Chapter 687: Donatello and Leonardo da Vinci

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On the second deck should be the sailor's cabin and the captain's quarters, as well as some compartments for storing sundries.

But apart from a handful of knives, guns, pipes, metal utensils, and more than twenty skeletons, there was nothing left!

The focus is on the third deck, which is the ship's cargo hold, which is divided into four holds from bow to stern.

The first compartment was filled with long wooden crates, large and small, but some of them had rotted under the immersion of the sea, revealing rusty bronze sculptures stuck inside.

Liu Dong counted, there are a total of 112 of these sculptures, except for 21 pieces of body size below one meter, most of the rest are between 1~2 meters, more than two meters there are 13, especially a 2.5-meter-high Greek god of war Ares holding a spear, as if he is killing the enemy with all his strength The bronze statue is particularly exquisite.

Judging by the inscription on the base of the bronze statue, it comes from the fifteenth-century Italian Renaissance sculptor Donatello.

Donatello was the first generation of artists of the early Italian Renaissance and the most outstanding sculptor of the 15th century.

During his lifetime, Donatello produced a large number of sculptures that were full of vitality and solemnity. The representative work "David" is the first work to revive the ancient* figurative tradition.

And this bronze statue of the god of war "Ares" is obviously an artistic treasure that is not inferior to the bronze statue of "David".

Of course, in addition to the most precious bronze statue of Ares, the other 111 bronze sculptures are also the masterpieces of various sculptors before the 18th century.

In the past, the first cabin and the second cabin were also tightly packed wooden boxes. However, these wooden boxes are obviously much smaller, and the contents in them are pieces of exquisite porcelain, Liu Dong roughly counted, no more, no less, exactly 389 pieces, because of the close relationship between the packaging. Although the ship capsized, most of the porcelain remains intact except for a small amount of damage.

And more than 80% of these porcelains are from China, but Chinese porcelain has a problem that makes Europeans very uncomfortable, that is, there is only no grip, so these porcelains are added or gold according to European habits. Silver or ivory handles, although this makes the original noble Chinese porcelain a lot more tacky, but it does not detract from the delicacy of the porcelain itself.

Liu Dong took a look at it. Among the 389 pieces of porcelain, there are about 87 pieces of official kiln porcelain, 50 pieces of porcelain from the Qing Dynasty, 28 pieces of official kilns of the Ming Dynasty, and the remaining 9 pieces are Yuan blue and white.

Looking at these porcelain, Liu Dong couldn't help but secretly say in his heart that the ancients' pursuit of wealth was also very courageous, and the Yuan Qinghua and Ming Dynasty official kilns were just that, and these 50 Qing Dynasty official kilns actually dared to secretly risk killing their heads to sell out!

You must know that among the 50 Qing Dynasty official kilns, there is also a 40-centimeter high. The mouth of the bottle is skimmed, the neck is short and thick, and the elephant ears are piled on both sides of the neck. Hanging shoulders, bulging belly, circle feet of the 'Qing Dynasty Kangxi pastel hollow hollow heart bottle', this must be the emperor's hand-picked imperial kiln.

But its flawless appearance here can only show that there are people in the internal affairs office who are corrupt!

However, in any case, this 'Qing Dynasty Kangxi Pastel Hollow Turning Heart Vase' is the most precious of the nearly 400 pieces of porcelain.

Except, of course, for these official kiln porcelain. The remaining more than 300 pieces of porcelain are also fine porcelain for export, except for a few parts. The others should be more in line with the preferences of Europeans.

In 1514, Canton-Zhou porcelain was first introduced to Portugal. The 17th century was the heyday of the foreign trade of Guangcai porcelain. At that time, King Louis XIV of France ordered the prime minister Mazaran to send people to Canton to order porcelain with French armor coats of arms. From now on. The people of Guangzhou-Dezhen use the plain porcelain of Jing-Dezhen to depict peculiar foreign coats of arms, scenery and patterns, and inject them with foreign language knowledge, and make colored porcelain to be sold abroad.

Because of the advertising role of Louis XIV, the Sun King, European nobles and envoys of various royal families came to Guangzhou to order porcelain with porcelain patterns drawn by royal nobles.

And Liu Dong has almost more than 200 pieces of such fixed-firing Guangcai porcelain.

There are noble family coats and patterns of these porcelain on it, which gives more meaning to these Guangcai porcelains and doubles their value.

In the third cabin after the porcelain in the past, Liu Dong's most anticipated oil painting!

Because of the fear of flooding, the protection of each oil painting is very careful, in addition to the outermost iron box, there is a layer of wooden box inside, the wooden box is filled, and the outside of each oil painting is also three layers inside, the outer three layers are wrapped tightly with waterproof tarpaulin, and the gaps are blocked with a thick wax layer.

It is precisely because of this exquisite protection that 27 exquisite oil paintings have been preserved intact.

And these 27 oil paintings did not live up to Liu Dong's expectations, including 3 works by Rembrandt, 2 by Cheyenne, 3 by Rubens, 2 by Hoch, 4 by Frans Harris, the founder of the Dutch realist school, and 3 paintings by Johannes Vermeer, one of the greatest painters in the Netherlands and known as the three major Dutch painters along with Rembrandt and Van Gogh.

In addition to the seventeen exquisite paintings, only two of the remaining ten paintings are owned by the Spanish oil painting master José de Ribera, and one painting by Titian, Hobema, Judith te Berch, Gerard Tee Berch and others.

In the end, Liu Dong also found the painting, which is now worth $100 million and caused a rivalry between the female tsar and the French royal family.

This is an oil on canvas painting with a height of 2.3 meters and a width of 1.7 meters, and the main content of the oil painting is a girl holding a white swan in her arms, and there are two children with different movements at the girl's right foot.

Although Liu Dong couldn't touch this painting up close, just at a glance, he could see that it was a world-famous painting "Lida and the Swan" that Leonardo da Vinci loved before his death!

According to records, Leonardo da Vinci was very fond of this painting and always carried it with him, and in his later years he moved to France, and finally left it in Paris.

It's just that Liu Dong didn't expect this painting to appear on this sunken ship, looking at the rich white light on the painting, Liu Dong understood that he really saw the big baby this time!

Leonardo da Vinci's oil paintings are now less than 40 paintings in the world, and it is conceivable that if Liu Dong is willing to take them up for auction, they will be worth no less than 200 million US dollars!

Of course, this kind of art treasure, people who are not short of money will definitely not take it to auction.

Although the location is not very good, Liu Dong still chooses to appreciate these oil paintings one by one before moving to his mustard seed space.

Liu Dong, who gained great satisfaction in the middle, noticed the last cabin, which was also the largest cabin on the entire ship. If you have to describe Liu Dong's first impression of this cabin, it is splendid, golden and shining.

About 40,000 gold coins and 150,000 silver coins were packed in wooden boxes, but these wooden boxes were damaged when the ship capsized, so the entire cabin was scattered, so that when you first saw this, it seemed to have fallen into the money cellar!

Although the actual value of these seventeenth- and eighteenth-century gold and silver coins is not very large, it is difficult to estimate if you include their artistic value.

Of course, the most precious things in this last cabin are not these gold coins, but those gold and silver as materials, engraved with exquisite patterns, all kinds of gold and silver tableware, wine utensils and living utensils created by skilled craftsmen, and there are dozens of gold and silver statues in them, of course, they cannot be compared with the bronze statues of the first cabin, but these gold and silver sculptures about 30 centimeters high are still rare artistic treasures.

In addition, in a large iron box in the corner of the cabin, Liu Dong found 9 diamonds, each of which was more than 30 carats, except for two yellow and one red, the remaining 6 were pure and transparent colorless diamonds, and the largest of them was a colorless diamond the size of an egg and weighing about 200 carats.

These diamonds have been cut, and it is clear that this is the diamond that belongs to the female tsar, and the Russian royal family is also famous for its love of diamonds in history, and the royal family has more than 100,000 diamonds!

The Netherlands was the largest diamond processing center in the Western world at that time, and the world's largest diamond weighing 3,106 carats, the 'Star of South Africa', was processed here, and then set in the scepter and crown of the British royal family.

Obviously, these diamonds were also sent to the Netherlands by the female Tsarine Catherine II for processing, but they sank into the Baltic Sea before they returned to Russia, and finally fell into the hands of Liu Dong!

After packing up all the precious things on the boat, Liu Dong turned around and swam towards the direction where the yacht was.

"I don't know what kind of expressions the Finns and Russians had on their faces after they tried their best to get this ship up but found nothing!" Liu Dong couldn't help but think with a little malice in his heart.

Liu Dong, who returned to the yacht, did not immediately go back to the room to rest, but started the yacht and left this sea area, since the purpose has been achieved, and as expected, after a lot of harvest, Liu Dong does not want to continue to stay here.

Although there is no danger even if it is discovered by the Finnish police, Liu Dong is still reluctant to wait for the completion of the Old Summer Palace Museum, and these precious works of art have attracted the attention of two countries after they are exhibited.

……

Bordering the Baltic Sea and the capital of the Nordic country of Finland, Helsinki is a city that blends classical beauty with modern civilization, reflecting the romantic atmosphere of an ancient European city and the charm of an international metropolis. At the same time, it is also a garden city that skillfully combines urban architecture and natural beauty. Most of the buildings in the city are made of light-colored granite, and it is known as the "white city of the north".

Liu Dong drove the yacht, and when he entered the port, he took a few looks at the bronze statue that the Finns called the 'daughter of the Baltic Sea', and then made a phone call to find the staff of the yacht company and other staff on the shore.

handed over the yacht to the other party, and then paid an additional employment fee, Liu Dong got his deposit back. (To be continued)