Even though Leonardo da Vinci’s Salvator Mundi sold at auction for a record-breaking $450.3 million while marketed as “the last da Vinci,” there are in fact one, maybe two more out there. Each could be worth as much as $200 million, according to one dealer. Both paintings are smaller scale and depict the same image: the Virgin Mary with the Christ child in her lap. In the painting, the baby is holding a cross-shaped stick used to wind yard. This has given the image its title: The Madonna of the Yarnwinder. Martin Kemp, a da Vinci scholar and emeritus research professor of art history at Oxford University in the U.K., said both paintings are in private hands. One of the paintings, known as Buccleuch Madonna, has been on view at the National Galleries of Scotland since 2009 as part of a long-term loan by Duke of Buccleuch. The family has owned the painting for 250 years, according to the museum. Technically the painting could be sold, but the trustees of the Buccleuch Living Heritage Trust have no indicted they don’t want to sell. The other painting, known as the Lansdowne Madonna, was last sold in 1999 by New York’s Wildenstein & Co and is believed to have remained in the same private collection.
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