Leonardo da Vinci's Salvator Mundi: the extraordinary journey from artist's studio to the auction house
It was once part of Charles I's Royal collection and then disappeared, re-emerging a century ago and selling for just ￡45.
Leonardo da Vinci's Salvator Mundi (Saviour of the World), which on Wednesday evening became the most expensive painting ever sold, has not had a straight-forward journey from the artist's studio to the auction house.
The haunting oil on panel painting depicts a half-length figure of Christ as Savior of the World, facing frontally and dressed in flowing robes of lapis and crimson.
He holds a crystal orb in his left hand as he raises his right hand in benediction.
Leonardo, who died in 1519, is thought to have painted Salvator Mundi sometime after 1500, during the same period that he produced Mona Lisa and it made its way into the Royal collection of Charles I in the early Seventeenth Century.
It then disappeared in 1763 until 1900, when it was acquired by Sir Charles Robinson, an art collector, for the Cook Collection, Doughty House, Richmond. At the time, the painting was thought to have been by Leonardo's follower, Bernardino Luini.
In 1958 the painting was sold by Sotheby's for just ￡45 and dropped off the grid once again until it showed up in Louisiana in 2005.
It was acquired, badly damaged and partly painted-over, by a consortium of American art dealers who paid less than ￡7,600 ($10,000) for it.
They restored it extensively and documented its authenticity as a work by Leonardo.
The masterpiece was long believed to have existed but was generally presumed to have been destroyed.
In 2011, following six years of investigations, the work was confirmed as a genuine Leonardo work of art and unveiled publicly at the National Gallery - making it the first discovery of a painting by Leonardo since 1909.
Dmitry Rybolovlev, a Russian billionaire, bought it in 2013 for $127.5 million (￡97 million) in a private sale that became the subject of a continuing lawsuit.
Christie's says most scholars agree that the painting is by Leonardo, though some critics have questioned the attribution and some say the extensive restoration muddies the work's authorship.
Loic Gouzer, chairman, post-war and contemporary art at Christie's, New York, said: "Salvator Mundi was painted in the same timeframe as the Mona Lisa, and they bear a patent compositional likeness.
"Leonardo was an unparalleled creative force, and a master of the enigmatic. Standing in front of his paintings, it becomes impossible for one's mind to fully unravel or comprehend the mystery radiating from them - both the Mona Lisa and Salvator Mundi are perfect examples of this.
"No one will ever be able to fully grasp the wonder of Leonardo's paintings, just as no one will ever be able to fully know the origins of the universe."