The Renaissance Man Does it Again
Leonardo da Vinci’s unprecedented success as a revolutionary scientist and Renaissance painter has made him an international household name. The world celebrates the Renaissance Man’s published works. Da Vinci was a perfectionist, and he prolonged the completion of his paintings. Throughout his career, he produced fewer than thirty paintings, and even among these select few, not all are finished. Each da Vinci painting is an artistic and historical gem, valued at millions of dollars. The rarity of Leonardo da Vinci’s paintings makes this latest discovery so spectacular.
On October 14, 2009, Peter Paul Biro, an expert on forensic art, revealed that fingerprints found on a previously supposed German painting belonged to Leonardo da Vinci. The piece, titled Profile of the Bella Principessa, is the first da Vinci painting to be found in over one hundred years. The story behind the discovery has its own mysterious aura. In 2007, an anonymous Swiss collector bought the painting at the Ganz gallery in New York for $19,000, thinking it was produced in nineteenth century Germany. But the owner of the painting claimed that the work did not appear to be from the 1800s. In order to confirm his theory, the collector began a series of tests to determine the painting’s true maker. Biro soon took on the case. Because Leonardo often directly used his hands to paint, he left fingerprints on several of his paintings. Using a digital scanner and multi-spectral images to reveal each coat of paint, Biro matched the fingerprints found on Profile to da Vinci’s fingerprints on his St. Jerome, which hangs in the Vatican. While there is a significant amount of technological evidence to prove Leonardo’s connection to the painting, there is also artistic evidence to supplement it.
The painting’s style and techniques are characteristic of da Vinci. In fact, the painting is so typical of Da Vinci that before Biro even revealed the results of his tests, art experts already suspected that Leonardo produced the painting. Now, after proving that the painting was by da Vinci, seasoned collectors and sellers estimate its worth to be over $150 million, equaling the price of the Mona Lisa and earning itself a spot among the most expensive paintings of all time. From continued studies of this newest da Vinci masterpiece, the public can expect the emergence of new theories regarding the Renaissance era and an expanded view of Leonardo da Vinci’s prolific accomplishments.
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