(By Alessandra Baldini) The most expensive painting in the history of the world is set to end up at the centre of a new museum in Saudi Arabia: a new two-part BBC documentary on Saudi Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman reveals. In 2017, he bought the Salvator Mundi attributed to Leonardo from Christie’s in New York for $450 million, a record at auction. While he waits for the “Louvre in the Sands” to be born, the frontal image of Christ with a crystal orb in one hand and the other raised in blessing is under lock and key in a Geneva vault, not on his yacht. The buyer, who had purchased it through a nominee, told the BBC: “It’s been in storage ever since.” So the mystery continues with the addition of a new piece: “Salman wants to build a huge museum in Riyadh and make the Salvator Mundi the centrepiece of the exhibition,” Bernard Haykel, a professor of Middle Eastern studies at Princeton University, told the BBC. Who would have learned it directly from the prince, whose goal in turn would be to replicate the example of the Louvre, where 90% of visitors pass through for the sole purpose of seeing another Leonardo work, the Mona Lisa. According to Heikal, Salman intended by purchasing the painting to challenge his country’s conservative Islamic leadership: “He would have bought it not only as a tourist attraction, but also to declare ownership of one of the world’s most important paintings of Jesus.” According to the BBC, the purchase “tells us a lot about what he thinks, about his willingness to take risks and distance himself from the religious community he rules. Above all, about his determination to compete with the West through a show of force.”


To achieve his goal of providing Saudi Arabia with a “Louvre in the desert,” Salman has enlisted the help of key Western art experts in Riyadh: among them the British Iona Blazwick, former director of the Whitechapel Gallery in London, and, more recently, the former director of the British Museum, Hartwig Fischer, who resigned after the scandal that erupted last summer over thousands of pieces stolen under his supervision by a former curator.


In July, the Saudi Museums Authority announced the appointment of the 61-year-old German art historian as founding director of a new museum of world cultures scheduled to open in Riyadh in 2026.

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