La Disputa

You must have heard this morning that they found a new painting, Profile of the Bella Principessa attributed to none other than Leonardo da Vinci himself. Could it be? Are $150 million dollar paintings still lying around to be suddenly “discovered”? Honestly, I’m not sure. I want to believe that it’s true, it’s gorgeous, it’s in great condition, and it was sold to New York art dealer Kate Ganz 11 years ago. She does say on record in 2008 that she does not think it was da Vinci’s work. Why did she attribute to da Vinci now?

It’s probably because I’m a cynic at heart, but it’s bothering me. It’s bothering me because while there are quite a few of profile drawings that look similar to Ms. Bella, there aren’t many profile paintings – if any. A fingerprint sounds like fantastic proof even without a provenance but – and you can throw a stick at me here – it’s also bothering me that Dan Brown’s Lost Symbol hasn’t been out for a month yet.

Personally, I’ll wait before I make my own decision. I would love to believe there’s another LdV found, but it’s more likely that some student emulated his work. What do you guys think?

This entry was posted on Wednesday, October 14th, 2009 at 11:19 am and is filed under Art Alert. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.