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    The Last Leonardo: The Secret Lives of the World's Most Expensive Painting
    Unavailable
    The Last Leonardo: The Secret Lives of the World's Most Expensive Painting
    Unavailable
    The Last Leonardo: The Secret Lives of the World's Most Expensive Painting
    Audiobook12 hours

    The Last Leonardo: The Secret Lives of the World's Most Expensive Painting

    Written by Ben Lewis

    Narrated by Peter Noble

    ()

    Currently unavailable

    Currently unavailable

    About this audiobook

    An epic quest exposes hidden truths about Leonardo da Vinci's Salvator Mundi, the recently discovered masterpiece that sold for $450 million-and might not be the real thing.

    In 2017, Leonardo da Vinci's small oil painting the Salvator Mundi was sold at auction. In the words of its discoverer, the image of Christ as savior of the world is "the rarest thing on the planet." Its $450 million sale price also makes it the world's most expensive painting.

    For two centuries, art dealers had searched in vain for the Holy Grail of art history: a portrait of Christ as the Salvator Mundi by Leonardo da Vinci. Many similar paintings of greatly varying quality had been executed by Leonardo's assistants in the early sixteenth century. But where was the original by the master himself? In November 2017, Christie's auction house announced they had it. But did they?

    The Last Leonardo tells a thrilling tale of a spellbinding icon invested with the power to make or break the reputations of scholars, billionaires, kings, and sheikhs. Ben Lewis takes us to Leonardo's studio in Renaissance Italy; to the court of Charles I and the English Civil War; to Amsterdam, Moscow, and New Orleans; to the galleries, salerooms, and restorer's workshop as the painting slowly, painstakingly emerged from obscurity. The vicissitudes of the highly secretive art market are charted across six centuries. It is a twisting tale of geniuses and oligarchs, double-crossings and disappearances, in which we're never quite certain what to believe. Above all, it is an adventure story about the search for lost treasure, and a quest for the truth.

    LanguageEnglish
    PublisherPenguin Random House Audio
    Release dateJun 25, 2019
    ISBN9780593147856
    Unavailable
    The Last Leonardo: The Secret Lives of the World's Most Expensive Painting
    Author

    Ben Lewis

    Ben Lewis is a Leverhulme Early Career Researcher at the University of Leeds. He has taught German language, politics and history at King’s College London and the University of Sheffield. In total, he has edited and translated four volumes of texts by European socialist thinkers: Karl Kautsky on Democracy and Republicanism (2019); Clara Zetkin: Letters and Writings (2015; with Mike Jones) Karl Kautsky on Colonialism (2013; with Mike Macnair); and Zinoviev and Martov: Head to Head in Halle (2011; with Lars T. Lih). He has delivered papers at multiple international academic conferences (including Chicago, London and Paris)

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