Leonardo's Lost Princess (21 page)

In his recent book, Alessandro Vezzosi identified this type of portrait as a
ritratto nuziale
(“marriage portrait”). He postulated that it may represent the young Bianca Maria Sforza (1472–1510), the daughter of the Duke of Milan, before her marriage in 1494 to the emperor Maximilian I (1459–1519). Her husband later praised her beauty rather than her character. The sitter's facial features conform to what Leonardo describes in his
Treatise
as the “perfectly illumined visage,” showing grace, since the shadows do not appear “cutting, hard or dry” (Dover reprint, Precept no. 196). Such a function—a portrait sent for approval to a prospective groom—would explain the drawing's unusual media, support, and high degree of finish.

Condition

In my view, most of the drawing defining the features of the figure and the decoration of the woman's costume is in pen and was drawn by Leonardo; it is handled with such finesse that it is quite simply beyond the competence of a later retoucher. A few later additions do nevertheless occur, but they are mostly in the pigmented areas and were made to replace losses in the coloring, mainly in the face and hair (see Lumiere Technology, UV reflectograph, false color reflectographs, and pigments and restoration study).

Attributional History

Since its reemergence in 1998, this work has carried only two attributions. When sold in that year by Christie's, New York (sale, January 30, 1998, lot 402, as the property of a lady), it was catalogued as nineteenth-century German school, and the sitter was described as being clothed in “Renaissance Dress.” The second attribution, to Leonardo, was proposed by myself and others in 2008 and has received varying degrees of support. Among those fully in favor are Professore Alessandro Vezzosi, Mina Gregori, Carlo Pedretti, and Cristina Geddo.

As has been pointed out by Dr. Cristina Geddo, who has worked extensively on the
leonardisti milanesi
, the rejection of Leonardo's authorship in favor of an attribution to one of his many Milanese followers—for example, Giovanni Antonio Boltraffio, Ambrogio de Predis, Francesco Melzi, Bernardino Luini—would be unfounded, since none of these artists was left-handed or skilled enough to produce such a subtle portrait.

Provenance

The provenance of the work before 1998 remains a complete mystery. The appearance of what seem to be early twentieth-century French customs stamps on the back of its wooden panel implies that, at the very least, it made a passage through France. Whether it was exiting or entering remains to be established. Perhaps it was hidden for generations in some French château, although this is pure guesswork. The only hint discovered so far of its possible earlier existence is to be found in two references, both brought to attention by Professor Alessandro Vezzosi. He has noted that in an inventory taken in the early 1480s of Leonardo's effects, there are two works that might correspond to the newly discovered
Portrait
, “
Una testa in profilo con bella cappellatura
” (“A head in profile with beautiful hair”) and “
Una testa di putta con trezie rannodate
” (“A head of a young lady with plaited locks”). It could, in theory, be either of these.

Conclusion

Not only does this remarkable drawing by Leonardo fit stylistically into his oeuvre as a painter and draughtsman, it also conforms to his theories of figurative representation, as set out in his
Treatise.
This report is based on research commissioned from me by the owner's agent at my standard daily freelance rate; I have no commercial interest in this work.

Nicholas Turner, M.A., formerly deputy keeper in the
Department of Prints and Drawings, British Museum,
London (1974–1994), and curator of drawings at
J. Paul Getty Museum, Los Angeles (1994–1998),
September 2008

Notes

1. Found!

1
. Christie’s catalog, New York, January 30, 1998, lot 402.

2
. There has been relatively little written about the Nazarenes, but an excellent essay, which includes illustrations of their works, is Lionel Williams, “Unwilling Moderns: The Nazarene Painters of the Nineteenth Century,”
Nineteenth Century Art Worldwide
, Autumn 2003.

2. Who Is She?

1
. Caroline Corrigan, restoration report, August 1, 2007:

Condition Report: For an early XVIth century drawing on vellum laid down on a panel, “Profile of a young woman.” Size: about 30 cm × 40 cm. Observations: Techniques—brown ink, probably iron gall ink; tempera, light retouch of a transparent pink on the forehead and cheeks; the surface is varnished. Support—vellum, laid down on an oak panel (the original panel must have been changed during the 19th century, as a few repaired insect holes can be seen; small accidents are noticeable on the ridges. State: This drawing is in a very good state, vellum and techniques; the 19th century restoration is rather well done. Conservation Conclusion: Under good conservation conditions, this drawing should preserve its exceptional aspect. There is no need of other restoration; it should not be treated in any way. It is too rare and precious to risk anything.

2
. Mina Gregori, “A Note on Leonardo,”
Paragone
, 2009, anno LXI, no. 723, no. 91, 3–4.

3. Leonardo’s World

1
. da Vinci, “Of the Life of a Painter in His Studio,” in
Leonardo’s Notebooks
, 492.

2
. Vasari,
The Lives of the Artists
, 284–287.

3
. Ibid.

4
. The unfinished
Adoration of the Magi
has been in the Uffizi Gallery in Florence since 1670.

5
. da Vinci, “Letter to the Duke,” in Vasari,
The
Lives of the Artists.

6
. Christopher Hare and Baldassarre Castiglione,
Courts and Camps of the Italian Renaissance
(New York: Harper, 1908), 23.

7
. da Vinci, “That Painting Surpasses All Human Works by the Subtle Considerations Belonging to It,” in
Leonardo’s
Notebooks
, 653.

8
. As Vasari recounted in
The Lives of the Artists
, p. 289,

He proposed to the Duke that he should make a bronze equestrian statue of marvelous size to perpetuate the memory of the Duke (Francesco Sforza). He began it, but made the model of such a size that it could never be completed. There are some who say that Leonardo began it so large because he did not mean to finish it, as with many of his other things. But in truth his mind, being so surpassingly great, was often brought to a stand because it was too adventuresome, and the cause of his leaving so many things imperfect was his search for excellence after excellence, and perfection after perfection. And those who saw the clay model that Leonardo made said they had never seen anything more beautiful or more superb, and this was in existence until the French came to Milan with Louis, King of France, when they broke it to pieces. There was also a small model in wax, which is lost, which was considered perfect, and a book of the anatomy of the horse which he made in his studies.

4. Real or Fake?

1
. Hoving,
False Impressions
, 17, 163.

2
. Ibid., 163.

3
. Two books have been published detailing the
Mona Lisa
theft and its implications: Scotti,
Vanished Smile
, and Hoobler and Hoobler,
The Crimes of Paris
.

4
. Simon Kuper, “Who Stole the Mona Lisa?”
FT Magazine
, August 5, 2011.

5
. Peter Landesman, “A Crisis of Fakes: The Getty Forgeries,”
New York Times
Magazine
, March 18, 2001. Other efforts of Turner’s to expose fakes at the J. Paul Getty Museum are also detailed in this article.

6
. Hebborn,
The Art Forger’s Handbook
.

7
. Brewer,
The American Leonardo
, 296.

8
. Hahn and Benton,
The Rape of La Belle
, 3.

9
. Ibid.

10
. Ibid., 41.

11
. Ibid., 42.

12
. Ibid., 32.

13
. “Duveen on da Vinci,”
Time
, February 25, 1929.

14
. Hahn and Benton,
The Rape of La Belle
, 5.

15
. “Lapis Lazuli and Kermes Berry,”
Time
, June 26, 1933.

16
. Hahn and Benton,
The Rape of La Belle
, xviii.

17
. Ibid., 17.

18
. Ibid., 21.

19
. Since Sotheby’s preferred to auction the “copy,” there were some who still wondered whether it might be the real thing. Peter Duveen [no relation to Sir Joseph], “Did Leonardo da Vinci Paint
La Belle Ferronnière
? If So, Which One?”
OpEd News
, January 25, 2010.

20
. Brewer,
The American Leonardo
, 296.

5. The Magic Box

1
. Daniel Kunitz, “Inside Leonardo’s Mind,”
New York Sun
, December 1, 2004.

2
. Thomas Regnier, “Leonardo’s Mystery: An Interview with Umberto Eco,”
Queen’s Quarterly
, June 22, 2006.

3
. As an interesting side note, Lumière is also the name of two French brothers, Auguste and Louis Lumière, who were distinguished as the earliest filmmakers in the nineteenth century.

4
.
Mona Lisa Revealed: Secrets of the Painting
, produced by Caroline Cocciardi (Miami, FL: JC Productions, 2009), DVD.

5
. Descriptions of the history and technology may be found at the company’s website,
www.lumiere-technology.com
. Examples of Lumiere Technology’s digitization from public and private collections might include the works of Chagall, Fragonard, Audubon, Latour, and Renoir, as well as Picasso’s
La Vie
, van Gogh’s
The Roadmenders
(digitized at the Cleveland Museum of Art), the two masterpieces
Les Vieilles
and
Les Jeunes
by Goya (from the Palais des Beaux Arts de Lille),
The Escape in Egypt
by Poussin, and the two versions of
The Bedroom of Arles
by van Gogh (one at the Art Institute of Chicago and the other at the Van Gogh Museum of Amsterdam). On the website, one can view a fascinating demonstration of its advanced technology, based on the world’s most renowned masterpiece, da Vinci’s
Mona Lisa
, at the Louvre in Paris, and
Lady with an Ermine
, at the Czartoryski Museum in Kraków. See also P. Cotte and D. Dupraz, “Spectral Imaging of Leonardo da Vinci’s
Mona Lisa
: An Authentic Smile at 1523 dpi with Additional Infrared Data,”
Proceedings of IS&T Archiving ’06 Conference: Ottawa
, 2006, 228–235.

6
.
Mona Lisa Revealed
, DVD.

7
. Ibid.

8
. Vasari,
The Lives of the Artists
, 294.

9
. Ibid., 284.

10
.
Mona Lisa Revealed,
DVD.

11
. Lumiere Technology’s website,
www.lumiere-technology.com
.

12
. Ibid.

13
. Papers by Raymond N. Rogers can be viewed at
www.shroud.com
. They include Raymond N. Rogers and Anna Arnoldi, “The Shroud of Turin: An Amino-Carbonyl Reaction (Maillard Reaction) May Explain the Image Formation,” in
Melanoidins
, ed. J. M. Ames (Luxembourg: Office for Official Publications of the European Communities, 2003), 4:106–113. This paper demonstrates that a complex but well-documented naturally occurring chemical reaction may explain all of the known image chemistry of the Shroud of Turin and provide us with an important clue in determining the actual image-formation mechanism.

14
. Kemp and Cotte,
La Bella Principessa
, 107. Cotte’s examination of
La Bella Principessa
was also discussed in numerous conversations with the author.

15
. Ibid., 115.

16
. Ibid., 177.

17
. Ibid., 129

18
. Ibid., 132.

19
. Ibid.

20
. Ibid., 135.

21
. Ibid.

6. A Scholar’s View

1
. da Vinci,
Codex Atlanticus
, folio 1058.

2
. In fact, most of Leonardo’s inventions did not work, a fact that Umberto Eco deems to be part of the creative process. Calling Leonardo a genius and a tinkerer, he observed, “History is constantly illustrating the productive power of mistakes. The productivity of mistakes is what the English call ‘serendipity.’ Serendipity is precisely the capacity to make happy and unforeseen discoveries by accident. There is serendipity in looking for one thing and, having made an error, finding something else.” Thomas Regnier, “Leonardo’s Mystery: An Interview with Umberto Eco,”
Queen’s Quarterly
, June 22, 2006.

3
. “Obituaries: Adrian Nicholas,”
Daily Telegraph
, September 25, 2011.

4
. Kemp and Cotte,
La Bella Principessa
, 32.

5
. Martin Kemp, “La Bella Principessa: A Leonardo Discovered,” University of Oxford podcast, August 16, 2010.

6
. Ibid.

7
. da Vinci, “Ligny Memorandum,” 1499, folio 669r.

8
. da Vinci, “Proportions of the Head and Face,” in
Leonardo’s Notebooks
, 310
.

7. Leonardo’s Principles

1
. da Vinci, “Of the Beauty of Faces,” in
Leonardo’s Notebooks
, 587.

2
. da Vinci, precept 200, in
Leonardo’s Notebooks
, 593.

3
. Dr. Sherwin Nuland, interview by Neal Conan,
Talk of the
Nation
, NPR, April 14, 2009.

4
. Cristina Geddo, “A ‘Pastel’ by Leonardo da Vinci: His Newly Discovered Portrait of a Young Woman in Profile,”
Artes
, 2008–2009, 63–87. After the first paragraph, which I have quoted in full in the text, the rest of the article reads as follows:

This portrait is far from straightforward to explain, a state of affairs that results above all from the ambiguity of the work itself, a hybrid creation wavering between drawing and painting, whose original appearance, with its outlines applied ‘
a secco
’, has to be separated in the mind’s eye from subsequent retouches with the brush in liquid colour. For this reason, it is not surprising that it was mistaken for a nineteenth-century work of the Renaissance revival, associated with the Nazarenes, and sold by Christie’s, New York, ten years ago, with an attribution to the early XIXth-Century German School.
1

Only now has the
Portrait of a Young Woman in Profile
been recognized—firstly by Nicholas Turner, and then by a group of Leonardo specialists, still quite restricted in number, among them the present writer
2
—as an astounding, unpublished work by Leonardo, lost to sight for five centuries, and a significant addition to the small corpus of portraits that are given to the artist today. And only now has the historical and critical study of the piece been initiated, in conjunction with its physical examination entrusted to Lumière [
sic
] Technology, a Paris-based diagnostic laboratory that specializes in new techniques of non-invasive, multi-spectral digital photography.

The aim of this preliminary contribution to the subject, which is still fraught with unanswered questions, is not completeness but to put forward a strong proposition—already expressed in the title—which is based on the convergence between the technique employed in the execution of the portrait and what Leonardo himself maintained on the use of such media. It is a thesis that ought to be judged in the light of the technical and scientific analyses that are at the moment underway in order to complete the “clinical record” of the work.

The portrait is carried out almost to life size on a piece of vellum cut into a rectangle, measuring 328 × 238 mm, laid down with copious amounts of glue on to an old oak panel; this vellum support was presumably attached to this backing at some time in the second half of the nineteenth century, perhaps at the same time as the restorations to the work itself. Two old customs’ stamps of Central Customs, Paris, are imprinted on the other side of the panel (
DOUANE CENTRALE/ EXPORTATION/PARIS
), telling us that the work was kept in France for a time at some point before the Second World War, before travelling to the United States.

In spite of the insertion of ‘butterfly keys’ to minimize the bowing of the panel, the poor adherence of the skin to the wooden backing has resulted in considerable lifting of the vellum in the upper centre, increasing the losses of pigment in the face and neck. This problem has been exacerbated by the apparent crudeness in the preparation of the parchment and by its mediocre state of preservation, covered by horizontal furrows, with three poorly mended tears along the edges and a fourth on the chin, as is shown in the photograph in raking light (fig. 5).

The edges seem untrimmed, with the exception of that to the left, which has been cut crudely: an important clue, on the basis of which one can presume that the leaf was originally contained in a hand-stitched volume and so had been detached from a parchment codex.

Besides the presence of the follicles, the rough unworked surface of the hide and its darkened, somewhat yellowish colour show that the portrait was made on the outer surface of the skin (formerly fur-covered) and not on the inner one covering the flesh, which was aesthetically the superior of the two and commonly used as a support for written documents. This observation opens up the possibility that the verso of the parchment may have writing on it, a point that could be verified were it to be lifted from its present backing in some future (and much hoped for) restoration.