45 pounds painting Sells for 120million pounds ! Da Vinci's £120m painting

The painting measures 26in by 18in and is owned by Robert Simon Fine Art in New York

London: A painting once sold for £45 (Dh265) at auction has been identified as a work by Leonardo Da Vinci and is estimated to be worth a world record £120 million.

The oil on wood panel painting, Salvator Mundi, or Saviour of the World, depicts Christ with his right hand raised in blessing and his left hand holding a globe.

It was attributed to a pupil of Da Vinci. But now an international group of experts has established it was by the master himself.

Milan-based Professor Pietro Marani paid a secret visit to the National Gallery in London to view it. He said: "We could tell at once that it was a work by Da Vinci and the documentation and analysis proved it beyond doubt. This is very significant and very exciting. The blues and the reds in the painting are very similar to those of Da Vinci's Last Supper."

Da Vinci painted it 500 years ago following a commission from Louis of France in 1506. It came into the possession of Charles of England and stayed in London for 400 years under various owners. In 1958 it was sold by Sotheby's for £45.

A source said: "On the open market the painting would easily fetch at least £120million — it's unique."

The painting measures 26in by 18in and is owned by Robert Simon Fine Art in New York. The highest fee for a painting is £96million for Jackson Pollock's No.5, sold by Sotheby's in 2006.

Leonardo di ser Piero da Vinci ( pronunciation (help·info)) (April 15, 1452 – May 2, 1519) was an Italian Renaissance polymath: painter, sculptor, architect, musician, scientist, mathematician, engineer, inventor, anatomist, geologist, cartographer, botanist and writer. Leonardo has often been described as the archetype of the Renaissance Man, a man of "unquenchable curiosity" and "feverishly inventive imagination".[1] He is widely considered to be one of the greatest painters of all time and perhaps the most diversely talented person ever to have lived.[2] According to art historian Helen Gardner, the scope and depth of his interests were without precedent and "his mind and personality seem to us superhuman, the man himself mysterious and remote".[1] Marco Rosci points out, however, that while there is much speculation about Leonardo, his vision of the world is essentially logical rather than mysterious, and that the empirical methods he employed were unusual for his time.[3]
Born out of wedlock to a notary, Piero da Vinci, and a peasant woman, Caterina, at Vinci in the region of Florence, Leonardo was educated in the studio of the renowned Florentine painter, Verrocchio. Much of his earlier working life was spent in the service of Ludovico il Moro in Milan. He later worked in Rome, Bologna and Venice and spent his last years in France, at the home awarded him by Francis I.
Leonardo was and is renowned[2] primarily as a painter. Among his works, the Mona Lisa is the most famous and most parodied portrait and The Last Supper the most reproduced religious painting of all time, with their fame approached only by Michelangelo's Creation of Adam.[1] Leonardo's drawing of the Vitruvian Man is also regarded as a cultural icon,[4] being reproduced on everything from the euro to text books to t-shirts. Perhaps fifteen of his paintings survive, the small number due to his constant, and frequently disastrous, experimentation with new techniques, and his chronic procrastination.[nb 2] Nevertheless, these few works, together with his notebooks, which contain drawings, scientific diagrams, and his thoughts on the nature of painting, compose a contribution to later generations of artists only rivalled by that of his contemporary, Michelangelo.
Leonardo is revered[2] for his technological ingenuity. He conceptualised a helicopter, a tank, concentrated solar power, a calculator,[5] the double hull and outlined a rudimentary theory of plate tectonics. Relatively few of his designs were constructed or were even feasible during his lifetime,[nb 3] but some of his smaller inventions, such as an automated bobbin winder and a machine for testing the tensile strength of wire, entered the world of manufacturing unheralded.[nb 4] He made important discoveries in anatomy, civil engineering, optics, and hydrodynamics, but he did not publish his findings and they had no direct influence on later science.[6]