Leonardo or not?
A painting sold in 1998 at Christie's auction as a 19th-century German School portrait has now been attributed to Leonardo da Vinci by some art and scientific experts. It is always fascinating in this kind of discoveries to see how little help comes from scientific research. People often think that a carbon 14 test is enough to classify the painting, but as a matter a fact it isn't.
Carbon 14-dating tests carried out by the Swiss Federal Institute of Technology Zurich place the work’s date between 1440 and 1650 (and God knows how Swiss can be punctual).
But art dealers and art historians interviewed recently had mixed opinions about the portrait. Scientific tests “can be very useful, but they can’t guarantee an attribution because the first criterion is quality and that can’t be discerned through mechanical means,” said Jean-Luc Baroni, a London-based art dealer. See full article in NYtimes.
Fakes are experts' terror, because they irrevocably undermine their credibility, which is essential to their job. In this case, what is awkward is that the work is on vellum, unlike the rest of Leonardo's production. In many cases, fakes are in every point what people expect, except from one detail (see the famous fake Gauguin "Faun" unmasked last year: it was supposedly the painter's only sculpture). On the other hand it was made by a left-handed artist, which is Leonardo's case...
Carbon 14-dating tests carried out by the Swiss Federal Institute of Technology Zurich place the work’s date between 1440 and 1650 (and God knows how Swiss can be punctual).
But art dealers and art historians interviewed recently had mixed opinions about the portrait. Scientific tests “can be very useful, but they can’t guarantee an attribution because the first criterion is quality and that can’t be discerned through mechanical means,” said Jean-Luc Baroni, a London-based art dealer. See full article in NYtimes.
Fakes are experts' terror, because they irrevocably undermine their credibility, which is essential to their job. In this case, what is awkward is that the work is on vellum, unlike the rest of Leonardo's production. In many cases, fakes are in every point what people expect, except from one detail (see the famous fake Gauguin "Faun" unmasked last year: it was supposedly the painter's only sculpture). On the other hand it was made by a left-handed artist, which is Leonardo's case...
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