Most Expensive Paintings Sold at Public Auction
Key Findings
About This Dataset
Most Expensive Paintings Sold at Public AuctionSalvator Mundi is in a league of its own at $450.3M - nearly double the second-place Klimt Portrait of Elisabeth Lederer, which set a modern-art record at $236.4M in 2025. Below the top two, prices compress sharply into a $110M-$195M band holding six works. Christie's and Sotheby's account for every sale, and the timeline shows escalating peaks: The Scream (2012), the Picasso and Modigliani records (2015), Salvator Mundi (2017), and the Warhol and Klimt highs of 2022-2025. Old Master, Impressionist, Post-Impressionist and Pop works all appear, confirming that scarcity and provenance, not era, drive the very top of the market.
Data Insights
Numbers, trends & sources behind this chart
Methodology & source
- Data source
- Wikipedia - List of Most Expensive Paintings
- Coverage
- 8 entities · 8 observations
- Measure
- Auction Sale Price (USD)
- Last updated
- 12 July 2026
- Compiled by
- The ANYSTAT team, from the source above
- Values are shown as reported by the source. Nothing is rescaled, rebased or converted — the only changes are thousand separators and decimals shown to two places.
- Entities are ranked highest-first on their value.
Data Sources & References
All external sources cited in this dataset
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