‘The Lost Leonardo’ Finds the International Art Community Suitable for Framing

“Everyone in this country now, and I guess the world, talks about fake news, and all the lies and politics and of all the hypocrisy, but what scares people the most, in my business, is the truth,” art critic and collector Kenny Schachter says in “The Lost Leonardo.” Director Andreas Koefoed’s documentary on the authentication of Leonardo da Vinci’s painting “Salvator Mundi” is both a mystery and a whodunit. But the investigators aren’t merely looking for some culprits in an international art heist. They really want to know who did it?

The mystery at the center of the film is whether the Renaissance master ever even laid a brush on the painting. It could have been one of his students, or even a student of one of his students. Leonardo expert Frank Zöllner suggests the most beautiful and Da Vinci-esque quality of the painting comes from its art restorer, New York University Institute of Fine Arts conservation professor Dianne Modestini. She laughs at this, as she is not that good a painter, and finds it “very flattering, but absurd.” 

Modestini, who has been accused of having financial interest in the work, began restoring the badly damaged piece in 2005, the documentary reports. She found portions of the artwork had been painted over. When she began cleaning it, parts of the face were nearly indiscernible. While restoring the lips, she found similarities between the painting and the Mona Lisa. She firmly believes it was painted by da Vinci. “No one except Leonardo could have painted this picture,” Modestini concludes.

Art historians only agree on eight paintings which are attributed to Da Vinci. The Salvator Mundi (“The Savior of the World”), a portrait of Jesus, was reputedly painted by da Vinci on commission circa 1500. The documentary labels it a “sleeper,” a painting “which is clearly by a much better artist than the auction house has recognized,” and grossly undervalues its worth. This was the case when the Salvator Mundi was put up for sale in New Orleans. “Jesus is not an easy sell,” Alexander Parish, a self-proclaimed “sleeper hunter,” recalls. “But for whatever reason, this picture gets my attention.” The piece was bought by an art dealer in 2005 for $1,175, proclaimed the “male Mona Lisa,” and sold in 2017 for a historical record-setting $450 million.

Koefoed breaks the film into three sections: “Art Game,” “Money Game,” and “World Game.” We see where the rules are subject to change and how each and everyone gets played. Art is perception, and perception is rarely objective. It is warped from the beginning, when Parish and his partner, old masters paintings expert Robert Simon, bring the painting to London’s National Gallery for evaluation. The work can only realistically be traced back as far as 1900. Simon, however, claims two da Vinci works, both called Salvator Mundi, were listed in the inventories of the English kings Charles I and Charles II. Both are now missing, and both were described as showing a figure holding an orb. The National Gallery experts attribute the work solely to da Vinci, and include the painting in a 2011 exhibit about the Renaissance artist. This gives the painting legitimacy, which gives the documentary an assured ambiguity.

“It’s not even a good painting,” “New York” magazine art critic Jerry Saltz proclaims in one of many possibly inadvertent humorous moments. Many experts, including the F.B.I.’s National Art Crime Team, critique the critics. The documentary highlights numerous flagrant signals which get overlooked in order to approve the appraisal. One expert points out how two fingers of a hand in the painting’s subject make no sense anatomically, a subject da Vinci was expert in. Such an amateur mistake is inconceivable for the artist. Another expert points to the “shitty” wood with a knot in it, as too cheap for such an artist as da Vinci. 

The cast of characters could fill an espionage feature. A Swiss art dealer and shipping magnate named Yves Bouvier refers to himself in the third person, the same way Lieutenant Jeffords calls himself “Terry” on “Brooklyn Nine-Nine,” but without the intentional comic effect. Somehow reminiscent of the Sydney Greenstreet character in “Maltese Falcon,” Bouvier buys the Salvator Mundi for $83 million and sells it to a Russian oligarch Dmitry Rybolovlev the next day for $127 million. Bouvier is surprisingly upfront about his 100 percent “mark-up.” He buys low and sells high, explaining “that’s business. It’s the principle of commerce. People don’t understand and say, ‘Mr. Bouvier is a cheater,’ but Mr. Bouvier is a businessman like any other.” But Mr. Bouvier openly tells his billionaire Russian client that buying the painting is like buying “a car that has been in an accident.”  

“The Lost Leonardo” excels in showing how no one kicked the tires. Rybolovlev consigns certified masterpieces by Klimt, Gauguin, Magritte, Picasso, and Rothko to Christie’s. The Salvator Mundi is the only piece with “questions around it,” says Bank of America executive Evan Beard, who brings much-welcome intrigue into the already dicey proceedings. “Christie’s is in the business of selling,” “Art Newspaper” editor Alison Cole, reasonably adds to the murky conspiratorial palette of the film. “It’s not in the business of authenticating.” The painting goes from the Louvre through French president Emmanuel Macron. Although it wasn’t included in the 2019 exhibition commemorating the 500th anniversary of Leonardo’s death, the Louvre secretly analyzed the painting and confirmed “that the work is by Leonardo da Vinci.”  A book testifying to that was produced but never published by the Louvre. The documentary ties this to a yet another financial deal. 

While the Saudi Arabian government not-too-vehemently denies it, the documentary ultimately follows the trail to Crown Prince Mohammad bin Salman, best known for giving the order to murder a dissenting journalist. The painting goes through an international society battle between French and Saudi Arabian arts tourism before being locked away from the public on a yacht somewhere in the Middle East. 

As befitting a film about paintings, the camerawork frames its images artistically. The people being interviewed are shot in front of beautiful backdrops. The soundtrack, by Sveinung Nygaard, is playful and majestic, depending on the scene, but maintains the mysterious melodic core of the film. As the documentary progresses, the music underscores how the idea the work was painted by da Vinci becomes harder to believe. 

It’s fun watching greedy people rip each other off driving the painting to become the most expensive artwork of all time. The Salvator Mundi is now worth more than the Mona Lisa, whether or not it was painted by Leonardo da Vinci. The reason has nothing to do with art, and not even power, as “The Lost Leonardo” would have you believe. It is because of accessibility. Da Vinci’s best-known masterpiece is always on display for the public to see. His most valuable painting has disappeared from view. The documentary captures the feel of invisible ink.

The Lost Leonardo” releases Aug. 13 in New York and Los Angeles.