The Lost Leonardo

The dazzling tale of the discovery, restoration, art-market furore, and spectacular auction sale of ‘Salvator Mundi’—the painting purported to be by Leonardo da Vinci that was sold to Saudi despot Mohammed bin Salman for $450 million in 2017—is brilliantly told by Danish documentary director Andreas Koefoed. Sure, the film deals with the big question about whether or not the painting is the real thing, but the deeper subject is the sometimes-shady side of the art market and the denizens who make it their world. The cynicism, collusion, greed and power worship on display is nothing short of mind-boggling.

‘An enthralling art-world mystery that only starts by asking: Is it or isn’t It?... One of the… things about a first-rate art-world documentary—and “The Lost Leonardo” is a sensational one—is that it can take the regally forbidding and rarefied world of high-art knowledge, put it on display, and at the same time sweep all that to the side. These movies tell the audience, “The experts aren’t everything—you can also use your own eyes.”’—Owen Gleiberman, Variety