alert]: the painting was originally painted by Leonardo; it was severely damaged and poorly restored (painted over), so that it escaped attention before winding its way to a New Orleans auction house; and it was innocently restored/repainted in the style of the Mona Lisa. It was sold solely on the Leonardo name–obviously a Saudi prince has no affinity for the subject or appreciation of art technique–to a buyer who was simultaneously spending the same kind of money for a yacht and a French chateau. This was just another trophy. Pictures of the work after cleaning and before retouching show none–zero–of the Leonardo sfumato that makes the painting ultimately glow like the Mona Lisa; so saying the painting is “by” Leonardo is unwarranted. But it is also unfair to call it “a piece of crap,” as the retouched painting is much better than the other copies of the composition shown in the film and affected many viewers.
Interestingly, both this film and Julia employed the same technique of mixing documentary footage with reenactments of unimportant actions: in this case, headless people carrying the painting from place to place; in Julia, anonymous figures slicing and dicing vegetables. The distinction was clear, never misleading, and the technique added visual interest.