Da Vinci’s Fingerprint

Mike G. on 12 10, 2009

I thought this was pretty cool…The fingerprints of the Italian mystic(which is an entirely different matter altogether) and scientist Leonardo da Vinci were found on ‘La Belle Principessa’ on October 14th. It’s cool because before all this, the profile potrait of a woman was thought to be created by a 19th century artist from Germany and two years ago was sold for $19,000.

But apparently, Leonardo da Vinci himself dispelled all the doubts regarding the creation of the painting by his fingerprint signature on it. The 13 x 10 inches work has got a fingerprint and a palm print on it. Peter Paul Biro, a Montreal based forensic arts expert, confirmed that the index or middle finger print matched with the fingerprint found on Leonardo’s St. Jerome in the Vatican.

The unsigned chalk, ink and pencil drawing of a lady’s profile bear distinct stylistic and technical evidence that it was created by the famous Florentine. Forensic experts have become sanguine after using carbon dating technique, that the painting belongs to Leonardo da Vinci and no one else. Art dealers have put a tentative price of 150 million USD on the Leonardo painting. The use of fingers and palms to smudge the paints was a well used technique of Leonardo da Vinci.

Biro used multi-spectral analysis method with the help of Lumiere Technology Laboratory in Paris to determine the exactness of the fingerprints. This method uses a special digital scanner to show successive layers of an artwork. Based on the style of the portrait, ‘The Beautiful Princess’ has been dated to 1485-1490, probably painted while he stayed in Milan from 1452 to 1519.

The curator of the Leonardo Museum of Vinci in Italy, Alessandro Vezzosi expressed his happiness at the findings. Vezzossi also said there are thousands of other lost works of Leonardo, “mainly pages from codexes or drawings.”

I read about this at http://EzineArticles.com/?expert=Dave_Vower