Stream It Or Skip It: ‘Savior for Sale: Da Vinci’s Lost Masterpiece?’ on Hulu, a Documentary About the Corrupt Commerce of the Art World

Now on Hulu, Savior for Sale: Da Vinci’s Lost Masterpiece? is the second of two documentaries released in 2021 chronicling a controversial art-world saga: the discovery and megamillions sale of Salvator Mundi, a painting that may or may not have been painted by Leonardo Da Vinci. So don’t confuse Antoine Vitkine’s Savior for Sale with Andreas Koefoed’s The Lost Leonardo, although they tell pretty much the exact same story, of art experts and dealers, skeptics and shysters, billionaires and Saudi princes. Sounds juicy, doesn’t it?

SAVIOR FOR SALE: DA VINCI’S LOST MASTERPIECE?: STREAM IT OR SKIP IT?

The Gist: It went from $1,175 to $450 million, but the movie starts with the second number – can you blame it? Gotta hook ya good – before jumping back to the first and working back up to the second. Such is the narrative loop-de-loo that so many movies do. In 2017, fancy auction house Christie’s dubbed Salvator Mundi the biggest discovery of the 21st century and brokered its sale for $400 million to an anonymous bidder; later in the movie, we’ll learn that Christie’s tacked another $50 million on top for its cut of the deal. I MIGHT BE IN THE WRONG LINE OF WORK some of us will think, but then we’ll watch the rest of this documentary and be happy we land closer to Honest Abe Lincoln than Amway or Madoff on the moral integrity scale.

Back in 2005, an art dealer spotted Salvator Mundi in a low-rent auction house in New Orleans and snatched it for $1,175, thus marking the beginning of the painting’s wild journey to fame – or infamy, depending on how you look at it. And it all depends on how you look at it, because some “experts” stare at this portrait of Caucasian Jesus and see the work of Leonardo Da Vinci himself, while others see the work of a Da Vinci underling employed by his art studio, with a few(ish) brushstrokes provided by the master. Either way, it’s an old-ass painting and it surely has historical and aesthetic value, both of which provide a smokescreen for the gross capitalism that occurs in the rest of this story.

From here, director Vitkine details how the painting passes through many hands, most of them belonging to people with remarkable self-interest. One guy uses “judgment by eye” and “senses” the painting’s “vibration” and uses zero forensic study whatsoever to determine it is indeed a Da Vinci work, and his word is deemed not ludicrous simply because no ART HISTORIAN at OXFORD could POSSIBLY be a crackpot. Other historians are keenly skeptical of such assertions, and those types come off as the film’s more credible voices. But they’re drowned out by curators and brokers who really really want it to be an honest-to-Jebus real Da Vinci, because if it is, millions of dollars are to be made, and they pretty much will it to be so, manipulating the truth like clay in a kindergartener’s hands.

There’s one middleman who negotiated an $83 million deal for the painting and then told the buyer it was $127.5 million so he could pocket the difference. And guess what? The guy got away with it because this is the Art World, which is so lawless, it makes Deadwood look like a daycare. I have to say, it’s kinda funny that the buyer was a multibilliionaire Russian oligarch who doesn’t really appreciate art beyond its investment value. But hey, he may have been ripped off, but it was still a good investment, because I already mentioned what Salvator Mundi ultimately went for, apparently purchased by a Saudi prince with a reputation for murder. This story is rich, I tell you, rich.

What Movies Will It Remind You Of?: I haven’t seen The Lost Leonardo, so I can’t A/B their relative effectiveness. But it and Savior for Sale cover a lot of the same ground and feature many of the same talking heads, which could make for the greatest mano-a-mano documentary slugfest since Fyre: The Greatest Party That Never Happened and Fyre Fraud debuted four days apart in 2019.

Performance Worth Watching: OK, so Mohammed bin Salman is the most likely person who’s $450 million lighter right now. But that didn’t stop Oxford art historian Matthew Landrus from publicly saying the evidence shows Salvator Mundi is not a true Da Vinci work – and then has the cojones to basically subtweet the Saudi prince for having Jamaal Khashoggi killed.

Memorable Dialogue: One curator who stands to make a load of cash on gallery ticket sales shovels a load of self-interested bull: “The way in which we feel (works of art) is part of the evidence we have to take into account.”

Sex and Skin: There’s a fair amount of non-sexual f—ing all the way down the line here.

Our Take: Savior for Sale is a touch dry – lots of doc cliches here, from the usual roundup of expert/journalist interviewees to vaguely ominous drone shots of cityscapes – and could use a cleaner timeline and presentation of facts. Vitkine is content to mush through contradictory statements or dangling assertions without ever clarifying them. But we roll over those narrative potholes because the overall subject matter is fascinating; brewing beneath the sensationalist narrative is a depiction of the art world as “a realm of smoke and mirrors,” as one commentator describes it. Roughly zero people involved in the handling and sale of the painting are interested in any objective truth regarding its origin, and are content to craft their own version of the truth by distorting speculative assertions or, in one egregious instance, pushing aside expertise to “let the public decide” if it’s a true Da Vinci.

So lurking beneath all this is a push-pull battle between purists and capitalists who are trying to control the Salvator Mundi narrative, and it’s yet another Battle for Truth among many in the current socio-political discourse. There’s also the irony implied by the film’s title – you know, how a painting of many people’s almighty lord is a commodity, and frankly always has been, because in all likelihood, Da Vinci’s apprentices cranked out the painting for a commission. Few people have even seen the maybe-masterpiece in years, since the Russian doofus and the current owner kept it locked up in far-flung storage facilities where NO ONE CAN APPRECIATE IT EVER, he said, cackling and wringing his hands like a scheming villain. But hey, at least a handful of people enriched the living shit out of themselves along the way.

Our Call: Savior for Sale has a lot of ground to cover, and does so adequately at best. Vitkine banks on our fascination with the topic – which frankly should be considerable – and ends up with a sloppy but watchable doc with noble aspirations of journalism. STREAM IT, just don’t expect anything resembling Oscar-level work.

John Serba is a freelance writer and film critic based in Grand Rapids, Michigan. Read more of his work at johnserbaatlarge.com.