Check Out This Painting Of Jesus By Leonardo Da Vinci That Was Sold For $450.3 million (Photo)

Leonardo Da Vinci’s painting of Jesus has been sold for a whopping sum of $450.3 million. Unbelievable!

Do you know that this Leonardo Da Vinci masterpiece once went for £45 in London? But now it has been sold again for $450.3 million (£340 million, €382 million).

Salvator Mundi, the long-lost Leonardo da Vinci painting of Jesus Christ commissioned by King Louis XII of France more than 500 years ago, has sold at Christie’s in New York for $450.3 million (€382 million), including auction house premium, shattering the world record for any work of art sold at auction.

The Italian master’s painting of Jesus went for four times its estimate after a furious 20-minute telephone bidding war in New York.

Leonardo Da Vinci’s painting of Jesus is the most expensive artwork ever sold following its sale in the Big Apple overnight but some experts still think the buyer could have been diddled. A mystery bidder coughed up more than a third of a billion pounds to win the ‘Salvator Mundi’, Sun UK reports.

A painting that for years had been dismissed as the work of one of Da Vinci’s students.

The image spent most of its life in London after being painted in 1506, being owned by King Charles II before eventually ending up in the hands of art collector Sir Francis Cook.

It was sold by London’s Sotheby’s auction house in 1958 for less than fifty quid because experts refused to believe Da Vinci painted it.

Christie’s, which sold the work, earned £38million for its role in the sale
But after being examined by experts 15 years ago, it was agreed the Venetian genius had created the work – named Saviour of the World in English.

It gradually changed hands, being sold for £7,500, £58 million and then £97 million after being bought by Russian billionaire Dmitry Rybolovlev in 2013.

Christie’s, which sold the work, earned £38million for its role in the sale.

It overtakes Willem de Kooning’s Interchange – which sold for £228million in 2015 – as the most expensive artwork in history.

Yet even now some art critics are convinced it was not painted by polymath Da Vinci
It labelled the work as “the greatest artistic rediscovery of the 20th century”.

Yet even now some art critics are convinced it was not painted by polymath Da Vinci.

Jenny Shaltz told Vulture.com: “Any private collector who gets suckered into buying this picture and places it in their apartment or storage, it serves them right.”

Da Vinci’s Salvator Mundi painting sold for 100 million a while back.