the primary {photograph} of the Louvre’s Leonardo guide that was spiked over Salvator Mundi fiasco

The saga of the guide “that does not exist” started on 27 February 2020, after I was contacted by an educational with some shocking information. She had heard that the Louvre had produced a small guide dedicated to a brand new and detailed scientific examination of Leonardo’s Salvator Mundi. My response was one in all astonishment.

We had been advised that nobody from the Louvre had been granted entry to the portray since its infamous sale at Christie’s in New York in November 2017, the place it had fetched a document $450.3m. Within the intervening interval, the image had neither been obtainable for public exhibition, nor scholarly scrutiny. It had disappeared.

On the similar time, the provenance of the image had unravelled, and the portray had been variously re-attributed by specialists to artists in Leonardo’s workshop, akin to Boltraffio, Luini and even later handsThe guide Léonard de Vinci. Le Salvator Mundi (Louvre editions/Hazan, 2019) was co-authored by the Louvre curator Vincent Delieuvin, along with Myriam Eveno and Élisabeth Ravaud of the Louvre’s scientific laboratory C2RMF. It had been revealed to coincide with the Louvre’s blockbuster Leonardo da Vinci present (24 October 2019-24 February 2020), through which the Salvator Mundi was meant to have a starring position—although within the occasion the image had proved to be a dramatic no present. Was The Artwork Newspaper planning to evaluate the guide, I used to be requested by the educational? Had we seen a duplicate?

This information of a guide was greater than intriguing. The Louvre’s opinion on the attribution of the portray to Leonardo da Vinci was the crucial piece of knowledge that the artwork world had been ready for; in any case no different museum had so many Leonardos of their assortment (notably the Mona Lisa, St John the Baptist and Virgin and Youngster with St Anne) and due to this fact entry to a lot collected experience and comparative technical analyses. So, when the image did not materialise within the exhibition, the scholarly dismay was palpable

Now it appeared that the Louvre’s specialists had not solely gained entry to the Salvator Mundi —supposedly final sighted on the tremendous yacht of its proprietor Saudi Prince Mohammed Bin Salman—however had additionally secretly examined it of their Paris laboratory. And so they had produced a 46-page guide in addition! So, what was the Louvre’s definitive verdict on the authenticity of the image and the way would that have an effect on the image’s worth?

The tutorial defined to me that she had searched in useless for additional proof of the elusive publication, and even any point out of it on-line. Nonetheless, Dianne Modestini, the knowledgeable who had devoted so a few years to painstakingly restoring the Salvator Mundi, had, “by a fluke”—as Modestini subsequently advised me—come throughout the guide within the flesh. And never solely that, however she had had an opportunity to scan it and research it intimately. Apparently, the guide had been obtainable, briefly, to buy within the Louvre bookshop in December 2019, through the exhibition’s run, buried amid a pile of exhibition catalogues. This “secret guide” had been innocently acquired for the princely sum of €8.

In fact, I instantly searched on-line for any hint of the guide however turned up nothing. So, my subsequent level of name was the Louvre press workplace. May they inform me concerning the guide and the place I would pay money for it? “No such publication exists,” I used to be advised emphatically. Nonetheless, the spokesperson confirmed that “the guide was a challenge in case the Louvre acquired the prospect to current the portray. As this has not been the case, it isn’t going to be revealed”.

However the printed guide actually existed—as the image accompanying this text reveals—and we quickly had entry to its contents. Our unique report “How the Louvre hid its secret Salvator Mundi guide” was revealed on-line on 31 March 2019 and on the entrance web page of the April print version of The Artwork Newspaper. Right here we revealed the publication’s existence and its conclusions. We additionally found why its emergence was proving such a humiliation to the Louvre, whose acknowledged coverage is “to not touch upon a piece in a personal assortment if the work is not on show in one in all its exhibitions”. And, most importantly, our article additionally quoted an excerpt that confirmed that the curator of the Louvre’s Leonardo retrospective, Vincent Delieuvin, had come down in favour of the portray as autograph.

The guide, additionally, for the primary time, unequivocally acknowledged that the proprietor of the portray was the Ministry of Tradition, Saudi Arabia. This confirmed the New York Occasions 2017 scoop that the profitable bidder at public sale had been a detailed ally of, or proxy for, Saudi Arabia’s Crown Prince. Delieuvin had additionally advised me, prematurely of the Louvre exhibition, that the Louvre have been producing two different variations of the exhibition catalogue: one within the occasion that the Salvator Mundi was loaned to the exhibition, the opposite if the mortgage failed. This was borne out by a leaked proof of the previous, sporting the Saudi Salvator on the quilt, accompanied by its Saudi image credit score. (Within the printed model of {the catalogue}, Cat no.157 is lacking, and the Belle Ferronière adorns the quilt as an alternative.)

Does the key guide comprise the fabric that might have been within the catalogue, if the mortgage had arrived in time for the exhibition opening? This is able to clarify why the fabric within the guide is sort of generalised and fails to face as much as peer scrutiny of the conclusions of the technical research. It feels and appears like a slim catalogue complement.

We due to this fact speculated that the guide could have been ready to assist facilitate the eventual mortgage of the portray by the Saudi Tradition Ministry—a while after the exhibition opening. In a separate piece of investigative journalism, we reported that the French authorities had made an modification to an indemnity decree to permit the image to show up, fashionably late, as much as and together with 31 December 2019—over two months into the exhibition’s run. The guide was printed in Turin that December, so the Louvre will need to have been supremely assured at this level that the image was en route.

So, what occurred in December 2019 to precipitate the sudden withdrawal of the mortgage, and a simultaneous instruction to destroy the copies of the guide? Had the Louvre’s pursuits clashed with the political pursuits of France and its main accomplice Saudi Arabia, within the wake of the homicide of the journalist Jamal Khashoggi? Two acclaimed documentary movies have since come out—The Saviour for Sale (April 2021) and The Misplaced Leonardo (June 2021)—but we’re nonetheless none the wiser. Maybe, because the world’s media turned its consideration to the Khashoggi homicide trial and verdict in December 2019 (with the West universally denouncing it as a whitewash), the politics have been too delicate for Saudi Arabia’s cultural rehabilitation.

The guide resurfaces

From her perusal of the guide, Modestini advised us that the Louvre’s laboratory had examined the portray again in 2018, subjecting it to non-invasive procedures, specifically XRF mapping in addition to new IR scans, X-radiography and photomicrography. She made a plea in our pages for the Louvre to share their high-resolution digital recordsdata, as she believed her personal information could be a helpful part within the all-important interpretation of the scans. However the Louvre’s official line continued to be that the guide did not exist. And the scans could not have been theirs to share….

We returned to the guide once more in January 2021 with an article specializing in its discovering of the late addition of Christ’s “blessing hand” within the image’s evolution, and a brand new US digital evaluation of the portray that claimed to offer additional insights into its authorship. However it was not till just a few days earlier than the screening of the French director Antoine Vitkine’s The Saviour for Sale—premiered on France’s Channel 5 on 13 April—that the Louvre’s secret guide dramatically resurfaced once more.

Within the movie, two nameless officers in President Emmanuel Macron’s authorities make the explosive declare that the state run Musée du Louvre had not solely questioned the attribution of the portray to Leonardo, but in addition that, on this foundation, Macron had taken the choice that the Louvre shouldn’t exhibit the portray as autograph (together with refusing an alleged request to exhibit it alongside the Mona Lisa). In consequence, the mortgage provide from Saudi Arabia was withdrawn. The Louvre’s unfavourable verdict on the portray’s authenticity, the officers mentioned, adopted a “top-secret” examination of the image undertaken by C2RMF in June 2018. (This date coincided with the French authorities issuing a decree of immunity from seizure for the image lasting as much as 3 March 2020.)

However how did that sq. with the Louvre’s optimistic verdict on the Leonardo attribution, as summarised within the suppressed guide? Surprisingly Vitkine’s movie made no point out of the guide, which, as The Artwork Newspaper had reported, additionally offered conclusions primarily based on a secret C2RMF 2018 evaluation.

The Louvre wouldn’t touch upon the movie’s politically damaging revelations, however the contents of the guide “that did not exist” have been out of the blue leaked to a couple choose media shops (notably the New York Occasions) in PDF type, in impact offering the Louvre’s response: that’s comprehensively contradicting the nameless claims made by the French authorities officers in Vitkine’s movie. With the pdfs of the guide now freely circulating on e-mail to any journalist who needed them, we determined it was time to offer an in depth evaluation of the guide, and, for the avoidance of doubt, to checklist its key findings.

We reported that in his preface to the guide, the Louvre’s then President, Jean-Luc Martinez, states unambiguously that “The outcomes of the historic and scientific research offered on this publication permit us to substantiate the attribution of the work to Leonardo da Vinci, an interesting speculation which was initially offered in 2010 and which has generally been disputed. Exhibiting the portray alongside different works by the grasp from the Louvre is due to this fact a significant occasion for research of Leonardo and within the historical past of the museum.” Alas, as we all know, this occasion—which the preface assumes is happening—by no means occurred.

Given this optimistic verdict, we additionally requested Vitkine why he hadn’t talked about the guide in his movie. He defined to us that following our March 2020 revelations, he had contacted Martinez who “defined that the Louvre doesn’t discuss footage that it doesn’t personal, and it would not have the proper to analysis footage that do not belong to nationwide collections.” “The Louvre’s official line,” continued Vitkine, ” is that the guide ‘would not exist’.”

“My movie’s focus, nonetheless,” he defined, “was an investigation right into a political resolution made by Macron in September 2019 [just before the Louvre exhibition opened], so I focused on that. I’m very respectful of the Louvre’s scholarship, and I can not clarify the contradictions between the file that went to Macron regarding the Louvre’s findings [June 2018] and the key guide, which was paid for by Saudi Arabia. I’m assured, nonetheless, that Macron didn’t have entry to [the book] when he made his resolution.” The guide certainly, was solely printed in December 2019, simply previous to its momentary look amid the Christmas bustle of the Louvre bookshop.

It’s now virtually sure that the Louvre guide won’t ever be formally revealed. Its second has handed, although its findings have now been broadly shared. However as a postscript to the saga, The Artwork Newspaper correspondent Martin Bailey reported in an article, that the Madrid museum—in a listing centered by itself early copy of the Mona Lisa—had relegated the Salvator Mundi to the class of “attributed works, workshop or authorised and supervised by Leonardo”, slightly than works by the hand of the grasp.

Vincent Delieuvin, who co-authored the suppressed Louvre guide, had additionally contributed an essay to this catalogue. As Bailey observes, Delieuvin shouldn’t be significantly forthcoming about his personal opinions of the Saudi Salvator Mundi, although he notes that Delieuvin’s essay refers to “particulars of surprisingly poor high quality” and apparently Delieiuvin concludes: “It’s to be hoped {that a} future everlasting show of the work will permit it to be reanalysed with larger objectivity.”

• Learn all of our protection on the Salvator Mundi right here and browse our particular protection on the five-year anniversary of the sale right here