SPECIAL EDITION

(29.5.2023) Roughly two years after it has become obvious (to informed people in the Leonardo field) that the Salvator Mundi authentication was never based on adequate scholarship (to put it mildly), I find it necessary to sum up where and why this authentication went wrong and did fail. Did it fail?, you might ask, adding: but half of the world still seems to believe in it. To this my answer is: yes, but to maintain the claim that we see an wholly autograph picture done by Leonardo da Vinci, you would have to start from scratch. Because this attribution is virtually falsified. Which means that you can still try to maintain it, but you would have to do this, despite of having to admit that the research was not adequate (to put it mildly), and you would have to do this against (what I believe to be is) better knowledge. And why do we not hear more on this situation in the field, as it presents itself to an informed scholar? Because what the world (journalists, curators, average people and so on) does not know, is that whoever was responsible for that attribution was lacking an adequate awareness for the problems of attribution, and thus was not able to handle this question of attribution adequately (and this includes all the Leonardo ›authorities‹ in the field, the people that journalists without adequate knowledge turn to, to have explained to them what the situation in the field is). And this state is still the current state in the field. And this is why it seems, and why it in fact is necessary to sum up where and why the authentication did fail.

1) On Where the Authentication Did Fail

The key passage is on page 49 in Dalivalle / Kemp / Simon 2019 (see reference below). This does not mean that the authentication did fail on this page. It does mean that it is enough to quote from page 49 to understand why the authentication process did go wrong. The passage reads:

»All the other versions of the composition, now numbering over twenty, as well as Hollar’s etching, consistently portrayed the thumb bent to the left. We tried and failed to come up with an explanation other than the most obvious one: that this first placement of the thumb was a pentimento, an initial idea for the orientation of the thumb, one never fully completed, but carried out in pink underpaint and later obscured by the background once the final position of the thumb had been determined.«

›We tried and failed to come up with an explanation other than the most obvious one‹. My commentary to this is: it is very easy to come up with an alternative explanation for the pentimento in version Cook, but it certainly (as I am assuming) was not wanted. Because it is an explanation that undermines the claim that we see, with version Cook, the prototype for all other versions. And my alternative explanation I have developed, roughly two years ago (in my book, chapter 9, and also in chapter 28, see links below) after noting that a Blessing Christ in the Hermitage, which is dated 1495, does show an upright thumb, and not one bent to the left. The question is: was this a version earlier than version Cook? Which would mean that the pentimento in version Cook might be only a shift from one pattern to the other, with both patterns having existed before version Cook. And the question is: are you able to rule that mere possibility out? And the answer is: for almost two years now we have heard nothing on that matter. The whole Leonardo field, in fact, would have to concede that the field did not know that picture in the Hermitage. And either you can include this picture in your narrative, or everything that has been claimed in the past 12 years is obsolete. (And in addition to that one has to say that there is also no adequate Leonardo da Vinci oeuvre catalogue, currently, a professional catalogue that would include versions, copies, follower’s works, and so on, a catalogue that would, among other things, serve the purpose, that one would not be surprised to find such pictures as the Hermitage Blessing Christ, a picture that the Hermitage did not put on actual display, but neither did the Hermitage, one of the most important museums in the world, hide it away).

Now we come to the question of where exactly the authentication did go wrong: it went wrong because there was no one, among the experts consulted, who was able to question the idea that version Cook, because of the pentimento, might have been a prototype. Which means: on every occasion it was still possible, based on critical thinking, to question the interpretation of the pentimento as the one main reason to think of an autograph picture, this did not happen. Because there was no one who thought of this possibility, for whatever reason (with the main reason being, as I am assuming, that there was no one with an adequate understanding of attributional problems, with an awareness also, of the risks in handling attributional questions). The answer to ›where‹ is thus: whereever there was the possibility to still apply critical thinking and to come up with ›an explanation other‹, which means: an alternative interpretation of the pentimento (such as the one I have suggested two years ago).

What happened was probably that, in the frame of a coalition of interests, individuals did confirm each other in the belief to see an autograph picture. No one did question the interpretation of the pentimento (also Martin Kemp does confirm it, in Dalivalle / Kemp / Simon, on p. 97, instead of questioning it). With the result that the individuals responsible did not even pubblish a scholarly explanation that would be an adequate base for the attribution. Because what we have is a diverse salad made of one apparently scholarly book, published in 2019 (see below), which, yet, does not seek to explain the attribution, but rather seems to take it for granted (which is the opposite of: questioning); further: a website by the restorer, a press release, an exhibition catalogue (National Gallery, London), a sales catalogue (for the 2017 auction), and so on. This diverse mix does represent the aforementioned coalition of interests, in which critical thinking was underrepresented. Which explains the mess we have today, with no one wanting to react to most substantial doubts, leading to the question that the initial pentimento interpretation might have been wrong.

(At this point I am referring again to my book, chapter 9 and 28, which means, to informations, to an argument available now for almost two years)

2) On Why the Authentication Did Fail

The authentication, based on a couple of other arguments (beyond the pentimento argument), did fail, because all these ›couple of arguments‹ are falsified or virtually falsified (with almost no one, obviously, taking notice that they are). These arguments include the claim that Hollar, in his now famous etching, does, allegedly, represent version Cook. This argument I consider to be falsified (see annex 1 to my book, with link below; as well as my essay on the Fontainebleau Group; see as well link below). But it is in fact the whole narrative that was built on the interpretation of the pentimento, a narrative represented by Martin Kemp, and being represented in Dalivalle / Kemp / Simon 2019, it is the whole narrative that is virtually falsified, and this despite all the erudition displayed in this book, because this erudition works only in the service of this one narrative which was never seriously questioned. Which would be the purpose of scholarship: to question things, to test hypotheses (as well as alternative hypotheses), and not to rule serious alternatives out right from the beginning (which leads only to the establishing of ideologies). But the book only seeks to manifest and to develop this one direction, and the tragic of this book is, that there is most serious reason to believe that there are other directions, of which the authors have taken no notice at all, and do not want to take notice, because it would mean to concede that the whole construction, the whole narrative the book is based on, and which it does further unfold, might be wrong.

The provenance narrative that is developed in this book might be useful in its own right, but there is serious reason to believe that it is not the provenance of version Cook (for all this see my two contributions on the Fontainebleau group, with links below). Which, all in all, makes me say, that the authentication process went wrong, and it did fail, because to maintain the claim that we see a wholly autograph picture by Leonardo, a picture that was represented by Hollar in an etching, and a picture that was in the possession of Henriette Maria, Queen of England (and taken to the court of Charles I), to maintain that claim you would have to rule every serious doubt out. And this did never happen, not before 2011, not after 2011, and not after I did publish my findings. Findings that people with no adequate understanding for questions of attribution might think not to be important. But it is wrong to think that these findings are not important. And scholarship is based on the distinction of right and wrong; it is not meant to produce ideologies, but to question things seriously, especially if there are reasons for very serious doubts. And here, in this case, there are plenty of such reasons.

One last word on the mantra that this picture, version Cook, does have a ›presence‹, and that Leonardos do have a ›presence‹. On this subjective feel attributions cannot be based on, and certainly not Leonardo attributions, because in countless cases in the past, people have thought that a picture had a ›presence‹, and that Leonardos do have a ›presence‹ (implying that only Leonardos do have this ›presence‹). Bernard Berenson, among these people, did once think that. And all these people, including Bernard Berenson, turned out to be wrong. Serious scholarship does ask, if also a picture by Francesco Melzi, if shown in appropriate light, might have a ›presence‹. This would mean to think in alternative hypotheses, and this is what the essence of scholarship is: not to produce ideologies and not allow ideologies to be produced.

Selected Literature:
Margaret Dalivalle / Martin Kemp / Robert B. Simon, Leonardo’s Salvator Mundi & the Collecting of Leonardo in the Stuart Courts, Oxford 2019

Some Salvator Mundi Resources

Here is an overview concerning my contributions to Salvator Mundi studies and research (since 2016). In 2021 I did publish my book A New Salvator Mundi History on this website (see the 32 chapters with the two annexes below). The essays and notes I did write earlier, as well as the essays and notes published since then, appear seperately, under the header ›Early Essays and Notes‹, respectively ›Recent Essays and Notes‹.

Early Essays and Notes


A Salvator Mundi Provenance (2016; additions in 2017 and later)

Leonardeschi Gold Rush

Some Salvator Mundi Microstories (2018)

Some Salvator Mundi Afterthoughts (2019)

Some Salvator Mundi Variations

Some Salvator Mundi Revisions (2019)

A Salvator Mundi Geography (2019/20)

A Salvator Mundi Atlas (2020)

The Bias of Superficiality

A Salvator Mundi Questionnaire

A New Salvator Mundi History


A Salvator Mundi Puzzle (chapter 1)

Unknown Melzi (chapter 2)

Francis I and the Crown of Charlemagne (chapter 3)

From Amboise to Fontainebleau (chapter 4)

Drones Above Chambord (chapter 5)

Looking Back at Conques (chapter 6)

Flaubert At Fontainebleau (chapter 7)

Images of Imperial Ideology (chapter 8)

The Chronicles of Santa Maria delle Grazie (chapter 9)

SeeingRightThroughSomeone (chapter 10)

Melzi the Secretary (chapter 11)

Eying Glass (chapter 12)

A Foil to the Mona Lisa (chapter 13)

A Renaissance of the Cartoon (chapter 14)

Sketching a Family Tree (chapter 15)

Venetian Variations (chapter 16)

A Brief History of Digital Restoring (chapter 17)

A Consortium of Painters (chapter 18)

Leonardeschi and Landscape (chapter 19)

A Christ In Profile (chapter 20)

Learning to See in Spanish Milan (chapter 21)

A History of Gestures (chapter 22)

Leonardo and Josquin (chapter 23)

A Renaissance of the Hybrid (chapter 24)

Suida and Heydenreich (chapter 25)

The Watershed (chapter 26)

Three Veils (chapter 27)

From BeginningToEnd (chapter 28)

Connoisseurship of AI (chapter 29)

Twilight and Enlightenment (chapter 30)

A SalvatorMundiGeography (annex 1)

A SalvatorMundiAtlas (annex 2)

Recent Essays and Notes


The Salvator Mundi in Bruegel and Rubens

Some Salvator Mundi Documentaries

Some More Salvator Mundi Monkey Business

The Windsor Sleeve

Art Historians and Historians

Five Fallacies in Attribution

A Salvator Mundi Chronicle

Salvator Mundi Scholarship in 2016

The Salvator Mundi and the French Revolution

Treasure Hunt

The Fontainebleau Group

Leonardo da Vinci at the Courts

The Fontainebleau Group Continued

The Windsor Sleeve Continued

The Salvator Mundi in Early Netherlandish Painting 1

A New Salvator Mundi Questionnaire

The Last Bruegel

The Yarborough Group

The Yarborough Group Continued

A Salvator Mundi Global History

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