Sold at auction in 1998, for 15,000 euros ($21,000,) the portrait of the Young Woman in Renaissance Dress has since been attributed, by some of the leading Leonardo experts, to the master himself. New “evidence” has been produced which seems to support the claim. The story of the portrait’s attribution reads like a whodunnit – physical evidence, stylistic and aesthetic considerations and state-of-the-art tests point to what Art Historian Martin Kemp calls “a miracle.” The portrait of the young woman is in ways haunting – she is depicted in profile with a contemplative and fixed gaze.
Kemp is a serious scholar and an expert in Renaissance art and the work of Leonardo. (He is one of the specialists lined against the attribution of the Isleworth Mona Lisa to Leonardo. See below for a link to a post we wrote recently.) Kemp claims that the work was made by a left-handed artist. And since its first attribution a book has surfaced – the “Sforziad” – made by Leonardo for the Duke of Milan, from which the portrait seems, convincingly, to have been cut out of. Leonardo was the only left-handed artist at the Duke’s employ according to research. A single fingerprint has also been isolated in the sfumatura, the blending of pigment on the surface, and it appears to match the Renaissance master’s prints, which we have from his San Girolamo, in the Vatican. Multi-spectral analysis has also revealed that the young lady’s eye was drawn whole and then covered by the lid… a detail that belies an interest in anatomy, something Leonardo famously valued. The details of the dress – particularly the gold embroidery on the shoulder also match Leonardo’s penchant for interlocking decorative motifs…
But all this compelling evidence has not calmed the firestorm of controversy over the portrait and its origins. The portrait, while offering many tantalizing clues, is drawn on vellum, a treated animal skin, – a material not known to have been used by Leonardo. Many researchers in the field have refrained from commenting on the portrait’s authenticity, and some remain purposely undecided: “Let’s remember not take clues for proof” cautions Claudio Strinati, former Sovrintendente ai Beni Artistici e Storici of the Lazio region, in an article in La Repubblica. Strinati has written the introduction to Martin Kemp’s book on “La Bella Principessa” (in the Italian edition) and he advises caution in jumping head-first into an attribution of a work made more than 500 years ago.
Kemp remains convinced: “We knew it came from a book, you have the stitch holes and can see the knife cut. Finding it is a miracle in a way. I was amazed,” Kemp told LiveScience. “When doing historical research on 500-year-old objects … you hardly get the circle completed in this way.”
The portrait of “La Bella Principessa,” because of the diverging opinions on its authorship, was not included in the recent exhibition on Leonardo at the National Gallery in London, nor exhibited at the Albertina Gallery in Vienna.
Previously on Art is Life:
Art is Life 