Why Are Critics Calling the $450 Million Painting Fake? by James Tarmy

Even before Leonardo Da Vinci’s Salvator Mundi went to auction last night at Christie’s in New York, naysayers from around the art world were savaging its authenticity. Various advisors were muttering darkly, both online and in the auction previews, and one day before the sale New York magazine’s Jerry Saltz wrote that though he’s “no art historian or any kind of expert in old masters,” just “one look at this painting tells me it’s no Leonardo.”

And that was before the painting obliterated every previous auction record, selling, with premium, for $450 million. 

Shortly after the gavel came down on Wednesday evening, the New York Times published a piece by the critic Jason Farago where, after also noting that he’s “not the man to affirm or reject its attribution,” declared that the painting is “a proficient but not especially distinguished religious picture from turn-of-the-16th-century Lombardy, put through a wringer of restorations.”

Had the buyer of the most expensive painting in the world just purchased a piece of junk?

All of the most relevant people believe it’s by Leonardo, so the rather extensive criticism that goes ‘I don’t know anything about old masters, but I don’t think it’s by Leonardo’ shouldn’t ever have gone to print,” says the British old masters dealer Charles Beddington. “Yes, it’s a picture that needed to be extensively restored. But the fact that it’s unanimously accepted as a Leonardo shows it’s in good enough condition that there weren’t questions of authenticity.”

After speaking to multiple prominent old masters dealers— a group not exactly known for holding its tongue— the real issue regarding the Leonardo’s validity seems to be a question of education: “All old masters have had work done to them,” says the dealer Rafael Valls, whose London gallery is directly across from Christie’s.

“They’ve all been scrubbed and cleaned, but when you think about a particular painting and say, ‘oh it’s by Titian, but a quarter of it was recreated by other restorers,’ it still is what it is.”

Those in the art world who dismiss its authenticity, dealers say, are simply transferring criteria used to judge contemporary art onto old masters—the equivalent of comparing the specs of a new Honda against a Ferrari from 1965. They’re both cars, but that’s where the similarities end.

“To a certain extent you have to put condition aside,” says the dealer Johnny van Haeften. “Of course it’s not perfect, and of course it’s not mint. But can you get another one?”

https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2017-11-16/is-the-450-million-salvator-mundi-leonardo-da-vinci-painting-a-fake

Bowl Sells for Chinese Porcelain Record $37.7 million: Sotheby´s

A 1,000-year-old bowl from China's Song Dynasty sold at auction for $37.7 million on Tuesday, breaking the record for Chinese porcelain, auction house Sotheby´s said.

The small piece -- which dates from 960-1127 -- broke the previous record of $36.05 million set in 2014 for a Ming Dynasty wine cup which was sold to a Shanghai tycoon.

Bidding started at around $10.2 million and the auction lasted for 20 minutes before the winning offer came from a phone bidder.

The bowl -- originally designed to wash brushes -- is an example of extremely rare Chinese porcelain from the imperial court of the Northern Song Dynasty and one of only four pieces in private hands, according to Sotheby's.

Measuring 13cm in diameter, the dish features a luminous blue glaze.

The sale broke the "world auction record for any Chinese ceramics", the auction house announced after the bidding.

It exceeded an earlier record made by a tiny white porcelain cup, decorated with a colour painting of a rooster and a hen tending to their chicks, created during the reign of the Chenghua Emperor between 1465 and 1487.

The cup sold in 2014 to taxi-driver-turned-financier Liu Yiqian, one of China's wealthiest people and among a new class of Chinese super-rich scouring the globe for artwork.

http://www.dailymail.co.uk/wires/afp/article-4943172/Bowl-sells-Chinese-porcelain-record-37-7-million-Sotheby-s.html