Why are critics calling the $450 mn painting fake?

Even in the 18th century, people were aware that their paintings got filthy, 'so normally, every time paintings changed hands, they got cleaned quite harshly'

Even before Leonardo da Vinci’s Salvator Mundi went to auction Wednesday night at Christie’s in New York, naysayers from around the art world were savaging its authenticity. Various advisers were muttering darkly, both online and in the auction previews. A day before the sale, New York magazine’s Jerry Saltz wrote that though he’s “no art historian or any kind of expert in old masters,” just “one look at this painting tells me it’s no Leonardo.”

And that was before the painting obliterated every previous auction record, selling, with premium, for $450 million.

Shortly after the gavel came down, the New York Times