[imagesource: AFP]

The ‘Salvator Mundi’ strikes again, this time elucidating the darker side of the art world.

This 500-year-old painting, which is also the world’s most expensive, is caught in the middle of the biggest legal fight that the art world has ever witnessed.

It’s a Russian oligarch, Dmitry Rybolovlev, versus a Swiss art dealer and freeport storage magnate, Yves Bouvier.

Rybolovlev has a few cases against Bouvier after he claims he was ripped off buying multimillion-dollar masterpieces sold to him by Bouvier over the course of a decade.

Meanwhile, Bouvier is preparing his own billion-dollar damage countersuit against Rybolovlev for ruining his reputation and business.

The dramatic saga is now being referred to as the “Bouvier Affair,” CNN reports.

Many people in the art industry question the authenticity of the painting, including some who tried to gain a profit from its sale, like Bouvier.

He used a markup of more than 50% when he sold the painting to Rybolovlev, buying it for $80 million and selling it on to Rybolovlev for $127,5 million, taking 1% of the profit.

But it seems Bouvier communicated his doubts about the painting with Rybolovlev before the purchase:

Emails shared with CNN by Bouvier appear to show communication between Bouvier and a representative of Rybolovlev in which the dealer advised his client in 2013 that the work was a thing of beauty but not a good investment.

It was so heavily restored, the dealer wrote, that experts doubted the work was entirely completed by Leonardo himself, and neither the Vatican nor any major world museum had expressed interest in acquiring it.

Despite this, the Russian oligarch then auctioned off the painting to Bader bin Abdullah bin Mohammed bin Farhan al-Saud, a little-known Saudi prince, who bought the painting for a whopping $450 million in 2017.

It’s now believed that Saudi Arabia’s Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman is the owner of the painting.

This rigmarole has clearly done very little for these two men, but it has shed light on the many problems regulators have identified with the soaring global art market:

Namely, that art, in the wrong hands, has become yet another commodity to move money with little accountability.

A recent documentary about the controversies that surround the painting, The Savior for Sale, tells of how Prince bin Salman demanded that the ‘Salvator Mundi’ be displayed next to the ‘Mona Lisa’ in order to solidify its place as an authentic Leonardo (even though nobody can be sure that is indeed the work of the Italian master):

The French government ultimately decided not to exhibit the painting under the Saudis’ conditions, which the anonymous official says in the film “would be akin to laundering a piece that cost $450 million.”

It seems too easy for well-to-dos to exploit the art world opacity and the public fight between Bouvier and Rybolovlev is lifting the veil on the art market’s ugly side.

Ben Lewis (his 2019 book, The Last Leonardo, details the drama surrounding the ‘Salvator Mundi) notes that parts of the art world have developed a rocky reputation for its way of doing business:

“The Bouvier Affair is a classic example of what can go wrong in the secretive, opaque, and — in inverted commas — discreet art market,” said Lewis…

“Opacity, lack of transparency, greed, tax evasion, money laundering, art historical dishonesty, dissembling, disingenuousness, corruption. I mean, where does it end?”

On the other hand, art collector and expert Kenny Schachter says the ways of the industry cannot be decided on how just one painting has been handled:

“The fact that people always say the art world is so unregulated and has a dark side is a bit of an exaggeration,” said Schachter, in a phone interview with CNN, adding that art isn’t any more corrupt than other industries involving multi-million-dollar deals, such as real estate, jewellery, and banking.

“No matter what it is, when there is a lot of money, there is going to be bad actions.”

Well, anyway, Lewis seems to sum it up quite well by saying that “behind the most beautiful objects often lie the ugliest of motives.”

[source:cnn]