On the face of it, it doesn’t seem like the obvious way to prove your modern and progressive credentials: with the purchase of a disputed, 500-year-old Renaissance oil painting depicting Jesus Christ holding a non-refracting crystal orb. Yet just as in art, everything involving . Something to put on the posters.

The painting, he’d been told by the Saudi culture minister, has “been in storage in Geneva ever since [its 2017 purchase] – there’s no truth to it having been hanging on his yacht or in his palace,” Haykel said. “It’s basically waiting for the museum to be completed and then it’ll hang in the museum.”

“Art has a special significance in the upper echelons of society. They call it ‘priceless’, don’t they? Which really just means it hasn’t been sold yet. The Mona Lisa isn’t priceless, it just hasn’t sold. But even calling things ‘priceless’ disassociates their economic value from their cultural value, which is an interesting premise,” Westgarth says.

There is even precedent in turning oil money into cultural clout: the number of times you might have seen the surnames “Rockefeller” and “Getty” on art institutions in the US, especially in the 20th century, show that. So too art as a geopolitical weapon: during the Cold War, Abstract Expressionism was promoted by the US as an alternative to Soviet Realism. “Just look how free and formless we are!” was the message.

Melanie Fasche, deputy programme director and senior lecturer of the MA in art business at Sotheby’s Institute of Art London, would caution against making too much of the Middle East as purely interested in the visual arts.

“I would put it in a broader perspective, of countries wanting to change their economies to shift from natural resources to creative knowledge and technology professions. So they’re not only investing in culture, but sports, tourism, it’s all about diversifying the economy. And obviously the royal families are playing a major role in this,” she says. Outside of Qatar’s 2022 World Cup, the sports move has included luring boxing, Formula 1 and Cristiano Ronaldo to Saudi Arabia.

The art market remains thoroughly international, yet the explosion in cross-cultural ties between the Arabian Gulf and the West is undeniable, as the centre of the art world suddenly looks further east than it once did. Museums, from the Science Museum in London to the Pompidou Centre in Paris, are striking deals with Middle Eastern states, while both Sotheby’s and Christie’s, the world’s leading fine art auction houses, are hosting major exhibitions showcasing Saudi art this summer.

In Saudi Arabia, in some ways the approach seems to be “build it and they will come”. We can be left in no doubt that they will build a museum, either in Riyadh or in Al-Ula, the ancient oasis city being developed as a centre of culture and tourism. But only if there’s something worth looking at inside. “Once you have those physical buildings, you need to fill them. They want these museums to be attractive locally and internationally,” Fasche says. Salvator Mundi would do it.

Not all of this, Fasche points out, is a simple case of buying masterpieces for the sake of it. “There is a lot of activity in the region, and a lot of capital that can be spent on artworks, programming, infrastructure, and things move quite quickly [there], and there is collaboration with experts from Greece or France or wherever, to get them up to speed. Which makes a lot of sense.”

The key question, she adds, is “What culture are they promoting? Is it their culture? Is it an international culture? Is it Western art?” Some people take a critical perspective on that, given the often unsavoury actions of countries like Saudi Arabia – not least the 2018 murder and dismemberment in a Saudi embassy of the dissident journalist Jamal Khashoggi. The focus on their forays into the art world might help push their less savoury human rights records off the agenda. Yet Western advisors continue to fill arts posts in the country.

Fasche has faith in the power of art as only a good thing, especially if there are outsiders involved. Her young students, on the other hand, weren’t so sure. “Just this morning, I asked my students whether they would take such an advisory role later in their careers, and they were completely divided. Some said it would be a great opportunity to be part of something so exciting, and others said absolutely not, it would tarnish their reputation,” she says.

“So there is no one view on it.” In art, that’s always the way. And MBS is counting on it.

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