(THE OBSERVER) — Will it or won’t it appear? This is the question being asked across the art world about the Salvator Mundi – the first Leonardo to be discovered for more than a century – as the Louvre prepares for its blockbuster da Vinci exhibition.
With just under two weeks to go before the show opens, there are now serious doubts as to whether the star of the exhibition will be included, as the Paris museum had hoped.
The world’s most expensive painting, a depiction of Jesus in Renaissance dress, which sold at auction in 2017 for $450m, would draw huge crowds. Described as a devotional counterpart to the Mona Lisa, Leonardo’s most famous work, it is said to have an “extraordinary, communicative presence.”
