ruly celestial was Leonardo da Vinci,” said the 16th-century art writer Giorgio Vasari. That verdict has stood for centuries. No one has ever doubted Leonardo’s genius, and in our own time his fame is greater than ever. We should probably therefore have some sympathy for experts so besotted with his name, fame and magic that they foolishly declared an obvious fake to be the real thing.
La Bella Principessa is a profile portrait of a young woman in late 15th-century dress with her copper hair flattened down at the sides and worked behind into an elaborately bound ponytail. Her skin is pink, her gaze cool – or bored. Martin Kemp, one of the world’s most renowned Leonardo authorities and emeritus professor of the History of Art at Oxford, hailed it as a rediscovered marvel in his 2010 book La Bella Principessa: the Story of the …show more content…
‘The claim that La Bella Principessa is a genuine Leonardo rests on testing its paper and materials.’ Facebook Twitter Pinterest ‘The claim that La Bella Principessa is a genuine Leonardo rests on testing its paper and materials.’ Photograph: Lumiere Technology / Pascal Cotte/EPA
I could buy that. Perhaps La Bella Principessa was created as a fake Leonardo in about 1650. Leonardo was already very famous then and his works were in huge demand; that’s the era when the British royal family bought his greatest drawings. They also had very few ways of authenticating art so long ago. A 17th-century painting of Medusa in the Uffizi was mistaken for a Leonardo until modern times.
Whenever and by whoever it was forged, La Bella Principessa is not a Leonardo. I honestly don’t know how anyone who loves his art could make that mistake. There is a deadness to this woman’s eye, a coldness to the way she is posed and drawn that has no resemblance to Leonardo da Vinci’s energy or vitality. She looks so miserable she may well be on a break from working at a Bolton supermarket in the
La Bella Principessa is a profile portrait of a young woman in late 15th-century dress with her copper hair flattened down at the sides and worked behind into an elaborately bound ponytail. Her skin is pink, her gaze cool – or bored. Martin Kemp, one of the world’s most renowned Leonardo authorities and emeritus professor of the History of Art at Oxford, hailed it as a rediscovered marvel in his 2010 book La Bella Principessa: the Story of the …show more content…
‘The claim that La Bella Principessa is a genuine Leonardo rests on testing its paper and materials.’ Facebook Twitter Pinterest ‘The claim that La Bella Principessa is a genuine Leonardo rests on testing its paper and materials.’ Photograph: Lumiere Technology / Pascal Cotte/EPA
I could buy that. Perhaps La Bella Principessa was created as a fake Leonardo in about 1650. Leonardo was already very famous then and his works were in huge demand; that’s the era when the British royal family bought his greatest drawings. They also had very few ways of authenticating art so long ago. A 17th-century painting of Medusa in the Uffizi was mistaken for a Leonardo until modern times.
Whenever and by whoever it was forged, La Bella Principessa is not a Leonardo. I honestly don’t know how anyone who loves his art could make that mistake. There is a deadness to this woman’s eye, a coldness to the way she is posed and drawn that has no resemblance to Leonardo da Vinci’s energy or vitality. She looks so miserable she may well be on a break from working at a Bolton supermarket in the