Become a Creator today!Start creating today - Share your story with the world!
Start for free
00:00:00
00:00:01
Josh and M go to the Art Gallery
26 Plays3 years ago
Josh and M discuss the curious case of Dr. Dirk Obbink, whether or not the Salvator Mundi is the work of Leonardo, and the theft of... another Salvator Mundi!
—
Josh is @monkeyfluids and M is @conspiracism on Twitter
You can also contact us at: podcastconspiracy@gmail.com
You can learn more about M’s academic work at: http://mrxdentith.com
Why not support The Podcaster's Guide to the Conspiracy by donating to our Patreon: https://www.patreon.com/podcastersguidetotheconspiracy
or Podbean crowdfunding? http://www.podbean.com/patron/crowdfund/profile/id/muv5b-79
Recommended
Transcript
French Resistance and Art During WWII
00:00:00
Speaker
Art. We don't know what it is, but we know what we like. History is, of course, replete with stories of artworks which went missing and the mysteries surrounding their recovery. Indeed, the documentary series Alo Alo detailed the French Resistance's attempt to keep Van Clomp's The Fallen Madonna. The Zabig boobies. Out of Nazi hands.
00:00:20
Speaker
Indeed an entire episode could be devoted to what happened to various artworks and treasures during World War II, given the Third Reich's penchant for stealing art and religious artifacts for Hitler and his cronies.
Introduction to Art World Conspiracies
00:00:31
Speaker
The documentary Raiders of the Lost Ark details the work of one Professor Henry Indiana Jones in trying to retrieve the Ark of the Covenant from Nazi hands, although what happened to it after the war still remains a mystery.
00:00:46
Speaker
But in today's episode, we're going to look at three stories about conspiracies in the art world which have tickled our fancies. Two, we have covered in bonus episodes of the podcast, whilst a third, well it almost featured in an episode at the beginning of this year. So, sit back, grab a glass of wine, light up a cigar, and enjoy the show. No, seriously, grab that wine and get a cigar. We can wait.
00:01:13
Speaker
It's not a suggestion, but perhaps Opino agree. Fine. Don't smoke him if you got him. See if we care. Plebs.
Recording via Zoom and Recent Events
00:01:24
Speaker
Philistines. The Podcaster's Guide to the Conspiracy, brought to you today by Josh Addison and Dr. N Denton.
00:01:43
Speaker
Hello and welcome to the podcaster's guide to the conspiracy. Good evening! I was about to say I am Josh Addison, the Dr. Indentith, but apparently it's none other than Alfred Hitchcock. It's true. Welcome to Tales of Mystery and the Imagination as we go through the outer limits and fiddle with the dial of the Twilight Zone.
00:02:10
Speaker
sounds a little bit dirty and I'm down with it. Now you might have noticed that if you're watching on video that we are socially distant via Zoom once again just to reassure our international listeners we're not back in lockdown again. I was just simply not able to make it over to Em's place this fine evening so we're doing things remotely but I think everyone's used to that now so it's probably okay.
00:02:35
Speaker
So we have an interesting episode for you this week, but first you've been doing more, more talking, more giving of talks.
00:02:45
Speaker
I have. So earlier this week, I gave a talk in the philosophy department seminar series at the University of Auckland. But there's not much to report on that because it was in fact the same talk I gave a week prior, which we covered in the podcast a week ago. So basically, it was more of the same. I mean, it was refined the same, but it was also essentially the same, the same.
00:03:11
Speaker
Right. And then there's been more goings on at the 45th Midwest colloquium. Yes.
Critique of New Conspiracism Book
00:03:17
Speaker
So this week, Steve Clark and Steve Clark gave a blistering critique of a book by Nancy L Rosenblum and Russell Muirhead called a lot of people saying the new conspiracism and the assault on democracy. And a good time was had by all.
00:03:36
Speaker
What is this book? We haven't, I think it's come up yet. So it's a book in the political sciences and it deals with a thesis that there's a new form of conspiracism breed, form of conspiracy theory out there in the world now, which is different from classic conspiracy theories, which basically refers to anything pre the birth of theories around Barack Obama.
00:04:00
Speaker
And these new theories are basically conspiracy theory without the theory. So they've got no theoretical components. They're just bold assertion. And Rosenblum and Muirhead say, this is bad. It's an assault on democracy. And as it turns out, Steve Clark goes, well, that's not true. All of the features they say, which are essential to the new conspiracism, are things we can find in the old conspiracism.
00:04:30
Speaker
And if the new conspiracism doesn't exist, it's no special threat to democracy after all. A point that was agreed upon by Brian Alkely, Charles Pigdon and myself in discussion after Steve's paper. Quality work, Steve. Quality work.
00:04:46
Speaker
Jolly good. So apart from you spreading yourself all over the place, which seems to be becoming more prevalent, do you find you're more in demand these days? Has the world's interest in conspiracy theory sort of perked up more than it used to?
00:05:03
Speaker
Yes, and I say yes with that kind of drawn out yes, because on one level, it's good for me on another level, the fact that people keep on needing to talk to me about things indicates that society is not progressing in a direction, which is conducive for the continuation of the human species. If people
Increased Demand for Conspiracy Talks
00:05:25
Speaker
need my advice, then things are getting very bad indeed.
00:05:30
Speaker
Oh, that's a worry. But let's take your you, and by you, I mean both you, Dr. Denteth, and you, our listener, your minds of it by talking about some classy conspiracy theory scandals and the art
Art World Conspiracy Scandals
00:05:47
Speaker
world. I assume they're classy because I assume everything to do with the art world is. I assume people in the art world are always wearing monocles and slipping from a glass of cognac. That's how big the glass is. They just slip right out of it.
00:05:59
Speaker
Indeed, they're always saying egaz and those molecules are just popping right out. Constantly popping off. So essentially, they wear spectacles. But that's only because they have two molecules in at a time. I mean, one of the ways to show how shocked things are by popping those molecules at the same time. Right, I have I have no idea what I'm even saying now. So maybe you should just play the chime and things will become a little bit clearer once we get into it.
00:06:27
Speaker
Okay, so in that six seconds, have you managed to clear your mind? The answer is no, isn't it? The answer is no. More or less have. So bits of this are going to seem familiar to our beloved patrons, because in times past, when we used to do news episodes, for the Patreon episode, we'd try to do something that wasn't at all news related, like the Patreon episodes used to be. And we'd discuss a few smaller stories that had popped up from time to time
00:06:57
Speaker
And a couple of these were quite interesting stories we found that had a common theme of sort of art-ish stuff in general.
00:07:07
Speaker
And this is another one of those things where we've been saying for a while now, ah, we should do an episode about that. We should do an episode where we go over those artsy ones, because we think all of our listeners would be interested in hearing about them. And we finally put our money where our respective mouths are, and we're going to be discussing those things today. So we have two main topics which have been discussed in Patreon episodes, another sort of subtopic
00:07:36
Speaker
Which never actually made it to a patreon episode and so it's brand new and I think we have some updates to some of the ones as well So it's all it's all going to be dashed interesting if I do say so myself so egads I say is my molecules go pop pop Precisely, do you still have the surprise sound effect?
00:07:57
Speaker
I don't think my monocles could take it actually, to be honest, so maybe give that one a rest. But so where do we start? Do we start with the tale of the dodgy paparologist?
Dr. Dirk Obink and Ancient Document Theft
00:08:07
Speaker
I think we do. I think we start with a character who is obviously named by Douglas Adams, the poor story of Dirk Obnick. Is it Obnick? Actually, I can't remember how we decided.
00:08:21
Speaker
We decided it was Oving. Yeah. You're the person who pronounces last names on this podcast. You can't trust me to say anything properly. I can't even say my own last name half the time.
00:08:34
Speaker
Let's just call him Dr. Dirk, because that sounds a bit more dashing and interesting. Although he's accused of some of some wrongdoing. So Dr. Dirk Obink is a paparologist, which is a real thing, at Oxford University, who has been accused of stealing and selling ancient documents to the Green family. Now, there are folks who've come up before, I think, in news updates. The Greens are the family who own Hobby Lobby, the chain of stores in the States, and they're the ones who sit.
00:09:04
Speaker
for supporting terrorism. Yes. So they set up this Museum of Christian History or whatever it's called. I think it's just the Museum of the Bible. Yeah, there we go. Where they've had lots of basically biblical era artifacts and they got in a bit of trouble in the past because it turns out some of these artifacts
00:09:25
Speaker
things that had sort of been looted and smuggled out of the Middle East and were basically funding terrorist organizations. So these people were themselves indirectly funding these terrorists by buying the proceeds of their looting.
00:09:41
Speaker
They ended up, I think, they got fined, didn't they? It's there in the notes, three million dollars. They got fined after smuggling out some ancient Iraqi artifacts, but also they had some bits of papyrus, which they claimed to be a date from biblical times. And these ones apparently have also been procured under dodgy circumstances.
00:10:04
Speaker
Yeah, so these are 120 papyrus fragments, which were a little bit suspicious. So this is an entire thing that goes on in the world of paparology, which is that universities by and large build up collections of these small fragments of papyrus. They then put them into storage and then they wait for experts to come along and start cataloging and then translating them.
00:10:32
Speaker
So first of all, you build up a catalog of all the papyrus you have, or all the fragments of documents from the past. And you try to sort them into which century they belong to, which stylistic features they have, if there's an identified author, you put them in there. So if it turns out you've got bits of the New Testament, then you put them into a special pile, and you try and work out say which letter of St. John they belong to, or which gospel they belong to.
00:11:02
Speaker
And then because the expertise needed to translate and deal with these papyri is actually quite difficult, then you start the really long process of asking for permission to examine these documents and produce definitive works, which then by and large belong to the university or collection that these papyri belong to. And so what we had in this particular situation was that
00:11:32
Speaker
Dr. Dirk, as we're calling him, because I just want to call him Opnik the entire time, even though that's not how his last name is pronounced, is an expert in translating Greek and koinite Greek.
00:11:47
Speaker
So ancient Greek and then the more modern version of ancient Greek. And he was taken to be one of the people who's really good at translating and looking after early fragments of gospels. So dealing with written forms of the gospels from the New Testament, which date back to within a few decades of the death of the Christian Messiah, Joshua H. Christ. The H stands for holy.
00:12:17
Speaker
It's actually not true at all. I'm probably offending Christians with my heart's content, but I'm a lapsed Catholic. I'm allowed to get away with these things.
00:12:24
Speaker
And so what's interesting about what happened with the fragments of papyri that Hobby Lobby ended up with is that they seemed awfully similar to a whole bunch of papyri fragments that were missing from the oxyrhynchus, rhynchus? Oxyrhynchus?
00:12:48
Speaker
okey rickus collection, which is owned by the Egypt Exploration Society, the EES, and was housed at Oxford Sackler Library. Now, of course, when we say Sackler
00:13:06
Speaker
if you are, if you've been paying attention, that name may ring some bells because the Sacklers, this is the very same Sacklers who own Purdue, the pharmaceutical company that's basically been blamed for the, which one, which one are they, the Oxycontin? I think so, yeah.
00:13:21
Speaker
Oxycontin epidemic in the States and they've been known to sort of bolster their family name by devoting large donating rather large amounts of money to universities it's quite simple I mean you you make a fortune getting people addicted to opiates
00:13:37
Speaker
And then you rehabilitate yourself by donating large sums of money to the upper class and the toffs in the UK. And it makes all your problems just disappear because the common people, the plebs, they absolutely love it. When the organization which got them hooked on crack is giving money to people who never need crack, because you know, their spines are wibbly wobbly from all the inbreeding.
00:14:07
Speaker
Yes, no, I mean, so that's largely irrelevant to the story. Nevertheless, we've got the greens and the Sacklers mixed in it as well. But yes, so this collection, Oxyrhynchus, Oxi means sharp, I know that much. I can't remember what Rhynchus is, so probably doesn't matter.
00:14:23
Speaker
Is it the Sharp Nose Collection? It is, maybe it's the Sharp Nose Collection. But yes, that Egypt exploration society that owns this collection, they're a... I gather they were sort of an organisation that goes back quite a long time, back far enough that their original purpose was basically showing up in Egypt, nicking artefacts and taking them back to England, and these days try to be a little more responsible with themselves.
00:14:50
Speaker
Much like the Elgin marbles, I guess, don't actually feel so strong as to give their stuff back, but nevertheless curate it now. So yeah, 120 of these fragments have gone missing from the collection that Obink was supposedly looking after.
00:15:08
Speaker
At the time, he denied everything. He claimed that he was being framed, that any sales documents or invoices with his name on them suggesting he was the one that sold them were faked.
00:15:21
Speaker
Now, things were particularly suspicious in this case, because it wasn't just that these papyrus fragments went missing, but the catalogue records that referred to them went missing as well. So that's somebody not just taking them, but then wanting to remove all evidence that they were there in the first place to try and cover their tracks. Oh, no, there's actually one part of the story we've forgotten to mention.
00:15:45
Speaker
We have which is what you've got. Dr. Dirk isn't just someone who goes around translating fragments of papyri. He also has a burgeoning trade as someone who buys and sells antiquities, including fragments of papyri, which he definitely didn't source from the EES definitely didn't source those. Yes.
00:16:11
Speaker
Yes, no, so that definitely counts against him as well. So it turned out there was a backup catalog information, and the Egypt Exploration Society did a bit of cross-matching and discovered that there were, in fact, things missing. But the fact that the main catalog records had gone as well suggests that, A, someone really wanted to hide their tracks, and B, someone was probably someone on the inside, someone who actually knew the workings of the catalog.
00:16:39
Speaker
So it did not look good for Dr. Dirk. There'd been a bit of conspiracy around him in the past. I think one of the things that made his name was he published an analysis of some fragments that were apparently the writings of Sappho, the famous classical poet. Actually, I think you'll find the famous lesbian philosopher poet.
00:17:06
Speaker
Well, yes, but we actually I wasn't sure what's this works of her poetry or of her philosophy. I don't know if the contents of them came up. Actually, that's a good point. I mean, I mean, Saffo is kind of famous for her erotic poetry and coming from the Isle of Lesbos, but also actually was a philosopher as well. And I actually don't know what these what these fragments were, but they are taken to be
00:17:32
Speaker
copies of her work, so they're not all works in her hand, they are copies of her work, and given how little the work has survived, this transitive translations he produced of Cepho's work was taken to be big news indeed. And we'll be coming back to that.
00:17:51
Speaker
I think we will, because there was a bit of controversy around that, and it all comes down to cartonnage, which I think, I think last time we weren't sure if it's cartonnage or cartonnage, but I actually went and looked it up, and I've heard human beings saying the word, and they're fairly consistent. It's cartonnage. Now, cartonnage is basically paper mache but with papyrus.
00:18:17
Speaker
in this in this context as well. The fanciest form of paper mache. If you go to a really, really top school, then they don't do paper mache, they do cut and
00:18:28
Speaker
So I think people still do it these days with cardboard. It's a similar sort of thing. But so it's like peppermash a bit a bit stiffer, basically. And there are two forms of cartonnage. There's industrial cartonnage, which is where you just take a whole bunch of papyrus, you wet it, you turn it into blocks. And then there's mummy cartonnage. And it's the mummy cartonnage, which is a really interesting stuff.
00:18:54
Speaker
Yes, so some mummies were buried with masks made of cartonnage, and a thing that you can do is take these masks, essentially dissolve them, dissolve out the glue that holds them together, and retrieve the scraps of papyrus that they were made of. Now, that's kind of frowned upon, even if
00:19:17
Speaker
this stuff that the papyrus that you managed to extract from them is of enormous historical value, you're still destroying a historical artifact to get at them in the first place. And often destroying an artifact, not knowing if there's going to be any particular benefit to doing it. Because if it turns out that this pharaoh's mask is made up entirely of shopping lists, there's going to be of interest to some economists, but not much interest to the literary world in general.
00:19:47
Speaker
And so things get a little bit dodgy, and so I remember at the time, when we first talked about this, we were surprised to find ourselves talking about the international practice of papyrus laundering, where this can be a way of laundering, essentially, illegally obtained or fake bits of papyrus. You can say that
00:20:13
Speaker
um you know no we didn't we didn't steal it we didn't get it from any dodgy place there was this uh mummy mask which we legally obtained and we we destroyed that and which yes okay people look down on it but it's not actually illegal you're allowed you know if you own it you are allowed to break it down for the papyrus if you want to
00:20:31
Speaker
And so that's where these scraps of papyrus came from. They're perfect, perfectly legit. They came from a mummy mask that we purchased and dissolved ourselves. And which is nice if it's true, but it's also a story that can be used to cover for the fact that this papyrus you've got was obtained via more dodgy methods, or indeed that it's fake to begin with. And so the other thing which you need to point out here is that
00:20:56
Speaker
You are allowed to trade in certain antiquities as long as they left a certain country at a certain time. So there's a whole trade in Egyptian antiquities.
00:21:12
Speaker
which basically left the country before the modern nation state of Egypt, so circa about the 1960s, and you're allowed to trade those artifacts, but anything which post-states that point, that's illegal antiquities trades. So not only is there a kind of worry about cartonnage with respect to your damaging artifacts,
00:21:38
Speaker
There's also the worry that cartonnage is being smuggled out of the country for this process to occur. And so there were suggestions that these saffo fragments that Obie could published might have been a little bit dodgy, because there were photographs of the fragments themselves, there were photographs of them being extracted from this cartonnage. And the
00:22:02
Speaker
photographs of them being extracted were actually dated after the images of the fragments themselves, which does not appear possible. So maybe there was something wrong with the dates on the photographs or there was some confusion there, but it certainly cast doubt upon things.
Investigation into Dr. Dirk Obink's Allegations
00:22:19
Speaker
And that's kind of where we left things, I think, when we first discussed the story, but I understand there have been some... Oh, sorry, I should say, I don't think I mentioned this right at the beginning. We first talked about this, the bonus episode accompanying episode 255, which is back in February of 2020, and it was based on an article in The Guardian in January of 2020. I gather there have been some developments since then.
00:22:43
Speaker
Yes, so at some point in November 2019, the police were called in to investigate exactly what was going on with the Oxi-Renker's collection, and Dr. Dirk was arrested somewhere between March and April of last year.
00:23:05
Speaker
Now I can't find any update subsequently. I believe when he was arrested, Bale was posted, so he's on his own reconnaissance, but there has been an arrest. Dirk has continued to maintain his innocence in this issue, but certainly being arrested is at least some indication that there's probably more to the story than Dr. Dirk wants to let on.
00:23:33
Speaker
And then as well as that, in October of last year, the Bulletin of the American Society of Papirologists, which once again is a thing, was published containing an article by C. Michael Sampson, which is entitled Deconstructing the Provenances of p.seph.obinc. Which means papyrus's of sepho as translated by obinc.
00:23:58
Speaker
And it seems like he is basically casting doubt on the story of this manuscript. He's found some inconsistencies. So first of all, the use of old papyrus for making mummy cartonnage died out, apparently, like 200 years before the fragments supposedly recovered from the cartonnage were produced. So there seems to be an issue around
00:24:24
Speaker
the idea that these things could have come from mummy cartonnage in the first place. And then there are a bunch of inconsistencies around how how Obink supposedly came upon these fragments. And there's this mysterious German officer, I understand.
00:24:43
Speaker
Yeah, so in the original version of the story, when Obink talked about where he procured the fragments from, because he was the one who presented the world with, I've got some fragments, here's some translations, he talked about the idea that this particular bit of Mami Katanaj
00:25:02
Speaker
was taken out of Egypt by a German officer, Rayner Kriebel, who was a military attaché to the German Federal Republic's embassy in Egypt in Cairo. Then later on, this German officer kind of disappears from the story to the point where Dr. Dirk, when he's challenged on what about the German officer, starts saying, oh, I never talked about a German officer. That was invented by someone else.
00:25:31
Speaker
And so Sampson has basically tracked down the initial reports and actually tracked down who the officer was, i.e. Rayna Creeble. And this turns out to be a bit of a problem for Obbink's story because he said this person existed, then he denied this person existed, and it turns out this person did exist.
00:25:55
Speaker
But it also turns out that the bit of Mummy Katanaj that Kreeball has an association with really can't be the bit of Mummy Katanaj that Obink said he got the fragments from. So it seems if the entire origin story of these fragments is completely fictitious.
00:26:15
Speaker
Mm. Which doesn't necessarily mean that the fragments themselves are fake, but it could mean that they were obtained in a slightly less than legal manner. Yes, i.e. they may have been obtained from Karshanaj, which was taken from Egypt well after the period you're allowed to be buying and selling antiquities.
00:26:37
Speaker
And so that's where things stand at the moment. So we
Guardian Article Recommendation
00:26:41
Speaker
should actually we should put a link to that Guardian article in the notes or in the tweets accompanying this episode or something because it's quite a it's a surprisingly sort of gripping story of detective work and intrigue in tracing down exactly what had happened. And entirely a case of a student magazine
00:27:02
Speaker
at Oxford going actually there's something really weird going on here and people going actually you're right that is weird we should probably investigate that more so that yeah definitely worth looking at but that's where it stands at the moment um which means we should probably move on to the second story that we looked at um in a patron episode accompanying the next news episode the news episode episode 259 news episode from march of 2020
00:27:31
Speaker
And we were alerted to this from another Guardian article, which was also dated January 2020. January 2020
Art Forgeries and 2020 Predictions
00:27:38
Speaker
seems to have been the month for mysterious goings on in the art world. And we thought it was going to be the year of art forgery, art hopes and art conspiracies.
00:27:48
Speaker
And it turned out not to be and if only it had been, if only it had been, I might be giving talks called conspiracy theorizing in the age of the art forgery. Oh, actually, that's a great idea for a paper. Maybe I should write that. I think maybe you should anyway. But anyway, so the story we're going to talk about now centers on the Salvatore Mundi, which is
00:28:12
Speaker
It's the name of a painting. It's the name of a bunch of paintings. I think it's sort of a recurring thing in Christian iconography out here. But Salvatore Mundi, meaning savior of the world, is a depiction of Jesus with one hand up doing that two fingers thing that he does in some iconography. The kind of Churchill piece thing, but more like Spock.
00:28:35
Speaker
And holding a glass orb in the other hand, and the orb represents the world, I believe that he is the savior of. And the most famous Salvatore Mundi is a work of Leonardo da Vinci's. A lost work. A lost work. A Leonardo da Vinci's. Lost for a long time.
00:28:50
Speaker
Now at the time we first talked about this, it was the most expensive painting ever, and as far as I know still is, I don't know if it's been surpassed yet, it was sold at Christie's for $450.3 million in 2017.
Da Vinci Painting Controversies
00:29:08
Speaker
There were a few controversies and potential conspiracies around it. It was lost for a long, long time. It resurfaced at an auction in New Orleans in Louisiana in 2005. It was bought for a mere around $1,000.
00:29:27
Speaker
I'm trying to feel a myth here of what kind of return you get for 1k versus 450 million. I think it's at least 15 times as much money. Possibly even 16 times as much. It is very number way. It's more.
00:29:47
Speaker
Not as much as 18, though, right? That'd be far too big a factor. I don't know. I don't know. I need to get my calculator out, but could be. So this fellow, Robert Simon, and his business partners that somehow had come across this painting and had got an inkling that it might actually be a genuine Da Vinci. Obviously, if it was selling for $1,000, whoever owned it had no idea of its true provenance.
00:30:09
Speaker
but it was authenticated by experts from National Gallery three years later in 2008. It was shown to the public in the National Gallery from November 2011 to February 2012. Since then, it's changed hands a few times, so Robert Simon and his business partners weren't the ones selling it in 2017, so they probably themselves didn't get $450 million, but though we've got a hell of a lot,
00:30:32
Speaker
But yes, it's record breaking sale in 2017 was to actually, well, we'll get to who it sold to in a little bit. There were a number of controversies already before that. I mean, the reason why this article was written
00:30:47
Speaker
was because a bit of a controversy that it all sounds a little bit a little bit sort of technical and weird and pedantic really this first thing that's apparently there were claims that the painting was being shown at the time it was up for sale which apparently is a bit of a no-no apparently if you've got to work like that you can kind of understand if you're trying to sell a painting
00:31:12
Speaker
putting it in say the National Gallery in the UK, where it's going to get a lot of press is going to draw a lot of attention to that sale and make people go, Oh, this is a displayable piece, I should probably buy that. So I can understand why galleries in particular be going, no, no, we don't if there's even the hint,
00:31:33
Speaker
you're trying to sell this particular piece, we are not going to display it. And if people start lying about that, then of course, that can also bring your gallery into distribute, because people think that you're in on the con.
00:31:48
Speaker
So, I mean, yes, it's not sort of illegal or anything, but it's very much not done. And so there had been a bit of controversy around whether or not it had been done. And this British art historian called Ben Lewis published a letter released which contained what he described as nuclear proof.
00:32:09
Speaker
No shortage of hyperbole there that the picture had been offered for sale at various times when it was supposedly on display. And there was, as I recall, there was a little bit of some sort of dodginess around the idea that that sort of, it was up for sale and then it got put on display and then it was up for sale again. And they tried to sort of say, oh, but during the time it was on display, it wasn't for sale, but it was for sale directly before and directly after or something. It all seemed a little bit off.
00:32:39
Speaker
So there was there was a bit of controversy around that. But there was there was not the only controversy. No, I mean, the bigger controversy was the claim by British art historian Charles Hope that the Salvador Mundi that everyone was really excited by was not in fact the work of Leonardo da Vinci at all.
00:33:07
Speaker
I think that is worth the sting, yes. Even before that, there was some question about the state of it. It's a painting on wood, as we say, for a very long time. It seemed to have been held by someone who didn't actually know the value of what they had, and so it doesn't seem to have been treated as well as it possibly should have been.
00:33:28
Speaker
um it's it's uh quite banged up there were sort of you know bits where the wood had chipped away and so on there was a big streak right down the middle of it where it had been all scratched away um when um when it was first uh bought by Robert Simon um it had been heavily over painted in an attempt to restore it and so they did a lot of work at cleaning off all of this painting to to reveal the original painting underneath and then there was some restoring done and there was again there was a bit of
00:33:56
Speaker
a bit of controversy over whether, you know, how the restoration had been done, whether there was too much, whether, you know, the distinction between filling in bits where the paint was gone versus painting over bit where the original paint was already there and how much of that you should do and how much you shouldn't and so on. But at that point no one was disputing that it was a da Vinci, but nevertheless since then people have.
00:34:23
Speaker
From what I can gather, the consensus is that if it isn't for Da Vinci, it's at least from his workshop. The consensus is Leonardo's hand is involved in it to some degree. The question is whether he merely sketched out the image and then his assistants basically painted it in, or whether he did a large amount of the work and then the work was finished off by one of his assistants.
00:34:53
Speaker
So there's one fellow called Matthew Landrous, who's a scholar of da Vinci's works. He believes that most of the painting is by a man called Bernardino Luini, who was an assistant of da Vinci's, but whose own work generally sells for less than a million pounds, which is at least half
00:35:13
Speaker
of what it actually sold for eventually, isn't it? I'm pretty sure one is a decent amount, less than 450, yeah. I'd need to look that up. We should use some of the patron monies and buy a calculator. On the other hand, we have a fellow called Alan Wintermute, who is a senior specialist and old master paintings at Christie's in London. And he's quite convinced it's a da Vinci. He says,
00:35:39
Speaker
Every major scholar of Leonardo's work accepts the picture and has for the past decade, adding, it's not in flawless condition, it's 500 years old and absolutely has the presence and condition of a true Leonardo. Now, a large chunk of this is actually due to the fact that identifying the hand of a painter turns out to be a very inexact science. And in part, this is kind of confounded by the fact that
00:36:05
Speaker
Because Leonardo da Vinci wasn't just a solo painter, he had a workshop, he had students, he had assistants, who he was training to paint. Many of the characteristic techniques we take to be true to Leonardo's forms are also going to be found in amongst his students as well, because people talk about the kind of feathering work that Leonardo used in his work. And then people go, but yeah, but the problem is,
00:36:33
Speaker
Bernardino Luini also has feathering work. And we don't know, is that feathering work a case of Leonardo coming at the end of Bernardino's work going, I'll just finish this bit off for you? Or was Leonardo teaching Bernardino to do that particular type of feathering work?
00:36:54
Speaker
So there's an entire in in exact science here of trying to detect the figurative fingerprint of painters in paintings, and then going, Yeah, but unfortunately, this is tradecraft. This got taught to people. It's not a guarantee.
00:37:11
Speaker
So yeah, that's sort of where it stands. You have some experts think it's not genuine Da Vinci, other people who think it definitely is. Whether or
Saudi Prince and Painting Rumors
00:37:21
Speaker
not it is, I guess, would affect its value to a great degree. But that doesn't really matter because the fact is that it did indeed sell for over 450 million US dollars. Now, Josh, who did it sell to?
00:37:35
Speaker
Well, so apparently after it was sold, it was due to be unveiled at the Louvre Abu Dhabi. Apparently there are Louvre museums around the world. I didn't realize it was a franchise operation, but there you go.
00:37:48
Speaker
Well, there's also New York universities all around the world. There's one in Abu Dhabi. There's one in Singapore. It turns out New York University is not just constrained to New York. Even in New York University in Shanghai.
00:38:07
Speaker
So, it was foreshadowing to have been unveiled at the Louvre in Abu Dhabi back in 2018. It was bought by a member of the Saudi royal family, a Prince Badr bin Abdullah, who it was suggested was acting as a proxy from Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman.
00:38:36
Speaker
I think he's he's worth the sting as well, isn't he? And indeed, a few months after the sale, Prince Badir bin Abdullah was made Saudi Arabia's first ever Minister of Culture, suggesting that was possibly, you know, a reward for him doing the Crown Prince's bidding. Good work, old chap, getting ourselves a legitimate Leonardo da Vinci. Why not have this ministry over here as a reward?
00:39:02
Speaker
Now, Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman of Saudi Arabia is good buddies with Crown Prince Mohammed bin Zayed of Abu Dhabi, so it would make sense if Mohammed bin Salman or MBS, I believe as he's known these days,
00:39:18
Speaker
bought this to lend to his friend to display in this prestigious gallery in Abu Dhabi. The thing is though, as I intimated, that never actually happened. So since it was sold in 2017, it has not been seen since.
00:39:34
Speaker
Now there are a few suggestions as to why that may be. Some people have suggested that perhaps its current owners are no longer that convinced that it is a work of Leonardo da Vinci. And so they haven't wanted to exhibit it for that reason, especially since if they exhibit it in a fancy new convention hall, experts might come and have a look at it, which if it isn't a real real Leonardo da Vinci might be the death knell of your $430 million purchase.
00:40:04
Speaker
And the other suggestion is basically that Mohammed bin Salman being a guy who, as we know, just kind of does what he wants, has just kept it.
00:40:16
Speaker
Yeah, just keeping it on his luxury yacht. Yep, supposedly it is in storage in a luxury yacht owned by Mohammed bin Salman, where allegedly it's awaiting the construction of a new Saudi cultural center where it will be displayed. But yes, a luxury yacht doesn't sound like the sort of safe house where you'd put an over $400 million painting just for storage.
00:40:46
Speaker
Well, possibly you might. I mean, I've been to Dubai and if you spend any time in a hotel there, that environment is incredibly regulated to keep the humidity down and the temperature quite pleasant as opposed to walking out the front door.
00:41:06
Speaker
into the street. So I imagine if you're the crown prince of Saudi Arabia, and you own a luxury yacht, which this crown prince of Saudi Arabia definitely does, it is probably one of the most temperature and humidity controlled environments ever made by a private organization, which means actually, it might be the best place to keep this item.
00:41:33
Speaker
Well, I certainly, I would certainly believe that it is a suitable environment to keep. Unless, unless MBS is using it as a surfboard, being pulled along by a luxury yacht. Although, imagine that is the kind of thing you would pull if you were the crown prince of Saudi Arabia, and you've got money to spare in case of, yeah, my surfboard is a genuine Leonardo da Vinci.
00:42:02
Speaker
Nevertheless, I would argue that while it may be possible that a luxury yacht could be a perfectly suitable storage space for a 500-year-old master, it would surely be even better if you had that sort of storage environment in a location that could not sink into the water, say a bank or building of any kind. No, no, no, even better. What about a submarine?
00:42:30
Speaker
Well, it's sub, well, exactly. You can't you can't sink if you're already underwater. That's actually, I mean, that's the weird thing, though. You can sink. Well, you can a submarine on the sea floor, some sort of undersea base. Did you ever see an octopus garden in the shade? Did you ever see the film underwater?
00:42:49
Speaker
came out last year. Oh, the one what's it face from Twilight in a Christian's children. Well, actually, no, as you know, I said, I won't say it's a good film. I think I think she's great in it. I think it's just a fairly standard alien. A good example of its kind. Oh, yeah. Yeah. I mean, she's a great she's a great action star. She's really really successor to you to the the brief underwater phase in the 90s. And you'll buy things or deep stuff. Yeah.
00:43:19
Speaker
Anyway, that's not relevant, but I'm just saying you should go and see the movie underwater because it was actually, I mean, to be perfectly honest, I'm pretty sure it is the best film I saw in a cinema in 2020. How many films do you see in the cinema? Well, precisely. Nevertheless, I stand by that claim.
00:43:36
Speaker
Now, the only film I saw in a cinema in 2020 was Tenet. I saw Tenet. And that was definitely the worst film I saw in a cinema that year. I also saw Psycho Goreman at the Hollywood Navendale, which I liked, but actually I think I prefer it underwater, but anyway.
00:43:58
Speaker
Now, obviously the fact that we're rambling about good films that you should see means we're at the end of this story, but we're not at the end of this episode because we do have another story and it concerns the Salvatore Mundi.
00:44:13
Speaker
But not that Salvatore Mundi. But not that one. No, as I said before, there are lots of Salvatore Mundis. And basically, this was just something that popped up last year on actually, sorry, the beginning of this year, that was like, oh, we should we should chuck this in a Patreon episode, because it's an interesting follow up to the other one, another another Salvatore Mundi getting into a scrape. But we never ended up actually, I think we found something more interesting to talk about that week, whatever it was.
00:44:40
Speaker
I think it was our first week back and it turned out we just had a lot to talk about. Probably, yeah. No, so basically this was a Salvatore Mundi that was stolen from the Basilica of San Domenico Maggiore in Naples.
Theft and Recovery of Salvatore Mundi
00:44:57
Speaker
seemingly stolen to order and recovered in I guess January of this year. So the painting was a lesser known 15th century version of the contentious Salvatore Mundi, most likely painted towards the end of the second decade of the 16th century by a Lombard artist and a follower of Leonardo's style of the Second Milanese period, which is 1508 to 1513 apparently.
00:45:21
Speaker
It was recovered by, now this was the bit I liked, by the crimes against the heritage section of the Naples Flying Squad of the Plizia d'Estarto, which I assume is the Italian state police. I do love it because it's a flying squad. Especially one with the crimes against heritage section.
00:45:39
Speaker
Yes, it was discovered behind a wardrobe in a private residence in Ponticelli, which is an eastern suburb of Naples. And the 36-year-old owner of the apartment has been taken into custody for the offence of receiving stolen goods. Now, we can actually spin this into a conspiratorial angle because it does seem that the painting was stolen to order. It seems like there wasn't just somebody
00:46:01
Speaker
making off with it for themselves. There was some sort of a conspiracy behind it. It was stored in a cabinet in this basilica, which was locked. The cabinet itself showed no signs of forced entry, so it did appear to have been somebody who knew what they were doing.
00:46:20
Speaker
We're not quite sure if the person who they actually found it with is the person who stole it. But according to Alfredo Fabracini of the Naples Law Enforcement Division, the man who they arrested gave little credible information on how he came into possession of the painting, and apparently told the officers, I found it at a flea market.
00:46:44
Speaker
Because that's what I do when I steal something from the Basilico of San Domenico Maggiore, I just see how much I can get for it at a flea market. Well, I mean, we've all watched those, those detective shows, all those movies, where the person is all about the heist, but not about actually making any profit from the heist. Because I get my thrill from stealing the out of back, but I don't care what happens afterwards.
00:47:06
Speaker
The Thieves of Hearts of Gold, Joshua. Hearts of Gold. Probably. Probably, yeah, probably Golden-Hearted Thieves, robbing the Basilica of San Domenico Maggiore.
00:47:16
Speaker
Um, and that's kind of, I think part of the reason why this didn't show up in the episode is that that's basically all there is to it. Somebody stole a painting and then it got found and they got arrested. But it was a nice little, a nice little callback. Those those Salvatore Mundis, they just can't stay out of trouble. Every time we say Salvatore Mundi, all I can think of is Eleanor Rigby.
00:47:38
Speaker
Elinorikmi picks up the rice in the church where a wedding has been, lives in a dream. Salvador Mundi waits at the window wearing a face that she keeps. Actually, I mean, this actually, if we spend enough time, we can actually rewrite Elinorikmi to be about the Salvador Mundi.
00:48:00
Speaker
We could. I don't know if we should. You've got me doing it now. I think that's the worst I've had since somebody pointed out that COVID-19 can be sung to the tune of Come On Eileen. But let's not go there.
00:48:16
Speaker
Well, I'm sure we've talked about this before. You've seen the the Twitter feed of Wikipedia articles whose titles can be sung to the Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles theme. I have, indeed. That's the thing that exists. My personal favorite, post-traumatic stress disorder. There isn't a harsh show. There's a lot to watch.
00:48:34
Speaker
And so that, I think we can now remove our monocles and our top hats, tip our remaining brandy into the gutter where it belongs, and leave the art world, because we're done, I think, with our stories. But maybe this year... What the listeners aren't aware then?
00:48:54
Speaker
They think they've been listening to two people talking about art forgeries, art hoax, and stolen paintings. We've been doing an entire Oceans 8 the entire time, distracting you from the actual crime we just committed. It's the perfect cover story. It is. Which four of the Oceans 8 are you and which four are mine? Well, you're definitely Sandra Bullock. Yeah, one quarter of me is Sandra Bullock. I've always said that.
00:49:24
Speaker
Yes, well, and so possibly we should then wrap things up as quickly as we can before the before the cops rumble us.
00:49:33
Speaker
before we're forced to stage another elaborate heist, because it'll turn out that when they pick us up, that's exactly what we wanted to happen. And our person on the inside is going to spring us and it'll all be a hilarious jape. It's true. James Corden has actually turned out to be the secret third host of the podcast's Guide to the Conspiracy since the beginning.
00:49:56
Speaker
Exactly. But before we go, we should probably point out that despite this being a recap and an expansion on bonus episode content in the past, we do have an actual bonus episode coming up after this.
Preview of America's Stonehenge Episode
00:50:09
Speaker
And it's art adjacent, I suppose, would you say? Yes.
00:50:14
Speaker
So we're going to talk about America's Stonehenge, how America's Stonehenge has been defaced, and the curious role that QAnon plays in the story. It's going to get weird, and we're going to have a reference back to America Unearthed. Yep, that's how we like it. Which should be giving Josh nightmares right now.
00:50:36
Speaker
Ah, mild flashbacks, I would say. But yeah, so until then, that's what our patrons get to sink their teeth into. If you're not currently a patron and you'd like to be one, then just go to patreon.com and look for the podcaster's guide to the conspiracy. If you're not a patron and you're fine with that, well, then we're fine with that too, quite frankly. But we'd love you to become one so you can join on the hijinks.
00:51:00
Speaker
Yeah, but no pressure. No pressure. I mean, you get you get access to a Discord server and, and stuff like that. But you know, it's it's it's all it's all good. It's quite literally all good. So I think we'll get off and and record the episode about QAnon defacing Stonehenge or something. But until then to the rest of you, we simply say goodbye. And totally,
00:51:27
Speaker
The podcaster's guide to the conspiracy is Josh Addison and me, Dr. M.R. Extenteth. You can contact us at podcastconspiracyatgmail.com and please do consider supporting the podcast via our Patreon. And remember, remember, oh December, what a night.