Last updated on June 25th, 2026 at 08:05 pm
This chapter is set during the art auction which took place on the 15th of November 2017 at Christie’s in New York City and elicited a divided popular view regarding the progressive stance of the auction to the nation. Christie’s New York was shocked when they seized the other gavel as Salvator Mundi, an allegedly Da Vinci painting worth twenty million dollars, came up for bidding. Not only did the auction formally inaugurate the 21st as one of art history and economic prosperity but it also invites us to explore a dimension of the universe that seems quite far removed from issues of art and art sociology, a nearly thalamic universe. In this moving and sentimental painting, which later became more meaningful in that it drew interest to the nexus of politics, art and international relations over time, mature Jesus is pictured with a crystal ball in his outstretched palm.
The creators of the Salvator Mundi did not take or intend for it to be a grand scale painting. It was generally a poorly cared for, poorly credited, and poorly appreciated work of art for a very long period of time, fetching a meager price of £45 at auction in the year 1958. It was only in the year 2005 when a few art dealers bought it for $10,000 and went on to do a lot of restoration work that the painting could boast a not so simple provenance. Nevertheless, the attribution to Leonardo da Vinci has been brutally challenged because many scholars are in disagreement as to whether the painting is indeed by the master or is it a composite of restoration activities. Quite predictably, there was a spiralling increase in the cost as buyers jostled for the great piece of work.
The buyer, who was later known to be a proxy for Mohammed bin Salman (MBS), the crown prince of Saudi Arabia, was not actually acquiring a piece of art. He rather was acquiring a representational image which would henceforth embody the dichotomy of artistic heritage and that of political ambition. To him, the Salvator Mundi was not just a trophy; it was an integral part of MBS’s grand Vision 2030 project designed to transform Saudi Arabia into an economic and cultural embodiment of superpower.
Still, there was a great interest with the story of the Salvator Mundi but so is the story of its journey too. The whereabouts of the painting were a mystery to most for a long time. Did the palace of MBS have that painting on the wall? Or was it on his super yacht tethered like the Serene? With the promise to showcase Saudi Arabia’s cultural evolution and the relationship with the United Arab Emirates, its exhibition provoked even more expectation within the art world. At the Louvre Abu Dhabi, it was supposed to be displayed.
The plot thickened on August 19th, 2024 when the BBC disclosed that the longed for sculpture of Christ was actually in a storeroom in Geneva. To the contrary of the popular narrative that the Salvator Mundi is owned by the Swiss city, one Haykel Bernard, a professor at Princeton University and a colleague of the Crown Prince, says otherwise. The implication here is that MBS has big plans to exhibit the painting in a museum under construction in Riyadh. “My point is to build a big museum in Riyadh,” MBS told Haykel. “And I want an anchor piece that grabs viewers’ attention like the Mona Lisa.”
All of this puts an even more interesting twist in the already interesting story of the picture. Yet another sign of the elaborate planning that went into the acquisition of this art is the preference of Geneva as a base for the works instead of a display venue. By holding onto the Salvator Mundi, MBS was doing much more than merely protecting himself from responsibility for the purchase of the work; he was laying the groundwork for added future expectations through the painting as part of his wider cultural vision.
It is plain to see that, like MBS’s ambition to increase tourism and direct the Saudi state towards being an art and cultural heritage center, the new muse that is under construction in Riyadh will also be an important cultural reference point.
With this application, MBS is able to achieve the long term vision of the Saudi Arabian Kingdom. Rather than just sitting on its projected cash, the paradigm is for the kingdom to put the oil proceeds from taxes, as enshrined in Vision 2030, to other income sectors as tourism and culture whose targets it intends to hit. MBS sees Saudi Arabia becoming a cultural tourist destination akin to the Louvre in Paris where its annual over six million visitors are drawn not for nature or wild animals but the notoriety of the Mona Lisa, the painting. This would affect the culture of the Saudi Arabia in a major way and even more crucially depict how far the country has come and the place it occupies in the world community.
On the negative side, there are disadvantages to this. The decision to postpone the public display of the Salvator Mundi until a new museum is completed raises moral and sociological issues related to the custodianship and worth of art. Does it not raise uncomfortable questions to keep such an invaluable work of art away from the public? How about the idea that even the art itself is a toy in the international standoff, and this nonsense is part of it?
The case of the Salvator Mundi and MBS further complicates matters. A beacon of continuity, the Crown Prince of Saudi Arabia is simultaneously the last of the KSA’s heads of state who belonged to this inconspicuous but nevertheless conflicting period in the Arabian Kingdom’s history. Modernization has come to the Kingdom too, but not without the help of such indirect means as terrorist deeds (e.g., “Let them drive!” or “Enough of these morals police!”) and the murder of opposition journalist Jamal Khashoggi, as well as copious bans on political pluralism. All these changes have been welcome. This approach, however, has its liabilities as well. This narrative further enhances the role of the Salvator Mundi on top of the objectives of Saudi Arabia’s cultural diplomacy to include the international relations patterns inherent in the experience of the nation’s evolution and conflict.
“Ownership of the picture by the Geneva estate” is one of the critical policy issues that shows how Saudi Arabia interacts with foreign governments. However, it is worth noting how careful MBS has to be with regard to ‘walking the tightrope’ as the location of the single image is a country that is characterized by neutrality in political issues. A relocation of the piece of art to Riyadh later would appear to be a bold maneuver to reorient and reposition Saudi Arabia within the modern-day dominance of Westerners and expansionists in cultural and political sphere.”
In much the same way, it can be pointed out with regard to the Salvator Mundi that in the context of the larger region of the Middle East, it also applies to the Saudi Arabian-UAE rivalry in matters of cultural leadership. Despite these two nations being in partnership, their common objective of becoming the cultural and economic hub of the region poses a challenge to the other. Following landmark ventures such as the Louvre Abu Dhabi, the United Arab Emirates has emerged as a top public relations and advertising agency. With the acquisition of the Filius Dei as well as plans for an enormous museum in Riyadh in the works, Saudi Arabia is signaling to the world that it also possesses cultural aspirations and intends to use history as well as culture for soft power purposes.
