Patronage, Some Copies, and Other Versions

Chapter 6 discusses possible patronage of Leonardo’s Salvator Mundi, without arriving at any favoured conclusion. The presence of a ‘Christ in the manner of God the Father’ in the list of paintings owned in 1524 by Leonardo’s pupil, Salaì (Gian Giacomo Caprotti da Oreno), indicates that the painting was never delivered to a patron. The evidence of some early copies is reviewed, including that formerly in the de Ganay collection, which, on the grounds of execution and the infrared reflectogram, cannot be credited to Leonardo himself, though it is of better quality that most of the copies. The Leonardesque version of the young Christ as Saviour in the Pushkin Museum in Moscow and related pictures might be associated with Isabella d’Este’s attempts to secure a painting of the young Christ from Leonardo. The chapter concludes that the ex-Cook painting is the only one that manifests Leonardo’s painterly and intellectual brilliance.