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In 2005, two art dealers bought a rather battered Christ at a New Orleans auction for 1,175 dollars. It was so heavily overpainted that it looked like a mediocre workshop copy.
After years of cleaning and restoration, several experts reached an explosive conclusion: it might be Leonardo da Vinci's Salvator Mundi, a lost original known only through copies. In 2017, Christie's auctioned it in New York and the bidding closed at 450.3 million dollars, the highest price ever paid for a painting. According to the press, the Saudi royal family stood behind the buyer.
The controversy has never stopped: some specialists doubt Leonardo painted it all, seeing instead the hand of his workshop — and of the restorer.
And the final twist: since the auction, the most expensive painting in history has never been shown in public again. Nobody knows for certain where it is.