A copy of the famous 16^th century art work ‘Salvator Mundi’, which was reportedly stolen, has recently been recovered by the Police in Italy. The painting is attributed to whom among the following ?

Correct — D, (d) Leonardo da Vinci. 'Salvator Mundi', the Saviour of the World, shows Christ in Renaissance robes with the right hand raised in benediction and a transparent crystal orb held in the left; the original is attributed to Leonardo da Vinci and dated to about 1499 to 1510. The news the stem is built on broke in January 2021, when police in Naples recovered a copy of the painting, made early in the sixteenth century, from a flat in the city. It belonged to the Doma museum of the Basilica of San Domenico Maggiore in Naples, and the detail that made the story travel is that nobody had reported it missing — the museum had been closed through the pandemic and the theft went unnoticed until the recovery. The occupant of the flat was detained after telling investigators he had bought the picture casually at a market. The museum credits its copy to Girolamo Alibrandi, a painter of the Leonardo school, and the stem is careful about exactly this point: it asks who 'the painting is attributed to', which is the original's attribution, not the copyist's name. Two further facts anchor the item. The word 'attributed' is the correct one for the original too, because Leonardo's authorship of it has been argued over by scholars, some of whom read it as substantially the work of his workshop after heavy restoration. And the reason a stolen copy was worth a news cycle at all is the price of the original: it sold at Christie's in New York on 15 November 2017 for 450.3 million dollars including fees, the highest sum ever paid for a painting at auction, bought by Prince Badr bin Abdullah, reportedly acting for the Saudi Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman.

Why the others are wrong

• (a)Vincent van Gogh — Vincent van Gogh, 1853 to 1890, was a Dutch Post-Impressionist working three and a half centuries after this painting was made, and nothing in his output resembles a devotional Renaissance panel. His examinable works are 'The Potato Eaters', 'Sunflowers', 'The Starry Night' and the series of self-portraits, and the biographical facts a general-ability paper reaches for are that he sold almost nothing in his lifetime and was supported by his brother Theo. The chronology in the stem is the check that disposes of him without any knowledge of the picture: the question says sixteenth century, and an artist of the late nineteenth cannot have painted it. On an art item, read the date in the stem before reading the names.
• (b)Pablo Picasso — Pablo Picasso, 1881 to 1973, was a Spanish painter and sculptor who, with Georges Braque, founded Cubism, and his best-known works are 'Les Demoiselles d'Avignon' of 1907 and 'Guernica' of 1937, painted in response to the bombing of the Basque town during the Spanish Civil War. He is separated from this painting by four centuries and by everything about how he painted. Like the van Gogh option, he is disposed of by the century printed in the stem, and the presence of two such options is a small piece of examiner's design: they let a candidate who knows only the rough dates of famous artists cut the field in half before having to think about the picture itself.
• (c)Michelangelo — Michelangelo Buonarroti, 1475 to 1564, is the option that actually requires knowledge, because he is the one contemporary in the list — a High Renaissance master working in the same decades as Leonardo and often set against him as a rival. The Sistine Chapel ceiling, painted between 1508 and 1512, the 'David' and the 'Pieta' are his, and he thought of himself first as a sculptor. But 'Salvator Mundi' is not among his works and never has been; it belongs to Leonardo, and the copies of it that survive were made by followers and pupils of Leonardo rather than by Michelangelo or his circle. A candidate who has reduced the list to the two Renaissance names has done the useful half of the work and then needs the specific fact.

The topic is European art history at the level a general-ability paper uses it: which famous work belongs to which famous name, and roughly when. The organising idea worth carrying is the High Renaissance in Italy, the decades around 1500, where three names dominate — Leonardo da Vinci, Michelangelo and Raphael — and a fourth, Titian, works in Venice. Leonardo's painted output is unusually small, with fewer than twenty works generally accepted as his, which is why each one is so heavily discussed: the 'Mona Lisa' in the Louvre, 'The Last Supper' painted on the refectory wall of Santa Maria delle Grazie in Milan, the 'Virgin of the Rocks', and the drawing known as 'Vitruvian Man'. 'Salvator Mundi' is the most contested of them, and that contest is the second idea here. An attribution is a scholarly judgement about who made a work, not a fact printed on it; it can be argued, revised and reversed, and a painting can be 'attributed to' a master, given to his workshop, or called a copy after him. The Naples picture illustrates the whole ladder — it is a copy, made in the same period, credited by its museum to a named follower, of an original whose own attribution to Leonardo is still argued over.

Key facts

• 'Salvator Mundi', meaning Saviour of the World, is attributed to Leonardo da Vinci and dated to about 1499 to 1510; it shows Christ raising the right hand in blessing and holding a transparent orb in the left.
• In January 2021 Italian police recovered an early sixteenth-century copy of the painting from a flat in Naples; it belonged to the Doma museum of the Basilica of San Domenico Maggiore, and the theft had gone unnoticed because the museum was shut in the pandemic.
• The museum credits its copy to Girolamo Alibrandi, a painter of the Leonardo school, so the copyist and the artist of the original are two different names — and the stem asks about the original's attribution.
• The original sold at Christie's in New York on 15 November 2017 for 450.3 million dollars including fees, the highest price ever paid for a painting at auction; the buyer, Prince Badr bin Abdullah, is reported to have acted for the Saudi Crown Prince.
• Leonardo da Vinci, 1452 to 1519, left fewer than twenty paintings generally accepted as his, among them the 'Mona Lisa' in the Louvre and 'The Last Supper' in Santa Maria delle Grazie at Milan; he was also an anatomist, engineer and notebook-keeper.
• Michelangelo, 1475 to 1564, was Leonardo's contemporary and the painter of the Sistine Chapel ceiling between 1508 and 1512, as well as the sculptor of the 'David' and the 'Pieta' — which is what makes him the only demanding distractor in this list.

Common traps

• Answering with the copyist rather than the artist. The news story is about a copy credited to a follower of Leonardo, but the stem asks whom the painting is attributed to, which is a question about the original.
• Ignoring the century printed in the stem. 'Sixteenth century' by itself removes van Gogh and Picasso, so a candidate who reads it is choosing between two names instead of four before knowing anything about the picture.
• Treating an attribution as settled fact. Leonardo's authorship of 'Salvator Mundi' is a scholarly judgement that has been disputed, which is exactly why careful stems use the word 'attributed'.
• Filing a news item under its transient details. The arrest and the flat are gone within weeks; the artist, the auction record and the museum are the parts that get asked about afterwards.

• practice — not a real PYQ

  'The Last Supper', the mural painted on the refectory wall of the convent of Santa Maria delle Grazie at Milan, is the work of which one of the following artists ?

  • (a)Raphael
  • (b)Leonardo da Vinci
  • (c)Michelangelo
  • (d)Titian

  Answer(b) Leonardo da Vinci

• practice — not a real PYQ

  The ceiling of the Sistine Chapel in the Vatican, painted between 1508 and 1512, was the work of whom among the following ?

  • (a)Leonardo da Vinci
  • (b)Sandro Botticelli
  • (c)Michelangelo
  • (d)Caravaggio

  Answer(c) Michelangelo