Art Crime - My Final Assignment
Sotheby’s short course, Art Crime, Due Diligence Report
Image taken from: Jones, J. (2015, November 30). This is a Leonardo da Vinci? the gullible experts have been duped again | jonathan jones. The Guardian. Retrieved March 20, 2022, from https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2015/nov/30/leonardo-da-vinci-experts-painting-la-bella-principessa
The Head of a Young Girl in Profile to the Left in Renaissance Dress, Leonardo Da Vinci (attributed), c. 1495 - Report
Previously known as Young Girl in Profile in Renaissance Dress or Profile of a Young Fiancee.
La Bella Principessa (The Beautiful Princess), name given by Martin Kemp
Short description of the artwork
Girl in profile, dressed in renaissance (Milanese) garb. The original artwork was done on vellum. Various mediums were used in the execution of artwork: pen and ink combination of black, red and white chalk. 15th century Italian Renaissance art style. Suspected to be a forgery or an imitation due to the lack of fluidity found in Leonardo’s other works.
Provenance
No known provenance of artwork before 1950s in Marchig Collection, ownership of Giovanni Marchig.
Giannino Marchig inherited artwork from Giovanni Marchig
1998 - Jeanne Marchig (inherited painting from husband Giannino Marchig) sold to Kate Ganz in Christie’s auction house with the attribution ‘German school, early 19th century’, considered a pastiche at the time. (Price - in between USD 19,000 and USD 25,000)
2007 - Kate Ganz sold to Downey Holdings, a company with an address in the British Channel Island of Jersey, ended up in a vault in Switzerland. Purchase made under the guidance of Peter Silverman, Canadian Collector and Art Adviser. No change in attribution at the time of sale. (Sold for the same price as when bought in 1998)
Current evaluation: USD 150 million
Observations Made Based on Research (Reasoning for why ‘La Bella Principessa’ might not be a Leonardo)
Let’s begin with the latest extensive retrospective of Leonardo da Vinci exhibited in the Louvre in 2019, a commemoration of his life after 500 years of his death. An attempt to re-contextualise his life and work. The Louvre brought in Leonardos from all over the world, but there is no mention of La Bella Principessa anywhere. The locus is on Salvador Mundi, and the mystery that surrounds it (Rea, 2019) (Artnet News, 2019). It is perhaps a significant manner in which the art world has contested, and refused to accept the authenticity of La Bella Principessa as a Leonardo against Martin Kemp’s claims and research.
The artwork was refused by the National Gallery, London for their Leonardo retrospective in 2011 as well. (Noce, 2016)
The story of this work begins in 1998 when Jeanne Marchig (anonymous seller at that time) who had inherited the artwork from her husband Giannino Marchig, sold the painting through Christie’s to Kate Ganz. Who had later sold the painting to an anonymous rich buyer in Switzerland, through Peter Silverman. (Pisarek, 2015)
This is where the story gets interesting. One could even consider this a very interesting illustration of the state of the art market and it’s connoisseurship.
In March 2008, Silverman approached Martin Kemp, a leading scholar of Leonardo. During that time period Kemp was discerning, highly scrutinised all artwork submissions made to him. He had very few hopes of finding a Leonardo. Then he received this email from Silverman with La Bella Principessa, he claims to have felt a shiver of recognition. Upon closer inspection of the pixilated image, it seemed like the hatching was done by a left handed artist, thus the consideration of it being a Leonardo. He pondered, examined, pondered more, very aware of what could happen to his reputation if this attribution was wrong. Came to the conclusion that the sitter was Bianca Sforza, the Duke of Milan’s illegitimate daughter. Then in the fall of 2009, he announced to his colleagues and reporters that the artwork was a real Leonardo. (Grann, 2010)
There were quite a few art connoisseurs who agreed with Kemp, while there were prominent figures like Thomas Hoving and Carmen Bambach who disagreed with him. (Pisarek, 2015) (Grann, 2010)
The most prominent paper that argued Martin Kemp and Pascal Cotte’s research findings in the case of La Bella Principessa was Katarzyna Krzyzagorska-Pisarek’s ‘La Bella Principessa. Arguments against the Attribution to Leonardo.’
Pisarek argued that the style was vastly different from Leonardo’s signature style. The shading was not his signature approach, the outside shading was vastly different from his other works. The attention to detail that is customary to a Leonardo is just not present in the artwork (example: the knots in the sleeves of the sitter’s garb). The sitter being Bianca Giovanna Sforza doesn’t make sense, also there is no way we can verify this claim as there are no portraits made in Bianca Giovanna Sforza’s likeness. Pisarek suspects that Kemp’s choice was based on this fact as well. (Pisarek, 2015)
The Warsaw Sforzaid Hypothesis by which it is suspected that the painting was cut out from the luxury copy of the codex- which is a eulogistic history of Franceso Sforza -in Warsaw is also something that Pisarek questions extensively in her paper. Almost all questions posed are significant, one of them is the date and stylistic discrepancies specific to that time period, more specifically in relation to Leonardo’s stylistic growth. It just doesn’t make sense for Leonardo to be doing works with such rigidity or deadness observed a few decades prior. The argument that it might have been an expansion of his oeuvre makes no sense either. Leonardo wouldn’t want to put forth a work that was sub par, even if it was a new medium. It was his personality, his obsession with detail, it just wouldn’t let him. By this time Leonardo had also developed his own understanding of body proportions, which, again, does not reflect in the artwork. (Pisarek, 2015)
There is also another point brought up by Pisarek which is, if the painting was placed in the folio according to Kemp and Cotte’s estimation of page placement, it would have faced a page with text. The mediums used for the artwork aren’t ideal to be placed in a book like this. It just does’t seem plausible for it to have been placed in the codex. (Pisarek, 2015)
Before all of this, what makes one’s eye really twitch is that Giovanni Marchig had “great affinity with Italian Old Masters, their concept of beauty, and as reported, experienced an intimate communion with objects when restoring and studying them.” (Pisarek, 2015)
He also knew Bernard Berenson, a prominent American art expert and Roberto Longhi, famous art historian and connoisseur. It sounds strange to think that Berenson or Longhi would have never mentioned the artwork or it’s possible status of a Leonardo. (Pisarek, 2015)
What does seem more likely is that the artwork was made by Giovanni Marchig, an imitation of the Italian old masters. Especially because of his interest and reverence for Italian old masters’ works. On a piece of old vellum with no intention to pass it off as a Leonardo or any other artist’s. The carbon dating that Kemp provides as proof, Pisarek argues that Kemp’s precise reasoning is why this painting could be an imitation/forgery. There is also the fact that the artwork was done on the wrong side of the vellum. (Pisarek, 2015)
There was also a claim made by Sean Greenhalgh that he had forged the painting. That was mentioned in his memoir which doesn’t stand on futher scrutiny. (Referred to La Bella Principessa and the Warsaw Sforziad)
Kemp publishes a reply to Pisarek’s paper, ‘Leonardo da Vinci La Bella Principessa. Errors, Misconceptions, and Allegations of Forgery’, what is most fascinating is that it does not answer any questions that Pisarek puts forth as counter arguments. It feels more like a staunch denial for any other form of well stated arguments that goes against Kemp’s research. This sentiment is subtly alluded to, for the reader to discern, in Pisarek’s reply to Kemp’s reply ‘A Reply to Martin Kemp’s essay ‘Leonardo da Vinci La Bella Principessa. Errors, Misconceptions and Allegations of Forgery’.’
In Ulrich Baer’s paper, ‘Deep in the Archive,’ there is a theory that’s proposed for what comes out of the archive. The archive stores in abundance, when a researcher walks into the archive they might find evidence that is for, and against their theory. They can choose which evidence they would like to believe more (Baer, 2018T). There is a possibility that we subconsciously lean towards what proves what we want to prove.
All the research that was read in support of Martin Kemp in the preparation for this paper feels skewed. More subconsciously than consciously. For instance Alessandro Soranzo and Michelle New berry’s ‘The uncatchable smile in Leonardo da Vinci La Bella Principessa portrait,’ this paper focuses on the shifts in expression with distance, blur, the way in which the slant of the smile changes, the emotional change that can be felt with such manipulations. It feels like a gross reduction of Leonardo’s skill and oeuvre to just his way of painting smiles. The control painting used for the study also seems more in favour of La Bella Principessa.
Conclusion
It seems highly possible that this painting is not a Leonardo, thus suggesting against the purchase of it. The artwork’s authenticity is highly contested in the art market at the current moment.
In my personal opinion it does’t look like a Leonardo. It is possible that it is an imitation (not a forgery, there seems to be no intention to pass it off as anything more than it is by the Marchigs). The probability of it being a Leonardo and having no proper provenance before 1998 is astonishing and greatly confusing.
Note: For this paper Peter Paul Biro’s forensic finger print evidence is completely ignored because of ‘The Mark of A Masterpiece’ by David Grann and the deletion of Biro’s chapter in Martin Kemp’s book ‘La Bella Principessa: The Story of The New masterpiece by Leonardo da Vinci’ in subsequent prints.
Bibliography
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