Leonardo’s Salvator Mundimakes auction history 

The rediscovered masterpiece by the Renaissance master sells for an historic $450,312,500, obliterating the previous world record for the most expensive work of art at auction

On a historic night at Christie’s in New York, Salvator Mundi, a depiction of Christ as ‘Saviour of the World’ by one of history’s greatest and most renowned artists, sold for $450,312,500 (including buyer’s premium), becoming the most expensive painting ever sold at auction. 

This stunning price reflects the extreme rarity of paintings by Leonardo da Vinci — there are fewer than 20 in existence acknowledged as being from the artist’s own hand, and all apart from Salvator Mundi  are in museum collections.

The global interest in a work that has been hailed as the greatest artistic rediscovery of the last 100 years saw a rapt audience of nearly 1,000 art collectors, dealers, advisors, journalists and onlookers packed into the main auction room at Rockefeller Center, with many thousands more tuning in via a live stream. Since the sale of Salvator Mundi  was announced on 10 October at Christie’s, almost 30,000 people have flocked to Christie’s exhibitions of the ‘Male Mona Lisa’ in Hong Kong, London, San Francisco and New York — the first time the painting had ever been shown to the public in Asia or the Americas.