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Da Vinci auction: The 12 most expensive artworks ever sold

A 500-year-old painting of Christ by Leonardo da Vinci has just become the most expensive artwork ever sold.

Known as known as Salvator Mundi (Saviour of the World), it went to an anonymous telephone bidder in New York for a record $450m (£341m) – almost £100m more than the previous highest.

And, while it’s billed as ‘the last da Vinci’, experts are not universally convinced it is by the hand of the Italian Renaissance master, rather one of his followers.

Nevertheless, auction house Christie’s insists the painting is authentic and hailed it as “the greatest artistic rediscovery of the 20th Century”. And now it’s the most expensive artwork ever sold.

Here’s how it ranks against the best of the rest…