Leonardo's Lost Princess

by Peter Silverman

  Was there a legal case to be made that Christie’s should have known better, or did the subjective quality of art guarantee that different eyes would draw different conclusions? The dilemma reminded me of the classic 1950 film Rashomon, in which three people witness a woman’s rape and the murder of her husband. When they later recount what happened, they offer three entirely different versions. The great director, Akira Kurosawa, shows in this film how our senses and vision can play tricks on us. We are challenged to ask: What is real? What is the truth?

  In art we can have a similar situation. Two people observing the same work might derive completely different signals from it, depending on many factors, including their cultural, educational, emotional, and philosophical conditioning. For example, a non-Buddhist will not understand the image of Buddha in the same way as someone who practices Buddhism. Likewise, a non-Christian would probably not perceive Michelangelo’s Last Judgment, or the sublime image of Christ on the cross by Bernini, the same way as a Christian would. The believing Christian would see the violent scenes through a prism of faith and feel inspired by the possibility of redemption, whereas the non-Christian might see only violence and terrible suffering.

  So the way we look at art is very much determined by context. A true art lover and connoisseur will be aware of these biases and strive to see beyond them and open up a dialogue between the object and the viewer—to see with both the heart and the mind and not allow preconceived notions to cloud judgment.

  This brings us to the discovery of La Bella Principessa. How is it possible that three—yes, three!—very able and experienced experts at a major auction house got it so wrong, in cataloguing the work as nineteenth-century German over the vehement protests of Jeanne Marchig? It is sad that she was ultimately persuaded by the power of Christie’s reputation and expertise to not believe what her own eyes were seeing.

  Did Christie’s make a $100 million blunder as a result of its own hubris? With a bit of simple due diligence, the auction house might at least have let a competent restorer examine the work to better determine its period—as I did by having the work examined by Caroline Corrigan.

  So we must ask how, in this case, did taste and connoisseurship go on holiday, leaving some very experienced specialists behind? One obvious answer is that the experts don’t always get it right. It is possible for them to be fooled.

  But one thing is undeniable: we have entered an age when science and scholarship walk hand in hand. This was admirably illustrated at a 2010 show at the National Gallery of London, where the usually unknown and unseen aspects of a great museum laboratory were revealed. The public was invited to view the methods employed by the museum to study and analyze a painting’s pigments, its surface, and eventually any existing underdrawing—all methods used in determining a picture’s authenticity.

  The role of science in the art world today is such that a museum curator is in a much stronger position to assess a work of art’s authenticity before attempting to acquire it for his or her institution. This is equally true of the art trade and the auction houses, which no longer have to rely solely on the connoisseurship of their staff or outside expertise when cataloguing works of potentially great value. Technology can exclude works that have traditionally been assigned to an artist as well as include new works that have mistakenly been attributed elsewhere.

  The exhibition at the National Gallery made a convincing argument in favor of an intelligent collaboration between scholars who examine works of art with their well-trained naked eye and scientists who examine them extensively with their specialized techniques. The names of these various methods, such as infrared radiation, infrared reflectography, and ultraviolet light, will mean little to the layperson. These methods, intelligently employed and interpreted, can single-handedly tip the balance in favor of a definitive attribution, which makes it even more incomprehensible that any museum curator or scholar would venture to pronounce on the authenticity of a work such as La Bella Principessa without subjecting it to stringent museum laboratory examinations. That would simply be missing the boat, and it’s what the revered experts at Christie’s did.

  Nicholas Turner has a more nuanced view of the matter. “Ideally,” he told me, “what we need is a hybrid of [the TV crime dramas] CSI and Criminal Minds, a blueprint for a new kind of connoisseurship where scientific method and traditional connoisseurship interact rather than push each other out. Kemp and Cotte’s project just might provide that model; we shall have to see if others follow suit.”

  On January 31, 2011, Jeanne Marchig’s lawsuit against Christie’s was dismissed by Judge John Koeltl in a twelve-page ruling, which noted, “The plaintiff’s breach of fiduciary duty claim is untimely unless they can demonstrate a basis for tolling the statute of limitations”—which happened to be three years.6

  Jeanne was outraged at the reliance on the statute of limitations—a technicality—rather than the merits of the case. “I only learned about the Leonardo attribution in 2009,” she said. “How could I have exceeded the statute of limitations?” But Judge Koeltl wrote that unless a claim is based on fraud, the statute of limitations clock starts ticking when the event occurs, not when the plaintiff learns of the breach.

  A statute of limitations ruling is the most blind form of justice because it has no regard for the validity of the claim, so Jeanne’s anger is understandable. She vowed to appeal, and to succeed she might have to prove that fraud occurred—an extremely high bar. But to Jeanne this “crying injustice” would not be allowed to stand without a fight.7

  12

  The Art World Strikes Back

  You do ill if you praise, but worse if you censure, what you do not understand.

  —Leonardo da Vinci

  The detractors of La Bella Principessa had been sharpening their knives ever since the opening of the Gothenburg show in March 2010. La Bella Principessa’s public coming-out, as part of the grand exhibition “And There Was Light,” was well thought out and deeply serious. Kathy and I flew to Sweden for the opening, filled with anticipation. It was a little more than three years since we had seen our lady in public, spotting her on an easel at Kate Ganz’s gallery. How far she had come since then! Seeing her aligned with other Master works, we had an overwhelming sense that she belonged.

  The Gothenburg exhibition had impressive credentials, being under the sponsorship of the city of Gothenburg and the patronage of the Vatican and the president of Italy. It was curated by Francesco Buranelli, the director of the Vatican Museums, and Alessando Vezzosi. The exhibition included original pieces by three Italian Renaissance masters: da Vinci, Michelangelo, and Raphael.

  As Vezzosi pointed out in his remarks at the opening of the exhibition, these three Masters lived at the same time, knew and influenced one another, and were even rivals. “Leonardo da Vinci, Michelangelo, and Raphael are three of the greatest artists in history,” he said. “But they were also people with ideas and visions that reached far beyond the world of art. They were also bitter rivals, competing for both commissions and fame. All three became immortal.”

  Their appearance together in the grand exhibition hall, Eriksbergshallen, was priceless. The security was as tight as any I’d ever seen.

  During the five-month exhibition, more than 150,000 paying visitors saw La Bella Principessa for the first time—not bad for a city of fewer than a million inhabitants! Ironically, the masses were eager to view Leonardo’s lady, whereas many of her most vociferous critics used every excuse under the sun to not see her “in the flesh.” In the coming months, as the naysayers lobbed their arrows at the portrait, the one thing that I found most irksome was how many were assuming scholarly airs without exercising scholarly diligence. I have no problem with anyone who studies La Bella Principessa closely, views the original and Lumiere Technology’s work, and then details his or her arguments against a Leonardo attribution. I do have problems with self-styled experts who declare that it is not a Leonardo without bothering to even view it.


  We were basking in the positive feedback from the Gothenburg exhibition, and the momentum seemed to be in our favor. The March publication of the book La Bella Principessa: The Story of the New Masterpiece by Leonardo by Martin and Pascal, with a foreword by Claudio Strinati and a preface by Nicholas Turner, laid out the evidence with a level of expertise, scientific rigor, and detail that I assumed would satisfy the most hardened skeptic. I was being very naive.

  The first inkling of trouble came in the form of an article in the London Daily Telegraph a month after the book’s publication.1 Written by Richard Dorment, the article was titled “La Bella Principessa: A £100m Leonardo or a Copy?” The subhead added, “La Bella Principessa has been touted as Leonardo’s missing masterpiece, but the experts beg to differ.”

  From the outset of the article, Dorment attacked my credibility, calling me a “fantasist.” He proceeded to also attack Martin’s scholarship with a dripping sarcasm that I considered an insult to a man of Martin’s stature: “Genuine drawings need to be studied and discussed over time, so that scholars can reach a consensus on their status. I don’t doubt that Prof Kemp’s belief in Leonardo’s authorship is sincere. But he is wrong to think he can prove this by steamrolling the public into accepting his attribution.” Steamrolling? In what respect?

  Dorment was dismissive of Vezzosi’s Gothenburg exhibition; he had viewed a tiny opening snippet on YouTube and therefore felt perfectly qualified to give his opinion. He failed to mention important details about the exhibition, particularly the patronage of the Vatican and the president of Italy.

  “As a non-specialist, my opinion of the drawing’s status is irrelevant,” he wrote, and then proceeded to give his opinion. What troubled me most about Dorment’s article was its lack of balance. He presented La Bella Principessa as a possible fake and then went on to find ways to support his view. The “experts” he quoted prominently were from what Martin calls the “New York Gang”—those “connoisseurs” from the Metropolitan Museum and elsewhere who would not deign to give anything a hearing that did not spring from their own initiative. I had long suspected that Ganz had showed the portrait to people at the Met who dismissed it and now had to dig in and defend their opinions for fear of looking bad.

  In particular, Dorment mentioned Everett Fahy, the chairman of the Department of European Paintings, and Carmen C. Bambach, the curator of drawings and prints, as two of the heartiest detractors, yet neither of them had ever seen the portrait in person. I had repeatedly urged Bambach to do so, and she also refused an invitation to visit Lumiere Technology when she was in Paris for a colloquium. I could not understand how one could pass judgment on a work of art without at least taking the trouble to view it. I might add that Dorment himself never viewed it, either. Other journalists who have reported on the discovery, notably those from Der Spiegel and the Times of London, were very serious about their research; they visited Lumiere and learned about the technology so they could report knowledgeably.

  It was also noteworthy that Dorment did not interview any of the specialists who had endorsed the Leonardo attribution, which made his article one-sided. In fact, Dorment, who was once married to Ganz, specifically cited people who took issue with the attribution and conveniently excluded the numerous others who defended it, thereby violating one of the first principles of journalism: impartiality. What was equally astounding to me was why a normally serious newspaper such as the Daily Telegraph would publish the article and not perceive the manifest conflict of interest. Dorment, as Ganz’s ex-husband, should have recused himself. Serious journalist friends of mine, after reading his article, told me that I was not far off the mark in seeing his ex-wife’s sour grapes squeezed between the lines.

  Again, I was not surprised by the controversy. In one respect I welcomed it. I was well aware that art frauds occur, and vigilance is advised to prevent them. But I also believed that in the end, the main nemesis of art attribution is not the fraudster but the unbeliever. Inertia, jealousy, ignorance, and envy fill the air of art houses, stifling courage and creativity. The lazy scholar, the blind expert, the forever doubting Thomas—these types plague every institution. Was this the work of those perennial detractors, who anonymously dismiss a work like La Bella Principessa before it has been properly viewed?

  The main problem is often the museums themselves. To the average citizen, the museum is the bastion of unassailable truth, yet the political reality is a different story. I had to ask myself what was at play here: truth or politics.

  One name mentioned in Dorment’s article as being on the side of the naysayers was Nicholas Penny, head of the National Gallery of London. Nicholas and I go back more than twenty years. The reason for our first encounter was a portrait I had discovered at a small auction in Paris. It was presented simply as “Italian 16th c.” As soon as I saw it, I suspected it might be a late work—albeit rather damaged—of none other than Raphael. Before the auction, I hurried home to check out my library. Lo and behold, in a rare complete catalog of Raphael’s work by Leopold Dussler, published in the 1960s, which I was fortunate to own, was the very same portrait.

  It was engraved as a Raphael, and purportedly depictied Marcantonio Raimondi, an engraver and a close friend of the artist’s The picture was, in fact, engraved already in the seventeenth century; it had been published a number of times and was then lost from view. As it had always been in a French collection, I knew there was no danger of its having been stolen or exported illegally out of Italy, so I decided to purchase it. There was little interest in the work, and I was able to get it for around $10,000. Naturally, I was thrilled, and because I knew that Nicholas Penny was one of the top experts on Raphael, I contacted him, and he kindly came to our home to view the picture. He hemmed and hawed; he was having trouble seeing the picture for what it was because of its bad condition. The picture was instead published by Pierluigi De Vecchi, the top Italian specialist on Raphael, about five years ago.

  Throughout the years Nicholas and I saw each other regularly, either at sumptuous dinner parties given by a mutual friend and top sculpture dealer, Daniel Katz, and his wife, Gree, or at exhibitions or luncheons he attended with his delightful American wife, Mary. We continued to see each other after Nicholas accepted the position as head of sculpture at the National Gallery in Washington, D.C., where my sister, Tina, was living at the time.

  Some months after procuring the portrait from Ganz, I was in Washington and decided to stop in at the museum to say hello to Nicholas. I had photos of the portrait in my camera, and I showed them to him. I recall very precisely our conversation at the time.

  “Nicholas,” I said, “I don’t want to seem outlandish, but some people are telling me that this drawing may be by Leonardo. Do you think I am crazy?” He looked carefully at the digital images and replied, “No, not at all. Lovely thing. Please keep me informed of your progress.” I was elated. That was a lot coming from a man as cautious as Nicholas Penny.

  A year later Nicholas was back in London, now head of the National Gallery, one of Britain’s greatest institutions. I had been in contact with him as the evidence continued to mount in favor of a Leonardo attribution, but he had grown distant and unwilling to comment. Nor would he agree to view the original—he’d only seen photographs, at this point. Our regular correspondence was polite, but he seemed to be trying to shake me off. In one e-mail, he wrote: “You bought it from a very well-known and very well-informed dealer, Kate Ganz, as a nineteenth-century work. It is exceedingly unlikely that Kate did not think of Leonardo when she owned this work, and it would amaze me if she didn’t show it to experts in the field of Old Master drawings.”

  I was totally dumbfounded. Nicholas seemed to be saying that if the likes of Kate Ganz said it was not a Leonardo, so be it. Never mind that Ganz’s nineteenth-century attribution was proved wrong, as she publicly admitted. I didn’t understand Nicolas’s attitude, and I was surprised to find his name among the detractors listed in Dorment’s article. It didn’t make sense
to me that someone of Nicholas’s extreme professionalism and expertise would pass judgment so casually, having never seen the portrait.

  My frustration was apparent in an e-mail to him after the Daily Telegraph article was published. In particular, I invited him to find the time to see La Bella Principessa for himself, especially if he was going to comment on its authenticity. I reminded him that many foremost Leonardo scholars had endorsed the attribution. I sincerely believe that Nicholas’s scholarship, keen eye, and innate sense of fair play will ultimately prevail, and when all the latest facts are presented, he will come around to accepting Leonardo’s authorship. But as of this writing, he has not only continued to refuse to view the original, but he also excluded it from his museum’s Leonardo show, which opened in November 2011.

  I set about crafting a response to the Daily Telegraph piece, outlining point by point the evidence in favor of the Leonardo attribution:

  1. The work was initially identified as a Leonardo by Professor Mina Gregori, the acknowledged doyenne of Italian art.

  2. Support for a Leonardo attribution was first published in September 2008 by Alessandro Vezzosi, the director of the Museo Ideale Leonardo da Vinci, in a major monograph, with an introduction by Carlo Pedretti, the world’s most senior da Vinci expert.

  3. Francesco Buranelli, the former head of the Vatican Museums, and Claudio Strinati, the former head of the Museums of Rome and now in the Italian Ministry of Culture, endorsed the attribution. Timothy Clifford, the former director of the National Gallery of Scotland, as well as Simon Dickinson, one of the world’s leading art dealers and formerly a Sotheby’s senior expert, also endorsed the attribution.