Art has always been hailed as one of the strongest mediums available. It gives insight and captures emotion. It tells stories. It reflects upon the intricacies in human experience. But beyond colors and strokes, deeper layers reveal stories, secrets, and controversies that make some paintings priceless and valuable. The most expensive paintings in the world are more than masterpieces. They are full of intrigue and steeped in history. They are even covered with some hidden truths about why they cost millions, if not billions, when auctioned off. These paintings are more than beautiful; they are investments, mysteries, and even enablers of power.
Salvator Mundi: The Da Vinci That Shocked the Art World
The 2017 sale of Salvator Mundi by Leonardo da Vinci at a Christie’s auction for a record $450.3 million shook the art world into hysterics. Staggering, the price was so beyond anything previously known, but the true story of this painting is about mysteries, as much as it is about its astronomical price.
Salvator Mundi by Leonardo da Vinci dates to around 1500. He depicted Christ as a true Renaissance type: bearded and with long hair. One hand holds a crystal orb; the other, extended, gives a blessing. The painting itself had long been lost to the world, survived only through its faded copies. The team of art restorers found it in ruin in a private collection back in 2005, but even then, many experts hailed it as genuine da Vinci. This painting was authenticated as the lost masterpiece of the Renaissance genius after meticulous restoration that showed also the unique brushstrokes of da Vinci beneath the layers of damage.
How this painting is such a headlong price is not due to historical factors alone, it is also linked with its origin and the intrigue surrounding it. Though the owner before the sale was not so clear, now it was sold to a Saudi Arabian royal family representative, Prince Badr bin Abdullah bin Mohammed bin Farhan Al Saud. That added to an already intriguing layer in the sale, coupled with fierce overbidding, and media attention given to the reported plans of the prince to display the painting at the Louvre Abu Dhabi. One thing stands crystal clear: Salvator Mundi is something more than art-it is a synonym for wealth, power, and status. History is beyond the canvas.
Entangled in Controversy: Pablo Picasso’s Les Femmes d’Alger
The selling of Pablo Picasso’s Les Femmes d’Alger for 179.4 million dollars at a 2015 Christie’s auction realized one of the highest prices ever paid for any painting to that date. Les Femmes d’Alger bears a creation date of 1955 – a swirling, chaotic mass of abstraction of female nude forms in cubist distortion, an optical feast. It is part of the famous series Les Femmes d’Alger-a hommage by Picasso to the 19th-century artist Eugène Delacroix’s work with a title of the same name.
While beautiful beyond doubt, the rich history that accompanies it apart from the artist’s name gives reason for its high price. That’s also one of the reasons why the paintings of Picasso carry such a price value: he managed, through the turmoil of his life and this revolutionary manner of his art, to change the face of painting. Les Femmes d’Alger (Version O) was among his very last works within a very, very long-and incredibly prolific-career; again fact added to his work’s value. It was sold to an unnamed buyer, but it wasn’t just the inherent beauty or rarity of the piece that drove it to such staggering heights-it was also the quite contentious circumstances regarding previous ownership.
At the time of sale, Les Femmes d’Alger was in the late collection of the Qatari royal family, which over the past years has been quite active on the world scene. The royals had built up their collection discretely, adding timeless works from greats such as Picasso, Henri Matisse, and Marc Chagall. The price which the work of Picasso fetched was considered both an accolade for the genius artist and a hallmark of the cultural prestige of the Qatari family. But beneath the glamour of the sale lay darker truths. Some even further speculated that such a high price had been inflated for reasons other than the intrinsic value of the piece, but it came to represent not only the tremendous wealth of the Qatari royal family but its apparent ability to manipulate the global market for art. It wasn’t just the buying of art; it was an overt show and flexing of muscles in the high echelons of society.
The Aura surrounding The Card Players by Paul Cézanne
This painting by Paul Cézanne, The Card Players, was sold to the Royal Family of Qatar in 2011 for an undisclosed amount that was estimated to be as high as 250 million dollars.
It was supposed to be the most expensive transaction on a painting to have ever existed during that time. The Card Players was a part of five paintings done by Cézanne between 1890 and 1892 of rustic peasants playing cards. The one that sold to Qatar was actually one of the last remaining so it truly is quite rare and sought after. But the mystery lying beneath The Card Players’ sale is not with the painting per se but with the secrecy associated with the guy who bought it.
The sale was done in an envelope of secrecy with very little information released to the public about the sale. In fact, when the painting was sold, the entire art world was speculating on what figure and terms had been struck. That the Qatari royal family could buy such an elusive, expensive masterpiece underlines a greater narrative: how art is a means of politicking and one-upping for rich people and nations. While to Qatar, it was not only the acquisition of this iconic piece of art but more so of deeper meaning: to consolidate the country’s influence in the world arena and further its strength in the world. The Qatari royal family had been putting together a world-class collection of art as part of their goal of building the country’s cultural cachet. The Card Players completed that collection so that Qatar now appeared rich and sophisticated to the rest of the world.
Hidden History in Nafea Faa Ipoipo by Paul Gauguin
The other painting to have sent shockwaves to the art world was Nafea Faa Ipoipo by Paul Gauguin that was painted in 1892, sold in a private sale to the Qatar Museum Authority for a record price of $300 million in 2015, joining the list of the most expensive pieces of art ever sold.
It is a painting of two Tahitian women in a rich tropical landscape, but one that forms a key moment in the career development of Gauguin himself: it epitomizes his fascination with the exoticism and beauty of the South Pacific. But the truth behind the sale of Nafea Faa Ipoipo does not lie with the painting at all, but with its murky provenance.
Works of art, when masterpieces, seldom have less intricate ownerships; legacies to larger themes: colonization, wealth, and power. It was executed during his Tahitian sojourn when this French artist had romantic and, to an extent, cultural affinities with the natives. Large-scale financial transactions somehow always shadow big broad topical concerns like these regarding colonialism. But it’s the bigger story in the art world of how commodification of art often obscures cultural and ethical considerations of the ownership of such pieces, none more visible than in the sale price of the painting that seemed to embody the wealth and national prestige of Qatar. This Nafea Faa Ipoipo sale has gained so many brows, especially a massive astronomical figure tacked along with uncomfortable in-depth history inlaid in the painting-the making colonial exploitation it comes to symbolize. Then again is Qatar buying all that and retaining secrecy: it gets more mysterious mystique among these world-acclaimed pieces of artworks.
The Role of Art as Status and Power
What they all have in common, besides the astronomical prices paid for them, is much more than mere visual genius.
They are an embodiment of status, history, and power. Many find that today’s art has become a metaphor for prestige and clout. The contemporary art market is a maze of money, celebrity, and historical legacy. The price of a painting often has little to do with craftsmanship. It rarely considers the intent of the artist. Rather, it is about what the painting represents, the connections it creates, and the social capital involved. It says something about the place in this world from which a buyer hails. Behind these most expensive paintings are tales of a world where art and money intertwine. This world is marked by cultural heritage and political power. To truly grasp a painting’s real value, one must delve into its secret histories. Understanding the complex dimensions of its ownership is also vital.
The next time one stands in front of such a work, it shall not be the strokes. It also won’t be the colors that evoke awe. Instead, it is the untold truth beneath that makes such works worth millions or billions.