Mona Lisa copy - it was painted by Leonardo's lover??
March 1 2012
Picture: Prado
The speculation on this is just going to run and run. Here's the latest headline from The Art Newspaper:
"Leonardo’s lover probably painted the Prado’s Mona Lisa"
How do we get to this news-tastic conclusion on the basis of hard-to-interpret infra-red imagery - and no other evidence whatsoever?
Here's the reasoning:
In attempting to identify the copyist, curators at the Prado began by eliminating pupils and associates such as Boltraffio, Marco d’Oggiono and Ambrogio de Predis—since they each have their own individual styles. They also eliminated two Spanish followers of Leonardo, Fernando Yáñez and Fernando de Llanos, whose work is distinctively Valencian.
Miguel Falomir, the head of Italian paintings at the Prado, now believes that the copy of the Mona Lisa “can be stylistically located in a Milanese context close to Salaì or possibly Francesco Melzi”. Melzi was an assistant who joined Leonardo’s studio in around 1507, but the Prado’s copy may well have been started earlier. Of the two, Salaì now seems the most likely.
So it's by a process of elimination. Boltraffio, d'Oggiono and da Predis must be ruled out because they are far superior painters than the hand responsible for the Prado's copy. Presumably the same goes for Yáñez and Llanos. Melzi only joins Leonardo after he began the Mona Lisa, so that's him out. And we're left with Salai, for whom, perhaps conveniently, we have very few firmly attributable works for comparison. I'm not sure about this...
