DA VINCI’S ‘SALVATOR MUNDI’ SMASHES RECORD PAID AT AUCTION

A 45cm x 66cm oil painting of Christ by the Italian Renaissance master Leonardo da Vinci has sold at auction in New York for $450.3 million, that’s the equivalent of 46,606,050,000 Kenya Shillings!

The paining entitled ‘Salvator Mundi’ (‘Saviour of the World), painted by da Vinci in 1490, was sold after 18 minutes of frenetic bidding at Christie’s auction house in New York.

Four bidders, three by phone and one at the auction, bid first in bounds of 10 million dollars up to $225 million, then by five millions and finally by two million dollar bids, to the reach a record $450.3 million.

The previous highest figure ever paid for a work of art at auction was for Picasso’s ‘Woman of Algiers’ in May 2015.