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

(30.1.2023) Here we do a little bit more of fashion history. We will repeat what we have learned: Do we all know the Windsor knot? Yes? Half, full and triple? Okay, and what about the Windsor sleeve? No? But, this is important, for example in Salvator Mundi studies. We already had discussed the Windsor sleeve in November of 2022, but here and now (in January 2023) comes the second of the two new additions to the Salvator Mundi family, and this (second) version, also overlooked, but actually known since early 2020, may be a somewhat inferior version, but also has – and shows the Windsor sleeve.

(Picture: onlineonly.christies.com)

(Picture: twitter.com; Dr Martin Pracher)

Made known by Dr Martin Pracher, early in 2020 on Twitter, this version got perhaps overlooked by some due to the pandemic. But it does obviously show the corpus delicti: a scheme, now known as the Windsor sleeve, that goes back to the Leonardo workshop, and does appear only in the Yarborough version (picture below on the right in black/white), as well as in the recently auctioned version that I have named the Online Only version (small picture on the left) (which, on the other hand, is closely related to the version Ganay (on the right), which does not have a Windsor sleeve.
The best hypothesis for the moment may be – all in all – that we may have to do with an artist who had a link to the Leonardo workshop, an artist like Giampietrino, who, after roughly 1511, began to work autonomously, but also cooperated with other artists, and had an own, and very prolific workshop. Melzi, perhaps another candidate, seems not to have expanded commercially after Leonardo had died, but Giampietrino did. And since Cristina Geddo had attributed the version Ganay to Giampietrino, it seems to be the best explanation of what we see to me, to say that Giampietrino may have produced a Salvator Mundi in the studio of Leonardo, and later was allowed (a sort of franchise system may show here), to produce further versions on his own, and on the basis of workshop drawings that he may have copied (and probably was allowed to copy; given that, perhaps, he may also have paid Leonardo for this sort of franchise; we know of a similar case: it is the case of the Madonna of the Rocks). Other artists, perhaps workshop assistants, perhaps not, may have pursued that track. Which may explain that we see now this obviously inferior version with a Windsor sleeve. Which will probably continue to concern us. Which is why we do need to refresh and to update our background in fashion history.
Oh yes, I almost forgot. The new version was sold, according to Martin Pracher, in Italy in 2018 (for 600 Euro). It is said to have been heavily restored. May it have been restored after the Yarborough version (picture on the right below)? I think that it is more likely that it is a version of the same subgroup. Restored, yes, overall restoration, but obviously closely related to version Yarborough, it is said to have been painted, and this is also important as a clue, by a Lombard artist.

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