Critic Reviews

Koefoed’s stylishly made film takes its time, gives everyone their due, and leaves us with some profoundly interesting questions.

The Lost Leonardo tells the tale of the most scrutinized painting of all time in fascinating, exhaustive detail.

The Lost Leonardo is the first art-world documentary I’ve seen that captures what art becomes once it goes through the looking glass of greed: not just a commodity, but a way of transferring and manipulating power. It’s enough to make the Mona Lisa stop smiling.

The Lost Leonardo is one of those rare documentaries in which almost everyone involved volunteers their loose-lipped testimony, seemingly unconcerned as to the dubious light in which it may place them, and Koefoed turns it in at a snappy 96 minutes with all the bells and whistles of a doc crowd-pleaser.

The ultimate strength of The Lost Leonardo is its inspection of how society reveres and seeks out capital, the real driving force behind the pushes and pulls acted upon the Salvator Mundi.

As thrilling and fun to watch as any fictional crime narrative, The Lost Leonardo is also a straightforward and unflinching indictment of the way power is brokered in our modern-day society—behind the scenes, out of reach, under the veneer of beauty and esteem.

There’s an enigma here. If we believe anyone in The Lost Leonardo, we believe someone who is only here to cover their tracks. Koefoed knows this and plays up the mystery with compelling results.

It’s a dizzying tale. And whether or not you believe “Salvator Mundi” to be a real Leonardo, it’s ultimately a disgusting one.

As this film amply demonstrates, in the highest realms of commerce, wielding power is paramount.

As with all documentaries about art, we are left uneasily wondering if the galleries of the world are full of “wrong attributions” or straight-up fakes.