List of most expensive paintings



This is a list of the highest known prices paid for paintings. The record is approximately US$450.3 million (which includes commission), paid for Leonardo da Vinci's Salvator Mundi (c. 1500). The painting was sold in November 2017, through the auction house Christie's in New York City.

Background
The most famous paintings, especially old master works created before 1803, are generally owned or held by museums for viewing by patrons. Since museums rarely sell them, they are considered priceless. Guinness World Records lists Leonardo da Vinci's Mona Lisa as having the highest insurance value for a painting. On permanent display at the Louvre in Paris, the Mona Lisa was assessed at US$100 million on 14 December 1962. Taking inflation into account, the 1962 value would be around US$ million in.

The earliest sale on the list below (Vase with Fifteen Sunflowers by Vincent van Gogh) is from March 1987; with a price of £24.75 million (£ million in currency). This sale tripled the previous record, and introduced a new era in top art sales. Before this, the highest absolute price paid for a painting was £8.1 million (£ million in currency) paid by the J. Paul Getty Museum for Andrea Mantegna's Adoration of the Magi at Christie's in London on 18 April 1985. The sale of Vincent van Gogh's Sunflowers was the first time a "modern" (in this case 1888) painting became the record holder. Old master paintings had previously dominated the market. In contrast, there are currently only nine pre-1875 paintings among the listed top 89, and none created between 1635 and 1874.

An exceptional case is graffiti artist David Choe, who accepted payment in shares for painting graffiti art in the headquarters of a fledgling Facebook. His shares were of limited value when he was given them, but by the time of Facebook's IPO they were valued at around $200 million.

The list is incomplete with respect to sales between private parties, as these are not always reported and, even if they are, details like the purchase price may remain secret. For example, on June 25, 2019, the American hedge fund manager J. Tomilson Hill bought a recently rediscovered Judith and Holofernes (1607) attributed to Caravaggio, two days before it would have been auctioned in Toulouse. Though the Louvre Museum had turned down the opportunity to purchase it for €100 million, the painting was estimated to sell for $110 to $170 million. The actual purchase price was not disclosed, because of a confidentiality agreement attached to the private sale. Another example is a 2019 sale of The Seated Zouave by Vincent van Gogh. According to some sources, the painting had been sold by Argentinian art collector Nelly Arrieta de Blaquier for $300 million, but the price was not confirmed by any of the parties involved.

Vincent van Gogh, Pablo Picasso, and Andy Warhol are the best-represented artists in the list. Whereas Picasso and Warhol became wealthy men, van Gogh is known to have sold only one painting in his lifetime, The Red Vineyard, for 400 FRF (approximately $2,000 in 2018 dollars) in 1890, to the Belgian impressionist painter and heiress Anna Boch.

Georgia O'Keeffe holds the record for the highest price paid for a painting by a woman. On November 20, 2014 at Sotheby's, the Crystal Bridges Museum of American Art bought her 1932 painting Jimson Weed/White Flower No. 1 for US$44.4 million (equivalent to US$ million in ).

Among the listed top 89, only six are paintings by non-Western artists. Five are traditional Chinese paintings by Qi Baishi, Wu Bin, Wang Meng and Xu Yang. In particular, Qi Baishi's Twelve Landscape Screens was sold for $140.8 million in 2017. The only non-Western modern artwork listed is that of the Chinese-French painter Zao Wouki's oil painting Juin-Octobre 1985, which was sold for $65 million in 2018. Not listed here in this list is Chinese painter Wang Shaofei's The High Sun, which was appraised for $74 million in 2017.

List of highest prices paid
This list is ordered by consumer price index inflation-adjusted value (in bold) in millions of United States dollars in. Where necessary, the price is first converted to dollars using the exchange rate at the time the painting was sold. The inflation adjustment may change as recent inflation rates are often revised. A list in another currency may be in a slightly different order due to exchange-rate fluctuations. Paintings are listed only once, i.e., for the highest price sold.

Progression of highest prices paid
This list shows the progression of the highest price paid for a painting since 1746.