The price behind one of the art world's most closely watched private acquisitions is now public. Hedge-fund billionaire Ken Griffin paid $250 million for Leonardo da Vinci's Madonna of the Yarnwinder, painted around 1505, according to a column by Artnet writer Kenny Schachter. The panel is one of only two Leonardo paintings held in the United States, and it is currently on loan to the Metropolitan Museum of Art in New York, where it went on view after a loan first reported in August. A spokesperson for Griffin declined to comment on the figure.

The other Leonardo in an American collection is the portrait Ginevra de' Benci, painted between 1474 and 1478 and held by the National Gallery of Art in Washington, D.C. Schachter suggests that making the $250 million figure public could support the market for a possible companion to the Salvator Mundi, a painting he has reported on before, which could be offered with an auction guarantee after direct sale negotiations fell through. Griffin is a prolific buyer of Old Masters and modern works, and he regularly lends pieces from his collection to museums.

The same column reports that Gabriel Kilongo, a dealer formerly associated with Jupiter Gallery, was detained by US Immigration and Customs Enforcement. Jupiter Gallery was administratively dissolved on September 25, 2026, after failing to file an annual report. Kilongo, who was born in the Democratic Republic of Congo and raised in Israel after his family fled the Congo Wars of the 1990s and early 2000s, has since been released from detention, according to James Snyder, director of the Jewish Museum in Manhattan. Kilongo also faces lawsuits over unpaid rent and payments owed to artists whose work the gallery showed; some of those cases have been settled and others remain open.

The column also looks ahead to the New York auctions, including the planned sale of about $100 million of art from Jeff Koons's personal collection, and features an interview with gallerist Vito Schnabel about his acting debut in The Trainer, a film directed by Tony Kaye that is due for release in early 2027.