Salvator Mundi (c1505). Oil on panel. 66 x 45 Possibly with workshop. Sale $450,000,000 (2017, Christie's, 14995, 9B). Salvator Mundi is a painting attributed in whole or in part to the Italian High Renaissance artist Leonardo da Vinci, dated to c1499-1510. Long thought to be a copy of a lost original veiled with overpainting, it was rediscovered, restored, and included in Luke Syson's major Leonardo exhibition at the National Gallery, London, in 2011-12. Christie's claimed just after selling the work that most leading scholars consider it to be an original work by Leonardo, but this attribution has been disputed by other specialists, some of whom posit that he only contributed certain elements. The painting depicts Jesus in an anachronistic blue Renaissance dress, making the sign of the cross with his right hand, while holding a transparent, non-refracting crystal orb in his left, signaling his role as Salvator Mundi and representing the celestial sphere of the heavens. Approximately thirty copies and variations of the work by students and followers of Leonardo have been identified. Proposed preparatory chalk and ink drawings of the drapery by Leonardo are held in the British Royal Collection. The painting was sold at auction for US$ 450.3 million on 15 November 2017 by Christie's in New York to Prince Badr bin Abdullah, setting a new record for most expensive painting ever sold at public auction. Prince Badr allegedly made the purchase on behalf of Abu Dhabi's Department of Culture and Tourism, but it has since been posited that he may have been a stand-in bidder for his close ally and Saudi Arabian crown prince Mohammed bin Salman. This follows late-2017 reports that the painting would be put on display at the Louvre Abu Dhabi and the unexplained cancellation of its scheduled September 2018 unveiling. The current location of the painting has been reported as unknown, but a June 2019 report stated that it was being stored on bin Salman's yacht, pending completion of a cultural center in Al-Ula, and an October 2019 report indicated it may be in storage in Switzerland. Because of the specificity of the subject, Leonardo's Salvator Mundi was likely commissioned by a specific patron rather than produced on speculation. Art historians have suggested several possibilities for who the patron may have been and when it was executed. Joanne Snow-Smith suggested that Leonardo da Vinci painted Salvator Mundi for Louis XII of France and his consort, Anne of Brittany. Christie's claimed it was probably commissioned around 1500, shortly after Louis conquered the Duchy of Milan and took control of Genoa in the Second Italian War; Leonardo himself moved from Milan to Florence in 1500. Art historian Luke Syson agreed, dating the painting to c., though Martin Kemp and Frank Zollner date the work to and respectively. Martin Kemp discussed the possibilities of Isabella d'Este, King Matthias Corvinus of Hungary, Charles VIII of France and others as possible patrons but does not draw conclusions. The painting would have been used in the context of personal devotion, as were other panels of this size and subject in the sixteenth century. Indeed, Snow-Smith emphasized in her writings the devotional relationship that Louis XII had with the Salvator Mundi as a subject and Frank Zollner discussed the painting's relationship to French illuminated manuscripts in the practice of early sixteenth century personal devotion and prayer. It is possible that the painting was recorded in a 1525 inventory of Salai's estate as Christo in mondo de uno Dio padre, though it is unclear which Salvator Mundi this might refer to. The provenance of the painting breaks after 1530. The Salvator Mundi as an image type predates Leonardo. Thus, Martin Kemp argues that on one hand Leonardo was constrained in his composition by the expected iconography of the Salvator Mundi, but on the other hand he was able to use the image as a vehicle for spiritual communication between the spectator and the likeness of Christ. The composition has its sources in the Byzantine period, the imagery of which developed in northern Europe before finding its place in the Italian states.