Julianne Moore to play in a TV series on ‘Salvator Mundi’

LOS ANGELES

A TV series will trace the eventful story of Salvator Mundi, the painting billed as being by Leonardo da Vinci, which sold for $450.3 million at Christie’s New York in 2017, making it the priciest item ever sold at auction.

Famed actress Julianne Moore will play Dianne Modestini, the conservator who worked on the painting and was one of those who claimed with certainty that it was by the hand of the Renaissance master, Deadline reported.

Based on the 2021 documentary “The Lost Leonardo,” directed by Andreas Koefoed and distributed by Sony Pictures, the series will be directed by the duo of John Requa and Glenn Ficara, who previously worked with Moore on the 2011 feature film “Crazy, Stupid, Love.” Moore, who has racked up an Academy Award as well as Golden Globes and Emmys, will also be executive producer.

The series will tell the painting’s convoluted history, beginning when art dealer Alexander Parrish came upon it for sale at a New Orleans auction house in 2005; he and fellow-dealer Robert Simon bought the panel, identified as being “after Leonardo,” for just $1,500.

Aware that the painting had been damaged and clumsily restored, they engaged Modestini to repair it. She, too, became convinced that it was a signature Leonardo work when she noticed details similar to the Mona Lisa.

In a publicity stunt, the auctioneer inserted the painting into a contemporary art sale; ironically, some of the restoration work the painting was subject to along the way put it under scrutiny. “The joke circulating around the contemporary art world,” Artnet News contributor Kenny Schachter said, was that that was because “90 percent of it had been painted in the last 10 years.”

Others also remained unconvinced of the painting’s authenticity. In the documentary, Frank Zöllner, a Leonardo scholar in Germany, said that the best parts of the painting were actually done by Modestini. “I can’t paint like Leonardo,” Modestini countered. “It’s very flattering, but it’s absurd.”

While the buyer has never been definitively identified, it is widely believed that it was Saudi Arabian crown prince Mohammed bin Salman.