Could there be an earlier version of Leonardo da Vinci’s Mona Lisa painting? Some experts are alleging that a piece depicting a younger version of the sitter could be the original.
The Mona Lisa (1503–19) is a Renaissance painting of the Florentine woman Lisa Gherardini, the wife of Florentine silk merchant Francesco del Giocondo, by Leonardo da Vinci.
The Isleworth Mona Lisa, as it has been dubbed (because it was previously owned by an art dealer in the London suburb), shows Lisa in the same position as the original. There are, however, a few key differences. Namely, the Isleworth iteration depicts a younger version of the sitter with a thinner face.
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Experts appear unconvinced that the painting is an authentic da Vinci work. As Jonathan Jones, an art critic for The Guardian, pointed out on Wednesday, da Vinci worked on the Mona Lisa layer by layer for years perfecting his masterpiece. It is unclear how or why there would be a prequel to the Mona Lisa or why the artist would have abandoned the canvas. Jones went so far as to call it a “bad copy” or a “deliberate fake.” Meanwhile, Martin Kemp, a professor of art history at the University of Oxford and a da Vinci expert, told Artnet News that he believed the work to be a copy.
Still, the Mona Lisa Foundation, a Zurich nonprofit founded in 2011 to establish the Isleworth Mona Lisa as an authentic da Vinci work, is championing the privately owned piece as the first of two iterations of Leonardo’s masterpiece. For those interested in seeing it for themselves, the painting in question is currently on view in an exhibition at Promotrice delle Belle Arti gallery in Turin, Italy.
Though the work is privately owned and not currently for sale, it raises a lot of market–related questions. The controversial Salvator Mundi painting, for instance, which was marketed as a rediscovered masterpiece by da Vinci, fetched $450.3 million six years ago at auction. Despite looming questions surrounding its authenticity, it still holds the record for the most expensive painting ever sold. Should the Isleworth Mona Lisa ever hit the market, it could surpass that record.