Could There Be an Earlier Version of the Mona Lisa?
Could There Be an Earlier Version of the Mona Lisa?
Mona Lisa’s smile has enthralled visitors to the Louvre for generations but yesterday the focus shifted to Geneva, where a Swiss foundation unveiled what it said was an earlier version of Leonardo da Vinci’s masterpiece.
The work, known as the Isleworth Mona Lisa, was publicly exhibited by the Mona Lisa Foundation which claims that 35 years of research, numerous tests and mathematical comparisons have led experts to conclude that it predated the Louvre painting by 11 to 12 years.
Stanley Feldman, an art historian, whose book Mona Lisa: Leonardo’s earlier version was published yesterday, insisted that all the evidence suggests that the work was the first Mona Lisa.
“We have investigated this painting from every relevant angle and all the accumulated information points to it being an earlier version of La Giaconda in the Louvre,” he said.
The foundation, which has been working with the anonymous owners of the Isleworth Mona Lisa, claims that the younger Mona Lisa was probably painted around 1505.
The painting was discovered in 1913 by the collector Hugh Blaker who found it in a manor house in the west of England where it had hung unnoticed for a century. Mr Blaker took the painting back to his home in the London suburb of Isleworth.
When Mr Blaker died in 1936, the painting was bought by the American collector Henry Pulitzer. When he died in 1979, the painting was passed on to his Swiss business partner and on her death in 2010 it was bought by an international consortium.