Why is Salman hesitating to display a painting he bought for half a billion dollars at the Louvre?

London :

Opens in the French Louvre Museum exhibition of the work of the teacher and artist Italian Leonardo Da Vinci, to mark the 500 years of his death, the problem for the Trustees of the French museum and those on the big show is the absence of the painting "Salvator Mundi" or "Christ the Savior of the world , " which was sold by auction in 2017 worth $ 450 million, they have asked their mysterious owner to be offered but hesitant.

For this reason, the painting will not be on display, according to a Washington Post report by Sebastian Smy. Sami quoted Vincent Delphine and Louis Frank as saying they had asked for the painting from its owner, believed to be Prince Mohammed bin Salman (the same CIA said had ordered the killing of journalist Jamal Khashoggi in Istanbul). Since it was sold at Christie's at a fancy price, there has been much controversy over the proportion of the painting for Da Vinci, where some said it was painted in his studio and did not paint it himself.

The Leonardo da Vinci exhibition will open in a few days, but the museum's spokeswoman Celine Delphine says: "We are still waiting for the answer." The silence on the part of the new owner is painful and difficult to understand. The owner may have been worried about the repercussions of lending the painting, and was waiting for assurances from the museum before that.

The majority of the artist's experts say that Da Vinci painted the painting "Christ the Savior of the Year," at least the majority. Others were not convinced that it was the artist who painted the painting, which was in poor condition, and it took a number of years to restore it in order to be suitable for display. The panel finds that the painting is the work of one of his assistants or students.

If the painting is displayed in the Louvre and presented as part of the Da Vinci Collection, this would be a recognition from a world-renowned art reference, especially since the museum has five paintings by the artist, including the Mona Lisa.

But the museum curators, who planned to display the painting in the “Teacher Circle” section, not one of its real works, reserved the right to place Salvatore Mondi in the place they saw fit. Delphine said last month in an interview with the French newspaper Le Figaro that if the painting arrived, "we will say what we saw and whether Leonardo participated or not."

The newspaper's opinion that the museum's decision to display it, if it happens within the work of the artist or that it is the product of his studio, will have significant repercussions on the evaluation of the painting. Mohammed bin Salman, if he were the real owner of the painting, did not want to expose what he bought to this danger. In this case, the painting “Christ the Savior of the World” will remain out of sight, perhaps in his yacht “Serene” or in a closet in Switzerland.

The writer asks why the painting disappeared despite international attention to it, and the inability of an influential art institution such as the Louvre to obtain information about its fate.

The story of the painting is easy to tell. Twelve years ago it was sold at Christie's in New Orleans and was bought by Robert Simon and Alex Parrish, who paid $ 1.175 million.

Ben Lewis, an art critic who wrote a book on the painting, commented that there is no work whose price has risen as fast as the painting of Christ the Savior of the World. The decision of the National Museum of Art in London to display the painting in 2011 within the exhibition of the work of Da Vinci is another turning point in the life of the painting, especially as experts remained reluctant to accept it within his heritage.

The decision was to give her life and facilitate her sale in the art market. The curator of the exhibition, Locke Susson, told Lewis that "the way the viewer communicates, although the technical information about it is important," is "a work that hovers between our world and the spirit world."

But this was not enough to show it in Da Vinci's work.

He did not ask to confirm the painting's percentage for Da Vinci and there was no official discussion in which observations were taken. After the meeting, the writer told the museum director that the five agreed that the painting was a true work of Da Vinci. Lewis later revealed that the five did not agree that the painting was for Da Vinci. One Italian objected that their words were taken as consent.

Two years after the London Museum, Simon and Paris sold the painting to a person named Yoff Beauvoir for $ 75 million, and days later sold it to Russian Dmitry Repolovyev for $ 127.5 million.

Two years later Ribuloviev put the painting at Christie's auction and was initially sold for $ 70 million, and when it reached 90 million it seemed as if the sale had stopped, then its price went up.

Kim was watching the auction online and expected the auction to stop at $ 110 million, "so I went to sleep," he told the newspaper "Art", but discovered in the morning that the painting earned a fictional amount. He says it is in a different context of Da Vinci's work, which is true, an interesting case, but the question of its attribution to Da Vinci remains a complex one, and there are several reasons to doubt it or accept it as part of his work.

500 years after his death, museums in the world are racing to get his work, and even the Louvre struggled to get work for the next exhibition, there are between 13-15 paintings of the artist. Failure to display the "Christ the Savior of the World" at the Louvre may be a blow to anyone who blames him for setting conditions on how to exhibit in light of the role played by the London Exhibition in 2011 despite the uncertainties surrounding it.