The Last Leonardo by Ben Lewis

Author:Ben Lewis
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: HarperCollins Publishers
Published: 2019-03-21T21:20:42+00:00

The restoration troubles Frank Zöllner, and adds to his hesitation about making a decisive call on the painting’s attribution, especially without proper documentation of the restoration process. ‘I would need to see photographs of every stage of the restoration – before, during and after – in order to be able to properly assess whether this is a Leonardo or a Modestini,’ he says. ‘I have only partly been able to study any high-resolution, infrared or X-ray photographs of the Salvator Mundi. What Simon has released so far has not been sufficient. It looks to me like certain parts of the painting, like the light on the hands and the face, are painted in such detail that they have work by Leonardo in them, but they were also probably mostly painted by assistants or repainted by Modestini.’

The German art historian’s reaction to the fact that Modestini had restored the orb in the painting by studying that in a photograph of the Naples Salvator Mundi is astonishment: ‘You cannot do a restoration after a photograph of a second-class painting!’

Simon had sent Zöllner some photographs of the painting in various states: one from 2005 (taken with a mobile phone) which showed it as it was when Simon bought it; the cleaned version from 2006, when all the over-paint had been removed; a 2008 shot from when the painting was shown to the Leonardists in London, with two thumbs visible; another from 2011, after it had been restored and was to be shown in the National Gallery exhibition; and finally the Christie’s photograph from 2017. When Zöllner enlarged the images and placed them in sequence, they revealed alterations in the folds in the blue drapery on the right shoulder. In each one they varied in number, thickness and shape.

‘Look how they have changed!’ Zöllner exclaimed to me. ‘In the cleaned photograph, very little detail in the folds is visible, and the garment looks fold-free next to the curls of the hair. In 2008, deep, shadowy creases emerge across the whole shoulder. These new creases bear a strong resemblance to the folds in the shoulder in Wenceslaus Hollar’s print of the painting. As if Modestini restored the picture to look more like the Hollar print.’ In the 2011 post-restoration photograph the creases are neatened up. However, another major change comes in 2017, evident in Christie’s photograph for the auction, when suddenly the folds look reduced and simplified. ‘If you look carefully at these images, it’s clear that the painting has been altered since its first public presentation in 2011. The photograph of 2011 shows, in the right half of the picture (i.e. on Christ’s left shoulder), a whole series of drapery folds of differentiated shapes. But if you look at the photograph taken in 2017, you can see a reduced number of simplified drapery folds. Their course beneath the orb has also been simplified and is less visible. These comparisons prove that even after its exhibition in 2011, and during the period in which it

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