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The Da Vinci world of known unknowns

Was Leonardo really vegetarian, agnostic and a fashion icon? In this searingly brilliant new ‘anti-biography’ we learn there isn’t much we can say about him with any certainty at all

5 April 2025

9:00 AM

5 April 2025

9:00 AM

Leonardo da Vinci: An Untraceable Life Stephen J. Campbell

Princeton University Press, pp.352, 30

When Leonardo da Vinci’s ‘Salvator Mundi’ was sold in 2017 for $450 million it caused a sensation. Dismissed as an anonymous ‘wreck’ just 12 years before, it had become the single most expensive artwork ever to come to auction. Newspapers – goggle-eyed at the price – hailed the discovery of a ‘lost’ Leonardo.

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