Painting Once Thought to be by Leonardo Up for Auction
Since the 1920s a debate over the attribution of “Portrait of a Woman Called ‘La Belle Ferronnière,’ ” has been the stuff of legal dramas and scientific analysis, aesthetic disputes and connoisseurship differences.
Initially some scholars believed that the painting, which depicts a woman whose penetrating eyes cast a sideways, almost spooky glance at the viewer, was the work of Leonardo da Vinci. It was, they said, the second version of a painting of the same subject that is in the permanent collection of the Louvre. Other experts, including the notorious art dealer Joseph Duveen, dismissed the canvas as a fake without ever having seen it, claiming, “The picture is a copy, hundreds of which have been made of this and other Leonardo subjects and offered in the market as genuine.”
Today 21st-century technology has dashed any hope that the painting is Leonardo’s work, but its appearance at Sotheby’s, where it is being sold on Jan. 28, has once again raised many unanswered questions, chief among them: Who painted the portrait and when? And how much will a collector pay to own a portrait that comes with a history of controversy as well as vestiges of that old Leonardo magic, no matter how misplaced?
“This picture is not by Leonardo, I’m certain of that,” said George Wachter, director of Sotheby’s old master paintings department worldwide. “But he is such a potent name that there are people who want to touch anything that has to do with him.” ...
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Initially some scholars believed that the painting, which depicts a woman whose penetrating eyes cast a sideways, almost spooky glance at the viewer, was the work of Leonardo da Vinci. It was, they said, the second version of a painting of the same subject that is in the permanent collection of the Louvre. Other experts, including the notorious art dealer Joseph Duveen, dismissed the canvas as a fake without ever having seen it, claiming, “The picture is a copy, hundreds of which have been made of this and other Leonardo subjects and offered in the market as genuine.”
Today 21st-century technology has dashed any hope that the painting is Leonardo’s work, but its appearance at Sotheby’s, where it is being sold on Jan. 28, has once again raised many unanswered questions, chief among them: Who painted the portrait and when? And how much will a collector pay to own a portrait that comes with a history of controversy as well as vestiges of that old Leonardo magic, no matter how misplaced?
“This picture is not by Leonardo, I’m certain of that,” said George Wachter, director of Sotheby’s old master paintings department worldwide. “But he is such a potent name that there are people who want to touch anything that has to do with him.” ...