This documentary is a fine piece of investigative reporting. It describes the adventures of the "Salvator Mundi" (Savior of the World) painting which, after many years of relative obscurity, was attributed to Leonardo himself - perhaps rightly, perhaps wrongly. Thanks to this new attribution its value rose to stellar heights, causing it to become "the most expensive painting in the world".
In "Salvator" the enquiry into the painting's fate moves all over the world, just like the painting itself. (Monaco, you will be pleased to learn, fully lives up to its reputation as a haven for foreign oligarchs accompanied by bodyguards in black sunglasses.) It's a frankly unsettling tale about hype, secrecy, backbiting, conspicious consumption, inequality and ill-gotten gains.
And of course "Salvator" also questions the generalized obsession with Great Names. Why should a painting by Leonardo himself command a price in the telephone numbers range ? And why should a painting by one of his collaborators or pupils fetch a far lower price ?
Viewers with a cynical streak can organize a drinking game on the theme : if the world were righteous and just, who, among the people introduced in the documentary, would have disappeared into prison somewhere after the age of twenty-five ? I recognized several deserving candidates.
In "Salvator" the enquiry into the painting's fate moves all over the world, just like the painting itself. (Monaco, you will be pleased to learn, fully lives up to its reputation as a haven for foreign oligarchs accompanied by bodyguards in black sunglasses.) It's a frankly unsettling tale about hype, secrecy, backbiting, conspicious consumption, inequality and ill-gotten gains.
And of course "Salvator" also questions the generalized obsession with Great Names. Why should a painting by Leonardo himself command a price in the telephone numbers range ? And why should a painting by one of his collaborators or pupils fetch a far lower price ?
Viewers with a cynical streak can organize a drinking game on the theme : if the world were righteous and just, who, among the people introduced in the documentary, would have disappeared into prison somewhere after the age of twenty-five ? I recognized several deserving candidates.
