It’s yellow, not green, that’s the colour of jealousy

Making attributions to Leonardo da Vinci,  the great art historian Adolfo Venturi once remarked, is like ‘picking up a red-hot iron’. Those who wish to avoid injury, he advised, should exercise great caution. Whether or not the scholars who attributed the ‘Salvator Mundi’ to the great man are now suffering from badly burnt fingers — not to mention the buyer who paid $450.3 million for it — is a question of informed opinion.

On the whole, Carmen C. Bambach, the author of the monumental Leonardo da Vinci Rediscovered (Yale, 4 Volumes, £400) votes against. In Leonardo da Vinci: The Complete Paintings in Detail (Prestel £65), Alessandro Vezzosi, also a noted authority on the artist, is more guarded. One thing is certain, he concludes unanswerably: whatever it is, it remains the costliest work of art on earth and thus a tribute to the stellar status of Leonardo in this year, the 500th anniversary of his death.