Against the Rules in general turns on the theme of the loss of fairness in modern life, and here his argument winds through fellow best-selling author Walter Isaacson (who expressed his own doubts about the painting in his blockbuster biography Leonardo da Vinci), the market for used cars, and the ratings agencies pressured to give high marks to the toxic home-mortgage assets that crippled the world economy in 2008. In signature fashion, Lewis is after something much larger than Salvator Mundi‘s attribution. Left: Salvator Mundi‘ right: Author Michael Lewis attends the New York premiere of The Big Short, the film adaptation of his best-selling book about the 2008 financial crisis. (I explored this same line of reasoning last year through the lens of David Killen’s storage-locker haul of possible Willem de Koonings.)
Instead, the ruling lies with art authenticators who are heavily incentivized to declare competent if not necessarily spectacular works to be masterpieces by canonical talents, even in the face of legitimate doubt. But to him, the point is that no one else can be, either, based on the imperfect evidence available. Lewis admits that he isn’t sure who painted the now-famous work. Lewis’s interest in the piece derives from its paradoxical status as both the most expensive artwork ever auctioned-its price at auction crossed $450 million, in case you’ve been in a medically induced trance since early November 2017-and an artwork lacking unquestionable, objective proof of its creator. “ The Hand of Leonardo,” as the episode is called, hinges on the lingering uncertainty surrounding the authorship of Leonardo’s Salvator Mundi. But in the just released fourth episode of his new podcast Against the Rules with Michael Lewis, he’s set his sights on an unlikely character: the art authenticator. In best-selling books such as Moneyball, The Big Short, and The Fifth Risk, journalist and author Michael Lewis has taken on antagonists as formidable as structural bias, predatory banks, and a presidential administration working to hollow out government from the inside.
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