New proof said found for "original" Mona Lisa

David Feldman (R) , vice president of the Mona Lisa Foundation, shows similarities on a painting attributed to Leonardo da Vinci and depicting Mona Lisa to his brother Stanley, an art historian, during a preview presentation in a vault in Geneva in this September 26, 2012 file photo.

Credit: Reuters/Denis Balibouse/Files

By Robert Evans

GENEVA | Wed Feb 13, 2013 10:42am EST

GENEVA (Reuters) - New tests on a painting billed as the original version of the Mona Lisa, Leonardo da Vinci's 15th century portrait, have produced fresh proof that it is the work of the Italian master, a Swiss-based art foundation said on Wednesday.

The tests, one by a specialist in "sacred geometry" and the other by the Swiss Federal Institute of Technology in Zurich, were carried out in the wake of the Geneva unveiling of the painting, the "Isleworth Mona Lisa", last September.

"When we add these new findings to the wealth of scientific and physical studies we already had, I believe anyone will find the evidence of a Leonardo attribution overwhelming," said David Feldman vice-president of the foundation said.

The "Mona Lisa" in the Paris Louvre for over three centuries has long been regarded as the only one painted by Leonardo - although there have been copies - and claims for the Swiss-held one were dismissed by some experts last year.

But it also won support in the art world, encouraging the Zurich-based Mona Lisa Foundation - an international group which says it has no financial interest in the work - to pursue efforts to demonstrate its authenticity.

Feldman, an Irish-born international art and stamp dealer, said he was contacted after the public unveiling of the portrait - which shows a much younger woman than in the Louvre - by Italian geometrist Alfonso Rubino.

LEONARDO'S GEOMETRY

"He has made extended studies of the geometry of Leonardo's Vitruvian Man" - a sketch of a youth with arms and legs extended - "and offered to look at our painting to see if it conformed," Feldman told Reuters.

The conclusion by the Padua-based Rubino was that the "Isleworth" portrait - named for a London suburb where it was kept by British art connoisseur Hugh Blaker 80-90 years ago - matched Leonardo's geometry and must be his.

The Zurich institute, the Foundation said, carried out a carbon-dating test on the canvas of its painting and found that it was almost certainly manufactured between 1410 and 1455 - refuting claims that it was a late 16th century copy.

Earlier brush-stroke studies presented last September by U.S. physicist and art lover John Asmus concluded that both the "original" version and the Louvre crowd-puller were painted by the same artist.

The authenticity of the foundation's painting, discovered by Blaker in an English country house in 1913, has been fiercely challenged by British Leonardo authority Martin Kemp, who argued last year that "so much is wrong with it."

Feldman and foundation colleagues retort that Kemp has never followed up on invitations to come to see it.

Documents show that a painting of his wife Lisa was commissioned around the turn of the 16th century by Florentine nobleman Francesco del Giacondo. In French, the Louvre version is known as "La Giaconde" and "La Giaconda" in Italian.

Supporters of the "younger" version say it was almost certainly delivered unfinished to del Giacondo before Leonardo left Italy in 1506 and took up residence in France, where he died in 1519 in a small Loire chateau.

From the Giacondo house, it probably eventually found its way to England after being bought by a travelling English aristocrat, this account runs, while the Paris version was probably painted by Leonardo around 1516 in France.

(Reported by Robert Evans, editing by Paul Casciato)

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Art collector says he found head from Courbet's explicit nude

By Marine Pennetier

PARIS | Thu Feb 7, 2013 3:15pm EST

PARIS (Reuters) - A French art collector claims to have found the head from the nude body that appears in a famously explicit 19th Century oil painting of a woman's genitalia.

Art expert Jean-Jacques Fernier, who has studied the works of Gustave Courbet for years, told Reuters he believed an unsigned painting of a woman's head, featured in this week's Paris Match magazine, had been cut off his masterpiece "The Origin of the World".

An anonymous collector named by Paris Match as "John" told the weekly he bought the painting from a Paris antiques dealer in early 2010 for 1,400 euros ($1,900) after spotting it nestled between old furniture and knick-knacks.

Fernier said the painting appeared to have been chopped off a bigger work and the weave of its canvas exactly matched that of Courbet's graphically erotic 1886 work, which shows just the torso of a woman lying on her back.

"The Orsay has a piece of the work ... and this face is another piece," said Fernier, who thinks Courbet cut the head off to protect the model, believed to be Irishwoman Joanna Hiffernan, erstwhile lover of the painter James Whistler.

Courbet, a leader of the Realist movement, is believed to have painted his most provocative work as a commission for Turkish-Egyptian diplomat Khalil-Bey, a flamboyant society figure who kept the canvas in his bathroom behind a green curtain.

"Khalil-Bey was not able to buy this piece because it wasn't possible to sell such an erotic painting at that period in time, it was unthinkable," Fernier told Reuters. "When Khalil-Bey bought (the Origin painting), Courbet removed the head."

John told Paris Match he had taken his painting to several experts before one told him she was convinced it was a Courbet.

That prompted him to study the painter and spot a similarity in tone with "l'Origine du Monde", on display at the Musee d'Orsay in Paris since 1995.

Being the matching head would give John's painting a value of some 40 million euros ($54 million), Paris Match said. He hoped to loan his painting to the Musee d'Orsay so the two could be displayed together, the magazine said.

French daily Le Figaro doubted the story, however, noting there was no recorded evidence that the Origin painting had been cut away from another and quoting other experts as skeptical of Fernier's theory.

The Musee d'Orsay declined to comment.

(Writing by Catherine Bremer; Editing by Robin Pomeroy)

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