Tribeca 2021: The Lost Leonardo Review

This will be one of several reviews from this year’s Tribeca film Festival. To follow our coverage, click here.

The art world is a fickle business comprised of people that profit off of opinions steered by a hive mind. From this subjective valuation, comes the ability to influence and exploit what can or should be seen as art. Enter the Salvator Mundi, a painting by Leonardo Da Vinci that after being purchased for just over one thousand dollars embarked on a journey to be sold at auction for $450 million, the highest amount a painting has ever been sold.

Along its journey, the Mundi changed several hands and was flipped for more and more millions leading up to its record-making price, however, the intriguing part of the story is not the painting itself, but the people surrounding its authentication. The Lost Leonardo follows both fairly closely, drawing the viewer in with a crash course into the largely unregulated market of the art game and how the evaluation and opinions of pieces can make or break reputations, careers, fortunes. With the Mundi, there arise darker layers of backroom deals and greedy business as the painting’s validity and authentication primarily takes a backseat to the notion that long-lost art is possibly found in a world where there is very little left to discover.

The Lost Leonardo leans into this ideal as many talking heads directly involved with the painting’s sojourn reveal interesting opinions on the emotional aspect of evaluation that can easily cloud the true nature of art. With the Mundi, this creates a wedge of doubt that cascades across the art world and casts a continually growing shadow over something that should be celebrated but instead receives a permanently perceived stain that over the course of the documentary changes from an insider’s joke to becoming a rare and allusive item. And despite its value, both actual and imagined, The Lost Leonardo evolves into possessing an almost mythic status that puts on full display the underbelly of a world that rises and falls based on opinions. It’s an unattractive business that can generate fortunes and create pariahs of a community that resides in secrecy and without governmental prying eyes.

In the end, The Lost Leonardo is an exceptional documentary that tracks the preposterous odyssey of a work of art that becomes so exceptional for its existence that few stop to ask about its authenticity allowing its success to spiral into a legend that exceeds its alleged creator.

still courtesy of Tribeca

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