Movie review: 'Lost Leonardo,' highly recommended

Is it or is it not The Lost Leonardo?/Sony Pictures Classics

That The Lost Leonardo received a 100% audience rating at Rotten Tomatoes (and 95% by the critics) on the day I looked at RT tells you it's got to be good, right? * 

It is. Good.

From The Lost Leonardo/Sony Pictures Classics

It's a documentary, sure; my favorite kind, laid out in chronological style beginning with the discovery in a New Orleans art house of the so-called Salvator Mundi by Leonardo da Vinci and following its trail to the present owner who is...?

And where is it now?

On a boat, you say?

Before the Lost (the Last?) sold at a public auction at Christie's in 2017 for the most ever paid for a painting ($450.3 million), it was part of a Leonardo exhibition in 2011-12 at London's National Gallery, yet was pulled at the last moment from a Louvre showing in 2019 when, according to rumors, the present owner demanded it be placed adjacent to the Mona Lisa. Also, a Louvre publication about Salvator was removed from its shops and publication, denied.

Huh? What's up?

Find out at the show!

Andreas Koefoed, the director, performs a marvelous feat, bringing it all home in this balanced portrayal. How he and the producers coaxed the consultants, the "experts," the critics, the sleuths, the government officials and more to settle for his camera is a story in itself, but he did, and they are all happy to share their opinions.

Their names and identifications (titles) are listed in the bottom left corner of the screen, an indispensable aid for those of us who do not circulate in their worlds and must profess ignorance of most of them.

Who had an ax to grind?

Is it an original da Vinci?

I must admit I was skeptical going in...and coming away, I was skeptical. But, how about you?

For art lovers, the curious, curators, critics, collectors, dealers, lenders, tycoons, art historians, artists, "sleeper hunters" (?), this is a fast film you cannot miss!

That a world-known criminal is involved is revolting and maybe, that's what his subjects will do...one of these day.

Mr. Koefoed co-wrote the story with Duska Zagorac, Andreas Dalsgaard, Mark Monroe, and Christian Kirk Muff. Hats off to you!  Music by Sveinung Nygaard is excellent.

For more reading, Wikipedia has a lengthy accounting of the painting's provenance.

*Now, the audience gives it 93% and the critics, 95%.


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