In 2017 the Salvator Mundi was offered at auction for $450m. But is it a real da Vinci? In a thrilling narrative built on formidable study, Ben Lewis monitors the extraordinary trip of the masterpiece dropped and discovered, lied and fought over across the centuries.

In 2017, Leonardo da Vinci’s small oil painting, the Salvator Mundi was sold at auction for $450m. In what of its discoverer, the image of Christ as saviour of the world is usually ‘the rarest issue on the planet from the about THE FINAL Leonardo: THE TRICK Lives of the World’s Most Expensive Painting greatest individual who ever lived’. Its amazing price also helps it be the world’s priciest painting.

For two centuries art dealers had searched in vain for the Holy Grail of art history: a portrait of Christ as the Salvator Mundi by Leonardo da Vinci. Many comparable paintings of significantly varying quality have been executed by Leonardo’s assistants in the first fifty percent from the sixteenth century. But where was the initial by the master himself?

In November 2017, Christie’s auction house announced that they had it. But do they? THE FINAL Leonardo tells a thrilling story of a spellbinding icon invested with the energy to make or break the reputations of scholars, billionaires, kings and sheikhs. Lewis takes us to Leonardo’s studio room in Renaissance Italy; to the court of Charles I and the English Civil War; to Holland, Moscow and Louisiana; to the galleries, salerooms and restorer’s workshop as the painting gradually, painstakingly, surfaced from obscurity. The vicissitudes of the highly secretive art market are charted across five decades. It is a twisting story of geniuses and oligarchs, double-crossings and disappearances, where we’re hardly ever quite certain what to believe. Above all, it really is an experience story about the seek out dropped treasure, and a quest for the truth.