Salvator Mundi by Leonardo da Vinci ~ 1500 Foil C Foil Card

Salvator Mundi by Leonardo da Vinci ~ 1500. When the ~ 1500 Leonardo da Vinci ‘Cook Version’ (beautiful all colour blue robe) Salvator Mundi (Saviour of the World / Saviour of the World) magnificently restored oil on walnut panel sold at New York Christie’s Auction 15 November 2017 for the jaw dropping $400 million US with Christie’s Auction fees of $50,312,500 added totalling $450,312,500 … more often stated as sold for over $450.3 million US, I instantly regretted not having studied my art history, particularly Leonardo da Vinci, enough! It was also stated that it was believed that some 75% of Leonardo da Vinci’s known works have been lost or possibly destroyed! Some likely had been destroyed in Leonardo da Vinci’s own lifetime by the evil extremist Christian Florentine Dominican friar monk Girolamo Savonarola who riled up the Florence masses into burning 'deviants' at the stake, burning most precious artworks, burning important books, even forcing artists to burn their own paintings! The masterly restored Salvator Mundi sold for nearly a half billion dollars US. But, you can afford this glowing lamp for your home or for a nice gift. Leonardo da Vinci used the finest grade crushed imported Afghanistan precious stone Lapis Lazuli Utramarine Blue for the robe colour. He used his own hand palms to blend the colours to create the ultra soft look ... his palm prints remaining. He was also known for the spiral curls in his drawings of hair and his note books also had the geometric design used in this painting of the leather straps crossing Christ's front. The hand of the blessing is said to be surely his work. It is believed his workshop created a number of these paintings and another is believed made from the same cartoon with sections reversed (face / nose) with different colours (red and blue) used on the robes. Leonardo drew the cartoons and his workshop boys pricked the cartoons with holes and dusted them to transfer the lines to a wood panel that they had coated in white. While critics say he never did full frontal portraits this was usually how Salvator Mundis were painted by most painters ... and he was known to have painted Salvator Mundis in his own time, so he likely did them the standardised way. Salvator Mundi paintings would show a full frontal Jesus Christ holding the world (mundi) in the left hand and giving blessing with His right hand and with head facing forward. It meant Saviour of the World. It was not unlike Leonardo da Vinci to have an androgynous look. His models were often his workshop boys. One of them Count Francesco Melzi (an actual noble count) remained devoted to Leonardo da Vinci taking care of him in his old age, both given a home under French King Francis I next to his Chateau d'Amboise with a tunnel passage in between so the king could visit them. It was the French court that recorded owning a Salvator Mundi by Leonardo da Vinci which passed to English court with marriage of a French princess Henrietta Maria to an English prince Charles I ... then later belonged to that king's son. Leonardo tried to paint how he imagined Jesus Christ in Salvator Mundi pose might appear to Leonardo out of the darkness. Here, Leonardo uses his famous Sfumato hazy soft look giving more sharpness to the nearer blessing hand. The intricate geometric design on the leather strapping is same as studies found in Leonardo's journals. The magic here is that Leonardo da Vinci was trying to show how he imagined how Jesus Christ would look appearing to him out of darkness in the standard Salvator Mundi / Saviour of the World painting Leonardo da Vinci's patrons paid for ... and this is exactly what this lamp does ... showing Christ appearing out of darkness to you in your home. This lamp will be cherished for generations. Leonardo died in 1519 ... 502 years ago. He not only painted and managed his art workshop, his had a fascination for many interests and ideas. He studied human faces, human proportions, human anatomy, equine (horse) anatomy, light and shadow, light and colour reflections, line and atmospheric (Sfumato) perspective appearance of distant objects or landscape, city planning, cathedral and palace architectural construction and design ideas, military mechanism ideas, birds in flight, possibility of human flight, ideas for humans breathing under water, how to calculate areas under curves, geometry, geometric solids, Golden Proportion (Divine Proportion), studies of swirling water, studies of human hair curls, studies of geometric complicated patterns ... leaving all these in his notes and journals which he willed to Francesco Melzi his younger companion who preserved and saved all these until his own death 51 years later. Francesco Melzi was of high nobility himself but gave up that life to study under and care for Leonardo da Vinci from young age. We are thankful that he did.