flower image : Antique shop sketch hailed as £2.7m Leonardo

A TINY portrait of an old woman has been attributed to Leonardo da Vinci, following analysis by infrared photography. If confirmed it would make the picture worth about £2.7m.
The privately owned Testa di Vecchia (Head of an Old Woman), a pen-and-ink drawing in which the ugly, pug-nosed profile contrasts with a dainty flower tied to the subject’s bonnet, will be unveiled at a news conference in the Doge’s Palace in Venice on Thursday, chaired by Massimo Cacciari, the mayor.

Although the sketch, measuring 4in by 2.5in, bears Leonardo’s name, experts had long dismissed the idea it could be by the Renaissance artist and scientist. Giancarlo Ligabue, a Venetian industrialist and collector who owns the drawing, said that when he bought it 30 years ago from a local antique dealer he was told: “Don’t start thinking it’s a Leonardo.” He has not revealed how much he paid.

The re-evaluation of the sketch began last year when Ligabue decided to publish a catalogue of his collection, including works by the Italian artists Canaletto, Piranesi and Tiepolo. He consulted Professor Luisi Cogliati Arano, a Leonardo expert in Milan, who urged him to carry out scientific tests on the portrait. It was photographed last month with infrared equipment that probed beneath the visible image and revealed an earlier sketch.

Cogliati Arano said it was typical of Leonardo, who habitually filled in initial sketches with ink.

“There are several details that are similar to other portraits by Leonardo, including the hairstyle, the flower above it, the eye and the profile itself,” she said. She added that the photography had also revealed later additions behind and underneath the woman’s ear.

The attribution has been challenged by Carlo Pedretti, director of the Armand Hammer Centre of Leonardo Studies at the University of California, who said yesterday that after seeing a reproduction of the portrait, he did not believe it.

“I saw that part of it was done with the right hand, and Leonardo was left-handed. To me it doesn’t even look Italian, it looks German. And I don’t see anything in common with other caricatures by Leonardo. But I’m curious to see the results of this photographic exam,” he said.

New attributions to Leonardo are extremely rare, occurring every 20 or 30 years, he added.

But Pietro Marani, who helped restore the artist’s fresco of the Last Supper in Milan, said he was convinced the drawing was a Leonardo with later additions by other hands.

“From the outset, Leonardo drawings were venerated like relics and those who intervened on them did so with the aim of preserving the works of the maestro for posterity,” he said.

Two other experts supported this view, Marani added: Martin Kemp of Oxford University, who has written extensively on Leonardo and advised Bill Gates, the billionaire founder of Microsoft, on a collection of the artist’s writings and drawings known as the Codex Leicester, and Sylvie Beguin, a curator at the Louvre where the Mona Lisa hangs.

“Leonardo is present, not only in the pen-and-ink drawing, but also in the general structure of the work,” Marani said.

by John Follain