Italian art sleuths discover da Vinci’s ‘earliest masterpiece.’
ITALIAN ART SLEUTHS MAY HAVE DISCOVERED DA VINCI’S EARLIEST KNOWN WORK
Italian scholars claim to have discovered the earliest known work by Leonardo da Vinci — a previously unattributed portrait of the Archangel Gabriel.
They say infrared analysis has revealed a tiny signature on the jawline of the angel’s face that, when magnified, reads “Da Vinci Lionardo” with the date 1471.
If verified, it would be the earliest surviving work by the Renaissance genius, as well as his earliest known signature.
He would have been 18 when he painted the portrait, which appears on a majolica glazed tile — a popular art form in Europe in the 15th century.
The signature went unnoticed for five centuries because it is all but invisible to the naked eye, researchers said.
They said it would probably have been legible when the portrait was first painted, but became smudged in the firing process when the clay tile was baked in a furnace.
The researchers also discovered the initials “LDV” for Leonardo da Vinci in the margin of the portrait.
A laboratory in Milan analyzed the clay used to make the glazed tile with a technique known as thermoluminescence and dated it to the second half of the 15th century.
“We have done everything humanly possible to verify its provenance. Science has provided us with concrete evidence that this work is by Leonardo da Vinci,” said art historian Prof. Ernesto Solari, who announced the discovery in Rome.
“We have plenty of works produced by Leonardo in his later years, such as the Mona Lisa and The Last Supper, but this provides an insight into the artist as a very young man.”
The signature and date are so small — to the naked eye, just a black line along the lower jaw of the Archangel — that they appear to have been deliberately concealed.
“Is it a secret code? I wouldn’t say that; this isn’t Dan Brown,” said Solari, referring to the author of The Da Vinci Code. “The protocol of the time was not to sign majolicas like this, so perhaps that is why it is so small. Any larger and it would have spoiled the esthetic of the painting.
“It is the earliest known signature by Leonardo. And we think the painting of the archangel was with great probability a self-portrait of Leonardo — Gabriel was like a rock star at that time and people wanted to be associated with him.”
The signature and date were compared with other known examples of Leonardo’s writing by Dr. Ivana Rosa Bonfantino, a handwriting expert from LUMSA University in Rome, who found a close match between them.
She drew on known examples of the painter’s work, including a letter written to Cardinal Ippolito d’Este in 1507 and a signature on a 1483 contract for the commission of a painting, the Virgin of the Rocks.
Bonfantino said the “1” in the date 1471 was much shorter than the other numbers, which tallied with how Leonardo typically wrote the numeral.
“My conclusion is that the writing on the face of the archangel was done by a young Leonardo,” she said.
A leading British expert on Leonardo was skeptical of the claims, however.
Martin Kemp, emeritus professor in the history of art at Oxford University, said the archangel painting compared poorly with what is generally accepted to be Leonardo’s earliest known work — The Annunciation, painted in 1472 or 1473.
“The handling of the hair is spectacularly unconvincing — it looks like vermicelli — and the details of the costume are also wrong,” Kemp told The Telegraph.
“The quality is not what you would expect from something that was supposedly painted just a year before The Annunciation.
“There is not a single painting by Leonardo in existence that he signed, although you can’t say definitively that he never signed anything.”
But the Italian team stand by their research and say they are happy to have it scrutinized by other scholars.
The portrait is privately owned by an aristocratic family called the Fenicia, who originally came from Ravello in northern Italy.
It was given to the family in 1499 by Giovanna D’Aragona, the Duchess of Amalfi, as payment for military support in one of the Renaissance era’s city-state conflicts.
The family had long suspected the work might be valuable, but had no inkling it could have been a da Vinci, said Solari.
If that can be confirmed independently — given the skepticism of some scholars, that will be a challenge — the Fenicia family hopes it will be bought by the Italian state and placed in a museum.
“This is the earliest known work by Leonardo and his earliest signature. One cannot give it a value,” said Solari. “I very much hope it stays in Italy. This is part of our national heritage.”
THIS PROVIDES AN INSIGHT INTO THE ARTIST AS A VERY YOUNG MAN.