A lost Leonardo? Top art historian says maybe
(Reuters)
Updated: 2005-09-22 17:44

PRIVATE COLLECTIONS

The painting has been in private collections for nearly all its recorded history in the past 100 years or so.

A black-and-white photo of it was taken in the 1920s in Vienna. It was last exhibited briefly in the United States in 1949 and Pedretti recently tracked it down to a private collector in Switzerland.

Pedretti, who has devoted most of his life to studying Leonardo, is cautious but hopeful that his hunch will prove correct.

He wants the painting to undergo an infrared reflectogram, a technique for viewing the under drawings and various paint stages of a painting using cameras equipped with infrared-sensitive detectors.

Pedretti said if traces of sketches were found it would be "extremely important" because Leonardo sketches are very easy to identify.

"First of all, it still has to be examined in a laboratory. I want to see a reflectogram and other examinations. But one extraordinary thing is that it is painted on an intact wood panel, just like the Mona Lisa," he said.

The exhibition is called "Leonardo - Genius and Vision in the Marche Region," after the area of Italy where it will be held and which is home to the city of Urbino, where Leonardo worked in briefly in 1502.

Its co-sponsors include the Italian Culture Ministry and a Vatican foundation.

Leonardo is known to have collaborated with students to complete some of his works. For example, one copy of "Virgin of the Rocks" is believed to have been painted jointly by Leonardo and Ambrogio De Predis.

If the Magadalene painting turns out to be of Leonardo's hand, even if only partially, it would be only one of a few by the master of a nude woman. Another is "Leda and the Swan."

Pedretti said he had no personal agenda to suggest that Leonardo may have had a major role in the painting.

"I don't think I need to draw attention to myself at my age. I'm just proposing this possibility in the service of scholarship," he said.

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