Rybolovlev's da Vinci payday creates headache in Bouvier fight

THE record price a Leonardo da Vinci canvas fetched at an auction on Wednesday evening in New York may have a downside for its seller, Russian billionaire Dmitry Rybolovlev.

An unidentified buyer agreed to pay US$450.3 million, including fees, for da Vinci's Salvator Mundi at a Christie's auction in New York, obliterating the previous record set by a Pablo Picasso work in 2015. And it far outstripped the US$127.5 million Rybolovlev paid Swiss art dealer Yves Bouvier for the canvas in 2013.

Yet the cash could complicate Rybolovlev's legal quest to prove he was overcharged by about US$1 billion on a collection of 40-plus paintings he bought from Bouvier.