The Last Leonardo: The Making of a Masterpiece
500 years after the death of Leonardo Da Vinci, Ben Lewis considers the unrivalled legacy of his art through an original biography of the ‘Salvator Mundi’ (Saviour of the World) – the lost Da Vinci painting.In 2017, Leonardo Da Vinci’s small oil painting, the Salvator Mundi entered global popular consciousness with its record-breaking $450m sale in 2017. The Salvator is, in the words of its discoverer, ‘the rarest thing on the planet by the greatest human being who ever lived.’ Only re-attributed to Leonardo in 2011, as the last one that will be discovered and sold, it is widely said to be ‘the Last Leonardo’.In this stunning mix of biography, art history, history and thriller that goes deep into the story of this astonishing picture, not to mention the shady dealings of the contemporary art world, Ben Lewis writes a truly original and gripping narrative history.This book forensically retraces the history of the Salvator Mundi, uncovering a very different narrative from the carefully edited, sanitised and sometimes spurious one presented by the dealers and connoisseurs, who marketed and sold it. The real painting is a prism through which we can understand the highs and lows of the art world, experiencing the passions that drove men and women to own this work, as well as the philistinism that led them to almost destroy and lose it; through which we can track the vicissitudes of the highly secretive and unregulated art market, across five centuries and the intrinsic link between art and the social and political system it inhabits. This story is an opportunity to tell a twisting tale of geniuses and gangsters, double-crossing, disappearances and sometimes dubious attributions, where we’re never quite certain what to believe.The Last Leonardo is an adventure story about art historians and a work of art. It is a book about a search for lost treasure, for something with a totemic power, that existed, until recently, only in myth and legend.
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William Collins
An imprint of HarperCollinsPublishers
1 London Bridge Street
London SE1 9GF
This eBook first published in Great Britain by William Collins in 2019
Copyright © BLTV Ltd, 2019
Cover image: Photo by Fine Art Images/Heritage Images/Getty Images
The author asserts the moral right to be identified as the author of this work
A catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library
All rights reserved under International and Pan-American Copyright Conventions. By payment of the required fees, you have been granted the non-exclusive, non-transferable right to access and read the text of this e-book on screen. No part of this text may be reproduced, transmitted, down-loaded, decompiled, reverse engineered, or stored in or introduced into any information storage and retrieval system, in any form or by any means, whether electronic or mechanical, now known or hereinafter invented, without the express written permission of HarperCollins.
Source ISBN: 9780008313418
Ebook Edition © April 2019 ISBN: 9780008313432
Version: 2019-04-15
Contents
1 Cover
2 Title Page
3 Copyright
4 Dedication
5 Contents
6 Epigraphs
7 Prologue: The Legend of Leonardo
8 PART I
9 1 Flight to London
10 2 The Walnut Knot
11 3 Buried Treasure
12 4 Paper, Chalk, Lapis
13 5 Zing!
14 6 The Blue Clue
15 7 Vinci, Vincia, Vinsett
16 PART II
17 8 The King’s Painting
18 9 Little Leonardos
19 10 The Salvator Switch
20 11 The Resurrection
21 12 Lost in a Crowd
22 13 The High Council
23 14 Entertainer and Engineer
24 15 The Greatest Show on Earth
25 16 Look, Cook Forsook
26 PART III
27 17 Offshore Icon
28 18 LDV RIP
29 19 Nineteen Minutes
30 20 There is a House in New Orleans
31 21 Mirage in the Desert
32 22 Fragile State
33 Afterword
34 Picture Section
35 Acknowledgements
36 Notes
37 Bibliography
38 Index
39 About the Author
40 About the Publisher
LandmarksCoverFrontmatterStart of ContentBackmatter
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Having wandered some distance among gloomy rocks, I came to the entrance of a great cavern, the likes of which I had never seen. I stood for some time in front of it in astonishment. I bent over, resting my left hand on my knee, while shading my eyes with my right. I squinted, shifting first one way and then the other, to see whether I could ascertain anything inside, but this was hindered by the deep darkness within. After having remained there some time, two contrary emotions arose in me: fear and desire – fear of the threatening dark cavern, desire to see whether there were any marvellous thing within it.
LEONARDO DA VINCI
The politics of Leonardo scholarship are like any other politics except that so far no blood is shed.
SIR KENNETH CLARK
Signs form a language, but not the one you think you know.
ITALO CALVINO
It ain’t where ya from, it’s where ya at
PROLOGUE
Centuries ago, in an age when the world was still ruled by monarchs and dukes and countesses dressed in velvet and golden brocade, there lived a man of illegitimate birth, as warm-hearted in his disposition as he was boundless in his curiosity, fierce in his intellect and skilful with his hands. This man was engineer, architect, designer, scientist and painter – the greatest painter, say many, who had ever lived. A genius, say others, who had brought the modern world into being. His pictures were both real and ideal, more beautiful than anything ever seen before. He studied the natural world in its tiniest details, from the leaves on trees to the paws of bears, and in its hidden rules, such as the proportions of the human face and body. He looked far and peered close, sketching the pale horizons of mountains and peeling back men’s skin so he could see the muscles and arteries that lay beneath.
