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MICROSTORY OF ART ONLINE JOURNAL FOR ART, CONNOISSEURSHIP AND CULTURAL JOURNALISM The Windsor Sleeve

(28.11.2022) Why not doing a little bit of fashion history? While so-called experts still seem to marvel about the so-called Yarborough Salvator Mundi version (because it has a sleeve that derives from one of the Windsor preparatory drawings), Christie’s has yet auctioned another version. Which also has a sleeve derived from the Windsor sleeve (which the famous version Cook has not). And this new version – I am calling it the Online Only version – is closely linked to the so-called Ganay version (that represented the Salvator Mundi family in the recent big Leonardo show at the Louvre). What on earth do we make of all of that?

(Picture: onlineonly.christies.com)

On the left we see the new Online Only version. On the right we see Ganay (it is falsely labelled on Wikipedia as the Naples version, which is still another one), and below on the right is Yarborough (only in black and white, with present whereabouts unknown).
The new version raises various questions: if Christie’s is right in dating it around 1600, how was it possible to paint a Windsor sleeve (it is not an exact Windsor sleeve, just as the Yarborough sleeve is not an exact Windsor sleeve, but it is derived from Windsor, as seen above)?
One possible answer is: beause someone copied another version with one. Or: someone had a preparatory drawing available, or even the original preparatory drawing. But: the new version is also very close to Ganay, which all experts seem to think as being a workshop version (one has attributed it to Giampietrino). So the question must be: how was it possible to paint a version with a Windsor sleeve – a version that also was and is close to Ganay (which, however has a sleeve that is not derived from the Windsor drawing).
One has to draw various conclusions here:
a) the recent excitement about the Yarborough version was at best naive; because here we have another version – much better than Yarborough – which would also claim its right to be linked with the Leonardo workshop, due to its sleeve having been derived from Windsor;
b) a possible explanation for the existence of that new version might be that preparatory designs, cartoons, drawings, were still in circulation, around 1600;
c) but if such materials were still in circulation, they must have been in circulation earlier; and it shows, again, that the theory of a protoype and many copies is outdated (and was very naive as well); the situation, the bigger picture, is more complex; a basic design existed (probably a cartoon), it multiplied, with single elements (like hand, sleeve, and so on), covered by single drawings, multiplying in their own right;
d) but since the new version is also close to the Ganay version, one has to consider that the dating is wrong and that it could be earlier than 1600; because: why would someone who might have copied the Ganay version go back to the Windsor sleeve?
e) Finally: might it be that it is the other way round: that Yarborough is derived from Online Only, and hence to be dated later? We have to consider that possibility as well, and would see, again, that the recent short-sighted excitement about Yarborough has to be questioned in itself – along with Yarborough.

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