Leonardo da Vinci’s painting, “Saviour of the World,” (‘Salvator Mundi’) sold for $450,312,500 Wednesday at auction at Christie’s in New York to an undisclosed buyer, more than double the old mark for any work of art at auction.
The painting broke the record for most expensive painting ever sold in an auction which was previously held by Picasso’s “Les Femmes d’Alger” (“Women of Algiers”) in 2015.
The bid which started at $240 million soon skyrocketed to as high as $400 million in a bid that lasted for more than 20 minutes, everyone in the room gasped and celebrated as they witnessed history.
The painting is known as Salvator Mundi (Saviour of the World). It shows the European version of Christ holding one hand up as a sign of blessing, while the other hand holds a glass sphere resembling the shape of the earth.
It was earlier reported that the same painting was auctioned out in London in 1958 for just $59 because it was dismissed as a copy.
Speaking on the painting, Dr. Tim Hunter who is an expert in Old Master and 19th Century art said:
“It completely smashes the record for the last Old Masters painting to sell — Van Gogh’s Sunflowers in 1988. Records get broken from time to time but not in this way. Da Vinci painted less than 20 oil paintings and many are unfinished so it’s incredibly rare and we love that in art,” he said.
 sold for $450,312,500 Wednesday at auction at Christie's in New York){kind=link}