In 100 years, a Da Vinci comes to light

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(China Daily)
Updated: 2009-10-15 09:00

TORONTO/PARIS: Art experts believe they have identified a new Leonardo da Vinci - in part by examining a fingerprint on the canvas.

A picture released on Tuesday by Paris-based Luminere Technology laboratory shows a detail of a portrait of a young lady, which could be a piece of Italian artist Leonardo da Vinci. The Paris laboratory found the fingerprint (top left) 'highly comparable' to one on a Da Vinci work in the Vatican, which was painted early in the artist's career. [Agencies]

Peter Paul Biro, a Montreal-based forensic art expert, said on Tuesday that a fingerprint on what was presumed to be a 19th-century German painting of a young woman has convinced art experts that it's actually a Da Vinci.

Canadian-born art collector Peter Silverman bought Profile of the Bella Principessa at the Ganz gallery in New York on behalf of an anonymous Swiss collector in 2007 for about $19,000. New York art dealer Kate Ganz had owned it for about 11 years after buying it at auction for a similar price.

Paris-based Luminere Technology laboratory found the left-hand fingerprint on the work drawn in ink and chalk in January and established that it was "very similar" to one found on a Da Vinci work in the Vatican, said laboratory director Jean Penicault.

Penicault said the findings were submitted to art historian Martin Kemp from Oxford University and that he considered it to be the work of the Italian Renaissance master.

Biro too examined multispectral images of the painting taken by the Luminere Technology laboratory and said the print was likely Da Vinci's index or middle finger "Leonardo used his hands liberally and frequently as part of his painting technique. His fingerprints are found on many of his works," Biro said. "I was able to make use of multispectral images to make a little smudge a very readable fingerprint."

Technical, stylistic and material composition evidence also pointed to it being a Da Vinci. Biro said there's strong consensus among art experts that it is a Da Vinci painting.

Oxford's Kemp speculated that the profile of the young girl whose hair hangs in a long single braid could be the portrait of Bianca Sforza, daughter of the Ludivico Sforza, the 15th-century Duke of Milan.

If experts are correct, it will be the first major work by Da Vinci to be identified in 100 years.

"I would say it is priceless. There aren't that many Leonardo's in existence," Biro said. He said he had heard that one London dealer felt it could be worth 100 million pounds (more than $150 million).

Silverman said his Swiss friend saw it first and told him it didn't look like a 19th century painting. When Silverman took a look at the painting at the Ganz gallery in 2007, he thought it might be a Da Vinci, although that seemed far-fetched. He hurriedly bought the painting for his Swiss friend and then started researching it.

"Of course you say, 'Come on, that's ridiculous. There's no such thing as a Da Vinci floating around'," Silverman said in a telephone interview with The Associated Press. "I started looking in the areas around Da Vinci and all the people who could have possibly done it and through elimination I came back to Da Vinci."

Last year, Silverman bumped into Nicholas Turner, a former curator of drawings at the J. Paul Getty Museum and the British Museum. Turner said it was a Da Vinci.

Silverman said thanks to the fingerprint image at the Luminere Technology laboratory it was confirmed. The Luminere Technology laboratory had been carrying out in-depth analysis since 2007 on the painting using carbon dating and infrared techniques to uncover the centuries-old fingerprint.

Silverman described the Swiss private collector as a very rich man who has promised to buy him "lunch and dinner and caviar for the rest of my life if it ever does get sold".

AP-AFP