Nice frame ! Astonishing painting ! Outrageous price tag ! Da Vinci’s Salvator Mundi (Saviour of the World), if you havent heard, just sold for a record sum– an amount that doesn’t phase me in the slightest. After all, it’s already priceless, so $450M sounds like a bargain! I just hope the undisclosed buyer gives the public a place to see it somewhere, in real life, so they can be shocked at how relatively small it is for something so famous (and so remarkably painted). Of course, in this case the size of the image, if you are to ascribe to David Hockney’s controversial ‘camera obscura’ theory, suggests that Da Vinci may have used lenses to create such photo-realism (the size of the lens determines the size of the picture). Having worked with photography for 40 years I think Hockney is on target and it certainly explains why Da Vinci’s ‘Salvator Mundi’ has such depth of field: The face of Christ is slightly soft and the raised hand and the crystal ball is sharp. The softness of the face also makes the portrait so enigmatic. Lenses or not, with only 20 paintings known in existence, DaVinci’s artistic legacy is beyond mind boggling. Da Vinci’s SalvatorThe Heart of Da Vinci’s Salvator Mundi