ABU DHABI: A Leonardo da Vinci painting, sold for a record $450 million last month at a Christie’s auction, made making its way to the Louvre Abu Dhabi, the museum has said. The 500-year-old painting is known as Salvator Mundi means Saviour of the World.
“Da Vinci’s Salvator Mundi is coming to Louvre Abu Dhabi,” the museum said on Twitter in Arabic, English and French, displaying an image of the work.
Auction house Christie’s has declined to identify the buyer of the painting at the time of the auction, but media reports say it was purchased by Saudi Arabia’s Prince Bader bin Abdullah bin Mohammed bin Farhan al-Saud.
The first museum to bear the Louvre name outside France, The Louvre Abu Dhabi opened on November 8 in the presence of French President Emmanuel Macron.
It holds 600 artworks permanently and 300 loaned from France. The museum pays Paris hundreds of millions of dollars for this as well as for the use of the Louvre name and managerial advice, the report said.
