Salvator Mundi went for $450m. But you can have the real thing for free

Nov 17, 2017 by

by Giles Fraser, Guardian:

The Christianity of Salvator Mundi is designed specifically for all us shits. And the good news is that it doesn’t cost $450m to find it. You only have to ask. And it only ever comes for free.

A painting by Leonardo da Vinci, circa early 1500s, has just been sold for $450m. That makes it the most expensive painting ever. It is called Salvator Mundi, and depicts Christ, hand raised as if about to give a priestly blessing. He is the saviour of the world, says Leonardo. It was probably only a few years after Leonardo finished this great work that, on the other side of the Alps, a German monk would come up with an idea about this act of salvation that would totally transform the intellectual landscape of Europe.

Generally, the beginning of the Reformation is regarded as being marked by Martin Luther’s posting on the door of All Saints’ Church, Wittenberg, a long list of demands to the Roman church on the subject of its financial corruption. But Luther’s key intellectual breakthrough had occurred several years before. Living as a monk, Luther wrestled with the thought that, despite his rigorous standard of living, nothing he was capable of as a human being would ever be good enough for God. And that, if God was entirely just – that is, if God judged us according to our merits – then all of us are in deep trouble. Hamlet makes the same point in a conversation with Polonius: if you treat everyone as they deserve, “who shall ’scape whipping?”

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