When the final gavel struck at Christie’s New York on November 15, 2017, the art world witnessed its most expensive auction sale ever. Leonardo da Vinci’s 500-year-old masterpiece Salvator Mundi sold for an astronomical $450.3 million. While private transactions mean we don’t know how much many artworks have sold for over the years, public auctions expose what the art world considers the world’s most valuable works. From Renaissance Rediscoveries to Pop Art monuments, these are the ten most expensive artworks ever to be sold at auction.
1. Salvator Mundi – $450.3 Million
Artist: Leonardo da Vinci
Sold: Christie’s, November 15, 2017
Attributed to Leonardo da Vinci, the original Salvator Mundi may have been painted c. 1500 as commissioned by Louis XII of France. Translated as “Savior of the World,” this painting depicts Jesus dressed in Renaissance-style garb. His right hand is raised to make the sign of the cross, and in his left hand he holds a crystal orb.
The original was long thought to be lost in the 17th century, but this version was authenticated by art historians in 2011, though considerable debate remains. Over 20 different versions of Salvator Mundi were completed by Leonardo da Vinci’s pupils, and some claim this work belongs to Da Vinic’s workshop rather than the man himself.
This version was housed in the National Gallery, London, from 2011 to 2012 after being restored. Then, it was sold at auction to Prince Badir bin Abdullah on behalf of Abu Dhabi’s Department of Culture and Tourism. It sold for over $100 million more than the next most valuable artwork ever sold.
2. Portrait of Elisabeth Lederer – $236.4 Million
Artist: Gustav Klimt
Sold: Sotheby’s New York, November 18, 2025
Standing six feet tall, this i a full-length portrait of Elisabeth Lederer, the 20-year-old daughter of Serena and August Lederer, who were Gustav Klimt‘s most prominent Viennese art patrons. She stands draped in a white imperial Chinese robe against a rich blue background influenced by East Asian tapestries. He worked on the painting for three years between 1914 and 1916 until Elisabeth’s mother reportedly marched into his studio and took it, claiming it was done, while Klimt insisted that he was still working.
During World War II and the annexation of Austria, the Jewish Lederer family faced Nazi persecution, and their collection was confiscated. While many of Klimt’s masterpieces in the Lederer collection were sent to Immendorf Castle and destroyed when retreating Nazi troops set the castle on fire in 1945, this portrait survived. It was restored to Elisabeth’s brother after the war. It was in the collection of cosmetics heir Leonard Lauder from 1985, who had hung the painting in his 5th Avenue apartment for 40 years before his passing. In the 2025 auction, it went to an anonymous private buyer over the phone.
3. Shot Sage Blue Marilyn – $195 Million
Artist: Andy Warhol
Sold: Christie’s New York, May 9, 2022
This is one of Andy Warhol‘s famous silkscreen portraits of Marilyn Monroe. Following her death in August 1962, Warhol began creating silkscreen portraits based on a promotional photo of her from the 1953 film Niagara. By 1964, Warhol wanted a sharper, more precise look than the mass-production aesthetic he was originally known for. He developed a far more demanding, labor-intensive silkscreen technique that started with laying down the background color (in this case sage blue), applying colors individually for Marilyn’s features, and then applying a black screen overlay, resulting in a sharper image. The process was so time-consuming that he only created five canvases using this technique.
In the autumn of 1964, the five newly completed Marilyn canvases were stacked together at Warhol’s famous Manhattan studio, The Factory. Performance artist Dorothy Podber was visiting and asked Warhol if she could “shoot” the paintings. Assuming she meant take photographs, Warhol agreed. Instead, Podber pulled out a small revolver, aimed between Marilyn’s eyes, and fired a bullet straight through the stack. Warhol banned her from the studio and had the works restored.
On May 9, 2022, Shot Sage Blue Marilyn went under the hammer at Christie’s in New York, consigned by the Thomas and Doris Ammann Foundation in Zurich. After less than four minutes of intense bidding, renowned mega-dealer Larry Gagosian placed the winning bid on behalf of an undisclosed client. It is the most expensive 20th-century American artwork ever sold at public auction.
4. Les Femmes D’Alger (Version O) – $179.4 Million
Artist: Pablo Picasso
Sold: Christie’s, May 11, 2015
Les Femmes d’Alger is a series of 15 paintings and drawings by Spanish artist Pablo Picasso. Version O is the final painting in the series and was completed in 1955. In Picasso’s classic cubist style, Les Femmes d’Alger was painted as a nod to Eugène Delacroix’s Femmes d’Alger dans leur Appartement from 1834.
The painting was first sold in 1997 for $31.9 million at Christie’s, New York, and was later auctioned for the second time in 2015. Its presale value was listed at $140 million, making it one of the highest values ever to be placed on an auctioned artwork. It was sold to former Qatari prime minister Hamad bin Jassim bin Jabar Al Thani and became part of his private collection.
5. Nu Couche (Red Nude) – $170.4 Million
Artist: Amedeo Modigliani
Sold: Christie’s New York, November 9, 2015
Nu Couché is an oil on canvas painting in the series of nudes by Italian artist Amedeo Modigliani from 1917. In December 1917, gallerist Berthe Weill organized Modigliani’s first and only solo exhibition of his lifetime. She hung several of his Nu Couché paintings right in the front window. A crowd gathered, and a nearby police station commissioner was outraged by the visibility of pubic hair on the canvases. He declared the display an “indecency” and threatened to confiscate the artwork unless the exhibition was closed immediately. The show was shut down on its very first day.
Chinese taxi-driver-turned-billionaire Liu Yiqian bought the masterpiece for his Long Museum in Shanghai in 2015. He famously paid for the entire $170.4 million purchase using his American Express Centurion Card (Black Card) over several transactions to bypass Chinese capital controls, also earning tens of millions of frequent flyer miles in the process.
6. Les Poseuses, Ensemble (Petite version) – $149.2 Million
Artist: Georges Seurat
Sold: Christie’s New York, November 9, 2022
This small painting (15.5 by 19.7 inches) by Georges Seurat is still considered the “holy grail” of Post-Impressionism. He produced the work using Pointillism, a technique where tiny, precise dots of pure color are applied to a canvas so that the viewer’s eye optically blends them together. When others criticized this technique as too mechanical to capture the delicacy of the human form, this work was Seurat’s response.
The composition depicts three nude models in Seurat’s Paris studio posing in front of La Grande Jatte hanging on the wall. It creates a clever “meta” dialogue between the rigid, fully dressed figures strolling in the outdoor park on the wall and the unclad, intimate human bodies sitting inside the studio.
On November 9, 2022, the painting went under the hammer at Christie’s New York as part of the historic Paul G. Allen Collection, the estate of the late Microsoft co-founder. Bidding opened at $75 million and quickly crossed the $100 million mark in less than a minute.
7. Three Studies Of Lucian Freud – $142.4 Million (adjusted to $153.2 million)
Artist: Francis Bacon
Sold: Christie’s, November 12, 2013
Three Studies of Lucian Freud is the second of two triptychs that British artist Francis Bacon painted in 1969 of fellow artist, friend, and rival Lucian Freud. All three parts of this piece are constructed in the typical Bacon style of abstraction, distortion, and isolation. Art critics from Christie’s noted that the piece is “paying tribute to the creative and emotional kinship between the two artists” whose relationship ended over an argument in the mid-1970s.
In the mid-1970s, the three individual panels were sold off to separate collectors. Bacon was furious, writing on a photo of the left panel that it was “meaningless unless it is united with the other two panels.” A devoted collector spent nearly 15 years tracking down the individual panels across the globe to reunite them as a complete triptych in the late 1980s. The reassembled work debuted together again at the Yale Center for British Art in 1999. The complete set sold in 2013 to Elaine Wynn and became the highest price paid for a work by a British or Irish artist.
8. La Montagne Sainte-Victoire – $137.8 Million
Artist: Paul Cézanne
Sold: Christie’s New York, November 9, 2022
Paul Cézanne’s depictions of Mont Sainte-Victoire are among the most celebrated works in modern art history, considered the bridge between Impressionism and 20th-century Modernism. The limestone mountain near his hometown of Aix-en-Provence became an obsession for Cézanne. He painted and drew it more than 80 times over the final two decades of his life.
While many of Cézanne’s Sainte-Victoire canvases hang permanently in major institutions, including the Metropolitan Museum of Art and the Musée d’Orsay, a prime oil version painted between 1888 and 1890 remained in private hands until November 9, 2022. This masterpiece was sold at Christie’s in New York as a marquee lot in the historic Paul G. Allen Collection.
9. The Scream – $119.9 million (adjusted to $130.9 Million)
Artist: Edvard Munch
Sold: Sotheby’s, May 2, 2012
Originally titled Der Schrei der Natur (German for The Scream of Nature), this piece is now popularly known as The Scream. This expressionist painting, completed in 1893 by Norwegian artist Edvard Munch, depicts the iconic image of an agonized face that symbolizes the anxiety of modern man. Munch created four versions of “The Scream” using paint and pastels, two of which were stolen but later recovered.
In popular culture, The Scream was prolific, being imitated, parodied, and copied across various genres. Andy Warhol created several silkscreen prints including The Scream, and Macaulay Culkin’s expression of Kevin McCallister on the poster for the movie Home Alone was inspired by the painting, to name a few examples.
When it went to auction in 2012, bidding opened at $40 million and escalated into a 15-minute, high-stakes duel between seven bidders, eventually coming down to two anonymous phone competitors. The Scream was sold to American businessman Leon Black, who later lent the piece to the Museum of Modern Art (MoMA) in New York for public display.
10. Untitled (1982) – $110.5 Million
Artist: Jean-Michel Basquiat
Sold: Sotheby’s New York, May 18, 2017
Jean-Michel Basquiat’s Untitled (1982), often referred to as “the skull,” is widely considered his single most important masterpiece. Depicting a raw, monumental, skeletal head rendered in acrylic, spray paint, and oilstick on a blue background, the canvas is an explosive symbol of 1980s Neo-Expressionism. He was just 21 years old when he produced the work, transitioning from his graffiti roots as “SAMO” into a painting phenomenon in the New York gallery scene.
On May 18, 2017, Untitled (1982) went under the hammer at Sotheby’s in New York. It had not been seen in public since 1984, when a private collector bought it at auction for just $19,000. The intense bidding lasted ten minutes, and when it sold for $110.5 million, it became the first piece created after 1980 to sell for more than $100 million at public auction. It was bought by Japanese e-commerce billionaire and art collector Yusaku Maezawa, who lent the work for public display for the first time in 30 years to the Brooklyn Museum.
