It has now been recognized through finding a fingerprint of the artist. Here is more from the Times Online:
The ghost of a fingerprint in the top left corner of an obscure portrait appears to have confirmed one of the most extraordinary art discoveries.
The 33 x 23cm (13 x 9in) picture, in chalk, pen and ink, appeared at auction at Christie’s, New York, in 1998, catalogued as “German school, early 19th century”. It sold for $19,000 (£11,400). Now a growing number of leading art experts agree that it is almost certainly by Leonardo da Vinci and worth about £100 million.
Carbon dating and infra-red analysis of the artist’s technique are consistent with such a conclusion, but the most compelling evidence is that fragment of a fingerprint.
Peter Paul Biro, a Montreal-based forensic art expert, found it while examining images captured by the revolutionary multispectral camera from the Lumière Technology company, Antiques Trade Gazette reports today....
Martin Kemp, Emeritus Professor of History of Art at the University of Oxford, is convinced and recently completed a book about the find (as yet unpublished). He said that his first reaction was that “it sounded too good to be true — after 40 years in the business, I thought I’d seen it all”. But gradually, “all the bits fell into place.”
Professor Kemp has rechristened the picture, sold as Young Girl in Profile in Renaissance Dress, as La Bella Principessa after identifying her, “by a process of elimination”, as Bianca Sforza, daughter of Ludovico Sforza, Duke of Milan (1452-1508), and his mistress Bernardina de Corradis. He described the profile as “subtle to an inexpressible degree”, as befits the artist best known for the Mona Lisa.
If it is by Leonardo, it would be the only known work by the artist on vellum although Professor Kemp points out that Leonardo asked the French court painter Jean Perréal about the technique of using coloured chalks on vellum in 1494.
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4 comments:
Fascinating! How ironic that we've located Da Vinci, a man whose inventions foreshadowed our newest creations, with such a modern technique as a fingerprint!
It is hard to believe that after 500 years a finger print would still exist on an object.
Ooh! How fascinating! I have a penchant for all things da Vinci, and I always find it interesting when years later (sometimes centuries) a piece of art is discovered to belong to a much-revered artist. I recently watched the movie "Who the $%^& is Jackson Pollock" which is about a truck driver who unwittingly bought a Jackson Pollock painting at a garage sale for $5. Scientists found a fingerprint that matched one found in Pollock's studio, but art "experts" are insisting it's not necessarily a Pollock. But a da Vinci, this many years later, is even more astonishing. Thanks for sharing!
It's even more intriguing that the so-called experts at prestigious Christie's auction house in NYC misidentified the provenance of the painting by artist, country of origin, "school" ...and about 500 years.
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