New Leonardo da Vinci’s portrait may have been discovered
A new portrait by Leonardo da Vinci may have been discovered thanks to centuries-old fingerprint and palm print.
Peter Paul Biro, a Montreal-based forensic art expert, said that a fingerprint on what was presumed to be a 19th-century German drawing of a young woman has convinced art experts that it’s actually a Leonardo.
Canadian-born art collector Peter Silverman bought “Profile of the Bella Principessa” at the Ganz gallery in New York on behalf of an anonymous Swiss collector in 2007 for about $19,000. New York art dealer Kate Ganz had owned it for about 11 years after buying it at auction for a similar price.
One London art dealer now says it could be worth more than $150 million.
If experts are correct, it will be the first major work by Leonardo to be identified in 100 years.
Ganz doesn’t believe it is.
“Nothing that I have seen or read in the past two years has changed my mind, I do not believe that this drawing is by Leonardo da Vinci,” Ganz told The Associated Press on Wednesday.
She declined to comment further. More on this story here.
