Is Leonardo da Vinci the new Jackson Pollock?

[Steve Everist]

http://www.cbc.ca/arts/artdesign/story/ ... nardo.html

Fingerprint on portrait has link to Leonardo da Vinci

A small picture of a young woman in profile owned by a Canadian collector may be a work by Leonardo da Vinci.

Art experts say there is strong evidence the picture is by Leonardo after finding a fingerprint on the Renaissance-era painting that matches another fingerprint found on his St Jerome in the Vatican.

The fingerprint was found by Peter Paul Biro, a Montreal-based forensic art expert, through multispectral analysis, which detects images unseen by the naked eye, according to the Guardian newspaper.

The painting is owned by Canadian-born collector Peter Silverman, who bought it two years ago for just over $20,000.

A Christie's assessment of the painting advertised it as by an unknown 19th- century German artist, but Silverman believed it might be older and of more noble lineage.

The hairstyle and robe worn by the young woman in the ink and chalk image is consistent with Milanese fashion of the late 15th century, experts say.

Carbon dating also suggests the painting dates from the late 1400s, when Leonardo would have been painting.

Silverman consulted both Biro and Dr. Nicholas Turner, formerly the keeper of prints and drawings at the British Museum, as well as experts at Museo Ideale Leonardo Da Vinci in the artist's hometown of Vinci.

That brought the painting to attention of international experts, including Martin Kemp, of Oxford University, who is writing a book about the painting.

Kemp investigated figures surrounding Leonardo and surmised the painting was an enticement to marriage for Bianca Sforza, the daughter of Ludovico Sforza, Duke of Milan from 1452-1508, and his mistress Bernardina de Corradis.

Bianca Sforza would have been painted about 1496 by Leonardo, who also painted two of the Duke's mistresses, Kemp said.

At age 13 or 14, Bianca married the Duke's army captain, Galeazzo Sanseverino, a patron of Leonardo's, but died four months later.

The painting, which measures 33 by 24 cm, would be worth millions if accepted as being a piece by Leonardo.

It will go on display at an exhibit in Sweden next year.

[Pat A. Wertheim]

http://www.nypost.com/p/news/internatio ... ZWRcngkcqO

'Money lisa' is found
22G sketch actually a $147M Leonardo
By CYNTHIA R. FAGEN
Last Updated: 7:06 AM, October 14, 2009
Posted: 4:23 AM, October 14, 2009

A forensic art expert says he found Leonardo da Vinci's finger and palm prints on an anonymous $22,000 portrait -- instantly transforming it into a $147 million work of art credited to the Renaissance master.

The unsigned chalk, ink and pencil on vellum portrait of a young woman, which had been erroneously titled "19th Century German," was sold by Christie's for a mere $19,000 in 1998 to New York art dealer Kate Ganz.

She sold it nine years later to Canadian collector Peter Silverman for a $3,000 profit even though rumors were swirling that the 13-by-9-inch picture could have been drawn by the "Mona Lisa" creator.

It's not clear who owns the portrait, but it was turned over for analysis to Montreal-based expert Peter Paul Biro.

In a scene worthy of "CSI," he used a state-of-the art "multi-spectral" infrared camera and found a print of the tip of an index finger in the top left corner of the drawing. He compared it to a similar print on da Vinci's painting "St. Jerome," which is in the Vatican, and determined they were the same, the Antiques Trade Gazette reported.

In addition, there's a palm print in the chalk on the woman's neck, which is "also consistent in application to Leonardo's use of his hands in creating texture and shading," said Biro.

The latest revelations have persuaded top da Vinci scholars that it's the real deal.

Oxford University Professor Martin Kemp, once a skeptic, is now convinced the portrait was indeed drawn by Leonardo and the woman is Bianca Sforza, the teenage daughter of the Duke of Milan and his mistress. Kemp has renamed the work "La Bella Principessa."

"It all sounded too good to be true. After 40 years in the Leonardo business, I thought I'd seen it all," he told the Gazette. "All the bits fell into place like a well-made piece of furniture. All the drawers slotted in."

Prof. Carlo Pedretti, a top Leonardo expert who works for an Italian foundation, agreed.

"This could be the most important discovery [of a genuine Leonardo] since the early 19th century," he said.

But the ink is not completely dry on its authenticity.

Ganz believes the drawing was made by a German artist studying in Italy, who based his work on da Vinci's style.

"I do not believe the [drawing] is by Leonardo, and nothing I have read or seen . . . has changed my mind," she told The Post yesterday.

Biro has been embroiled in controversy in the past. He was called a fraud when he authenticated a Jackson Pollock painting based on a fingerprint. The Global Fine Art Registry, which monitors art sales and disputed works, said that the print was copied off a paint can found in the artist's East Hampton studio.

Biro has denied any wrongdoing and he was never charged.

cynthia.fagan@nypost.com

[Ann Horsman]

Who verifies his ID's?

[Pat A. Wertheim]

Steve, there is a photo of the fingerprint at the following website. I don't know how to copy and post it here. Whoever "identified" this must be one heck of an examiner.

http://www.time.com/time/arts/article/0 ... 31,00.html

[Big Wullie]

Hi Pat

Hope you don't mind me posting this for you.

Anyone else wanting to copy and paste images can do so by

1. Right click on image
2. Opt for copy image URL
3. Right click back in the post
4. Opt for paste
5. Then highlight the URL in the post
6. Then click "Img" above

Took me quite a bit to grasp to start with too.

[Pat A. Wertheim]

Thanks, Wullie!

I would imagine by now the fingerprint experts are looking at the fingerprint in the right half of that picture and are scratching their heads. Of course, Mr. Biro does not actually call that fingerprint an "identification" to Leonardo da Vinci. He says the print is "highly comparable" to another print from another painting believed to have been painted by da Vinci. Since it is "highly comparable," according to the reasoning here, both paintings must have been done by the same person, and that person is Leonardo da Vinci.

I think I will try that term next time I testify:

Q: Mr. Wertheim, when you compared the latent print from the murder weapon with the defendant's fingerprints, what conclusion did you reach?

A: I concluded that the fingerprint on the murder weapon was highly comparable to the defendant's fingerprints.

That should answer all of the NAS Report's concerns, don't you think?

[Big Wullie]

Here is an edited version I took to flickr and tweaked a little.

Q: Mr. Wertheim, when you compared the latent print from the murder weapon with the defendant's fingerprints, what conclusion did you reach?

A: I concluded that the fingerprint on the murder weapon was highly comparable to the defendant's fingerprints.

Sounds good to me.

The white mark through this reminds me of Y7 and the rope mark through it.

[mgirard]

If only our critics were as easily persuaded as the art critics.

[Ernie Hamm]

Before too much criticism is heaped on the use the term “highly comparable” for a mark association, I would like to present another scenario that has probably been experienced by latent print examiners with a fine amount of experience.

You have received and processed a large number of checks forged by an individual whose record prints you have also received. There is a ‘pattern’ of a latent fingerprint being developed in the lower right hand corner of almost every check where it is removed from a check book. You start your comparisons with the better latent and identified it to the subject’s right index finger. You then start through the remaining checks and, check after check, you observe the same agreement of ‘target’ points in the latent as seen in the record and quickly make an ident notation based upon what is a cursorily comparison.

You submit a report that subject has been identified on “X” number of checks. The incident goes to trial and the identification on one of the “X” checks is challenged. You retrieve the challenged latent from the files and, WHOA, where are the points of identification beyond the target area?

I am no expert in paintings by the Masters, but if there is an acknowledged pattern of marks in particular areas of a painting (it is said we are creatures of habit) by a specific individual, couldn’t such marks be considered ‘highly comparable’ if they possessed similar markings?

[Ann Horsman]

This undated photo provided Wednesday Oct. 14, 2009 by Lumiere Technology in Paris shows a fingerprint on a painting that art experts believe they have identified as a new Leonardo da Vinci. Peter Paul Biro, a Montreal-based forensic art expert, said Tuesday that a fingerprint on what was presumed to be a 19th-century German painting of a young woman has convinced art experts that it's actually a da Vinci. (AP Photo/HO/Lumiere Technology.com)

[Charles Parker]

Now is that print:

1. Not Suitable For Any Evidentiary Value.

2. Suitable for Comparison Purposes (reach one of the three conclusions ID, Exclude, or Inconclusive)

3. Suitable for Identification Purposes (it either is that person or it is not-----no in between)


Well I would have to rule out #3, and #2------That just leaves #1.

[Ann Horsman]

I'm gonna ask again: who is verifying this dude's work?

Maybe he could find someone here? http://www.peopleofwalmart.com

[Gerald Clough]

Any comparison is made to a "reconstructed" fingerprint developed from partials found on various papers of Leonardo.

The research began in 2002, following the discovery of hundreds of fingerprints in the master's notebooks and drawings.

"Not all belonged to Leonardo. There was a mixture of traces, with marks also left by his apprentices," said Alessandro Vezzosi, director of the Museo Ideale in the Tuscan town of Vinci, where the artist was born in 1452 and where the fingerprints are collected.

Capasso and colleagues at the University of Chieti first worked on isolating and extracting the real Leonardo's fingerprints.

Through nondestructive spectrometry, they examined about 200 fingerprints from about 52 papers and found that only in a few cases had Leonardo left a complete fingerprint.

In most cases, the partial fingerprints consisted of the radial half of the left thumb, indicating that left-handed Leonardo was just moving and leafing through the papers.

"But when we examined the 'Portrait of a Lady with an Ermine', we noticed that the artist used his finger when applying the finishing touches to the necklace's shadow," Capasso said.

After scouring manuscripts and notebooks, the researchers found two other fingerprints that matched and completed the Ermine markings. The result was an entire fingertip, possibly belonging to the left forefinger.

The sources were limited to impressions made to remove ink blots, to avoid those possibly made by other people who handled the papers.

Obviously, such a compilation would not stand up in criminal litigation. And, as noted, the new print isn't sufficient for identification. But I also wouldn't hold anyone in the art community responsible for media mistakenly calling is an "identification." For that matter, there's certainly no general agreement that this is Leonardo's work. And I would not assume much intense research has been done on this painting before. That's going to take a lot more work. Possibly even some metric comparison of the subject with, of they exist, another image of the woman who has been proposed as the subject, which may mean a lot of research in family archives and among other identified and unidentified subjects. This sort of thing can turn literally into a lifetime of work. Some of the work on brush stroke analysis also comes to mind. The art world isn't bound to play by our rules, either in this or in the earlier anthropological conclusion that Leonardo's mother may have been a middle eastern slave or servant on account of the apparent pattern class of the reconstructed print and the relative distribution of patterns in populations. If this work eventually gains general acceptance as a da Vinci, there will likely be a lot more than the fingerprint. It certainly could be. There are a huge number of Leonardo's works unaccounted for. Not that I care if someone wants to pay $150-million for a modestly valuable painting that becomes a bit of celebrity memorabilia. It's still the same old painting.

[David Johnson]

I got an email from Martin Kemp regarding the ID and this may be another case of the media taking a story and twisting it.

We are aware that the fingerprint evidence is not wholly conclusive (it could never be in any event) and that it is not the totality of the case for Leonardo, which is rock solid on a variety of grounds.
What the press make of it is another matter of course.
best wishes,
Martin Kemp

So it seems that the investigators know that the fingerprint is not an identification but it is just part of the evidence that they are using to authenticate the painting at DaVinci's

There also seems to be a book in the works so we may be able to see high resolution images of the fingerprints at some point.

[Pat A. Wertheim]

This case is back in the news. The article combines both this alleged Leonardo da Vinci painting and an alleged Jackson Pollock.

The video clip is shorter, only a couple of minutes: http://www.newyorker.com/online/blogs/n ... grann.html

The written article goes into much more detail and quotes interviews by Charles Parker and myself: http://www.newyorker.com/reporting/2010 ... fact_grann