Italian police have recovered a 500-year-old 16th-century copy of Leonardo da Vinci Salvator Mundi picture of Jesus Christ stolen from the church of Naples at the time of the epidemic without the priests even realizing he was gone.
The discovery was made when Naples police working on a larger operation found the hidden picture in a flat. Police chief Alfredo Fabbrocini said the owner of the apartment was detained after he offered a “less than credible” explanation that it had been “barely” bought at a market.
The picture is a copy of the Salvator Mundi (Savior of the World) by Leonardo sold for $ 450 million at an auction at Christie’s in 2017. The anonymous bidder was later identified as a Saudi royal who actually bought him on behalf of the Louvre Abu Dhabi. It was due to be published a year later at the museum, but the exhibition has been delayed forever and the work has not been seen in public since.
The image is a copy of Leonardo’s “Salvator Mundi” (Savior of the World) which sold for 0 million at Christie’s auction in 2017. (Source: Wikimedia Commons)
The copy, which was donated to the Leonardo school but not the Renaissance artist himself, had housed in a small museum in a side chapel of the Basilica de San Domenico Maggiore in Naples, which was closed at the time of the coronavirus pandemic.
Fabbrocini said the finding was “particularly satisfactory” because we resolved an issue before it was created. ” He explained: “The photograph was found but its keeper did not recognize that it had been stolen.”
The painting featuring a ragged Jesus holding a crystal orb and looking directly at the viewer. The San Domenico basilica states that the painting may have been made by a Leonardo student in the 1520s and purchased by Giovan Antonio Muscettola, an adviser to Emperor Charles V and an ambassador to the papal court. It was in the Muscettola family chapel at basilica.
It was restored before its performance in the 1983-1984 exhibition “Leonardo and Leonardism in Naples and Rome.”