A Montreal-based art expert’s identification of a fingerprint on a mixed-media drawing once credited to an anonymous 19th-century German artist has confirmed a determination announced last year in Toronto last year that the work was created by Leonardo da Vinci.
As a result, the 33-by-22-cm drawing in chalk, pen, ink and wash tint on vellum is now estimated to be worth at least $150-million (U.S.) – not the roughly $20,000 that Peter Silverman, a Canadian collector, paid to New York dealer Kate Ganz in 2007 on behalf of a fellow collector and friend from Switzerland.
Previous carbon-dating and infrared analysis had determined that the drawing, sometimes called Profile of a Young Fiancée , had undergone some restoration in the 19th century, but the essential work could be attributed to Renaissance master Leonardo da Vinci (1452-1519). That attribution was announced in June, 2008, at Toronto’s ideaCity conference by Pascal Cotte, one of the founders of Lumière Technology, a Paris-based firm specializing in digitalized forensics.
Earlier this year, Martin Kemp, emeritus professor of art history at Oxford and Leonardo specialist, contacted Peter Paul Biro in Montreal and sent him “a small image of a blurry print that looked like a fingerprint, asking me if it compared to anything in my database of Leonardo fingerprints.” Kemp was one of the first to accept the Leonardo attribution while Biro is co-founder of London-based Art Access and Research and its director of forensic studies. Using “multispectral” images provided by Lumière, Biro determined that the fingerprint, found in the drawing’s upper right-hand corner, was from the middle or index finger of Leonardo’s left hand and “highly comparable” to a fingerprint on a Leonardo art work in the Vatican. It’s believed to be the first work to be given the da Vinci imprimatur since Lady with an Ermine was identified as such in the early 19th century.
Not much is known about the painting before it surfaced at auction at Christie’s New York in late 1998. Identified at that time as “German school, early 19th century,” Ganz bought it for $19,000 at the sale and held onto it.
Intriguingly, Peter Silverman was an under-bidder for the work at the original Christie’s auction. At that time, he had a gut instinct that it had been misattributed but, as he said in an interview from France yesterday, “I didn’t have the courage to go any further in my bidding.” Almost a decade later, he and a friend, a Swiss collector specializing in contemporary art, were strolling around Manhattan when they wandered by the Ganz dealership. The Swiss collector went into the gallery where he spotted the profile, then returned to the sidewalk to ask Silverman, who collects Old Masters drawings, paintings and sculptures, to come in to take a look.
In a flash, Silverman realized it was the drawing he’d unsuccessfully bid on in 1998. “I didn’t hesitate for a second [this time] . . . I wasn’t going to make the same mistake twice,” he said. Silverman wrote a cheque on his friend’s behalf – but on the understanding that he’d “do all the foot work in exchange for which if I ever prove if it’s something important, I want you to buy me dinner and lunch.” Silverman laughed. “I think he’s going to buy me lunch and dinner for the rest of my life. Even,” he chuckled, “breakfast.”
Silverman calls the fingerprint identification “the icing on the cake. Unfortunately, the art community needs something fancy like fingerprints to go on. The big thing is all the information that’s come together .. . the fingerprint is just the ultimate proof.”
The Leonardo drawing, currently housed in a Swiss vault, will have its international public premiere in March next year in Gotheburg, Sweden in an exhibition of Italian Renaissance art.
-James Adams, Globe & Mail, Wednesday October 14, 2009
