Before Leonardo da Vinci’s Salvator Mundi sold at auction for a record-shattering $450.3 million, it was marketed around the world as “the last Da Vinci" in private hands.
It turns out there is another—even two—out there. And at least one dealer thinks they could be worth as much as $200 million each.
Both are smaller-scale, devotional paintings depicting the same image: the Virgin Mary with the Christ child in her lap. The baby is holding a cross-shaped stick used to wind yarn, which has inspired the shared name, The Madonna of the Yarnwinder.
“They are both in private hands,” said Martin Kemp, a da Vinci scholar and emeritus research professor of art history at Oxford University in the U.K. “I know both owners.” (Christie’s says they do not comment on works that are not consigned and stand behind their presentation of Salvator Mundi.)
One of these paintings, known colloquially as the Buccleuch Madonna, has been on view at the National Galleries of Scotland since 2009. It’s part of a long-term loan by the Duke of Buccleuch (via a family trust), whose family has owned it for 250 years, according to the museum. The painting was stolen in 2003 from the duke’s Drumlanrig Castle in Scotland and recovered four years later. At the time, it was valued at $65 million.
Technically, the painting can be sold, according to Harris Brine, a press officer at the Edinburgh-based museum. “But the trustees of the Buccleuch Living Heritage Trust have indicated to us that they have no intention of selling the painting,” Brine added.
The trust’s chairman, Richard Scott, the 10th Duke of Buccleuch, declined to comment through the museum.
Kemp agreed that it would be “enormously unlikely” the family would sell. “The Buccleuch family is one the biggest landowners in Britain. They prize themselves as custodians for the nation. Their houses are open to the public,” he said. “But you can never be certain.”
The second painting, known as the Lansdowne Madonna, after the English nobles who owned it in the 18th and 19th centuries, was last sold in 1999 by New York’s Wildenstein & Co. It’s believed to have remained in the same private collection, Kemp said, declining to reveal the name of the owner.
Signs of Leonardo
Scholars believe one of the paintings was commissioned by Florimond Robertet, a top administrator in the court of King Louis XII of France, before da Vinci left Milan in 1499.