La Bella Principessa
Portrait attributed to Leonardo da Vinci / From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
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La Bella Principessa (English: "The Beautiful Princess"), also known as Portrait of Bianca Sforza, Young Girl in Profile in Renaissance Dress and Portrait of a Young Fiancée, is a portrait in coloured chalks and ink, on vellum, of a young lady in fashionable costume and hairstyle of a Milanese of the 1490s.[1] Some scholars have attributed it to Leonardo da Vinci but the attribution and the work's authenticity have been disputed.[2] Supporters of the theory that it was by Leonardo have propositioned that Bianca Maria Sforza is the woman depicted in the drawing.
La Bella Principessa | |
---|---|
English: The Beautiful Princess | |
Artist | Uncertain. Disputed attribution to Leonardo da Vinci |
Year | 1495-6[upper-alpha 1] |
Type | Trois crayons (black, red and white chalk), heightened with pen and ink on vellum, laid on oak panel |
Subject | Bianca Sforza[upper-alpha 2] |
Dimensions | 33 cm × 23.9 cm (13 in × 9.4 in) |
Condition | Restored |
Owner | Private collection |
Some of those who disagree with the attribution to Leonardo believe the portrait is by an early 19th-century German artist imitating the style of the Italian Renaissance, although radiocarbon dating tests show a much earlier date for the vellum. It has also been denounced as a forgery. The white lead has been dated to be at least 225 years old. The work sold for just under $22,000 at auction in 1998, and was bought by its current owner Peter Silverman in 2007. He has championed the attribution to Leonardo, supported by the analysis of academics Martin Kemp and Pascal Cotte.
The drawing was shown as a Leonardo in an exhibition in Sweden in 2010 and was estimated by various newspaper reports to be worth more than $160 million. The Bella Principessa remains locked in a vault in a secret Swiss location.[3]
According to Kemp and Cotte, the sheet was cut from a Milanese vellum book, La Sforziada, in Warsaw, which celebrates the marriage in 1496 of Galeazzo Sanseverino with Bianca, the illegitimate daughter of Ludovico Sforza, Leonardo's employer.[4] It has subsequently been exhibited in Urbino, Monza and Nanjing; and a facsimile edition of the portrait and the book in Warsaw has been published.[5]