184. Martin Kemp on da Vinci’s, Salvator Mundi

Live Streamed on YouTube, One of the world’s leading Leonardo experts, Martin Kemp, who helped authenticate the $450 million Salvator Mundi talks about what it was like behind the scenes exploring the authenticity, the depth of the work, emotional quality and more. He later discusses the ongoing speculation of the buyer, (the Crown Prince of Saudi Arabia?) where it may end up (possibly the Louvre Abu Dhabi) as well as other aspects of Leonardo’s work.

He will be writing a book on this particular work soon, which you will find on his website: www.martinjkemp.com He said that he knew immediately upon first viewing the restored painting that it was the work of Leonardo: “It’s got that kind of uncanny vortex, as if the hair is a living, moving substance, or like water, which is what Leonardo said hair was like. However skilled Leonardo’s followers and imitators might have been, none of them reached out into such realms of “philosophical and subtle speculation”. We cannot reasonably doubt that here, we are in the presence of the painter from Vinci. Source: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Salvator_Mundi_(Leonardo)

Bio: Martin Kemp is Emeritus Research Professor in the History of Art at Oxford University. He has written and broadcast extensively on imagery in art and science from the Renaissance to the present day. He speaks on issues of visualisation and lateral thinking to a wide range of audiences. Leonardo da Vinci has been the subject of books written by him, including Leonardo (Oxford University Press 2004). He has published on imagery in the sciences of anatomy, natural history and optics, including The Science of Art: Optical Themes in Western Art from Brunelleschi to Seurat (Yale University Press). SOURCE: http://www.martinjkemp.com/welcome.html