Scientist and the Forger, the () by Jehane Ragai

Author:Jehane Ragai
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: World Scientific Publishing Company
Published: 2018-01-15T00:00:00+00:00

Fig. 52 The Prado Mona Lisa

A closer scrutiny of both paintings however showed that the copy was painted on walnut whereas the original was on poplar wood. This important difference led Bruno Mottin25 to suggest that Leonardo painted the Mona Lisa in 1503, probably on the only available wood at the time, which must have been the poplar, and it was therefore quite unlikely that he would work on this coarse wood with his copyist working in tandem on the finer walnut wood.

Gonzalez24 however attributes the high quality of the materials used in the Madrid painting (including walnut wood) to an important commission.

In spite of the very great similarities between both underdrawings, several details suggested that Leonardo and his copyist probably started to work at the same time with the copyist completing the work at a later stage;4,25 for instance in the original, the underdrawing showed a different position of the left hand clutching the armrest whereas the copy showed in the underdrawing the left hand in the same position as that observed in the finished original Mona Lisa.25 In addition, the columns and their bases (also a later addition in the finished Louvre Mona Lisa) are clearly discernible in the Prado underdrawing.4

A landscape with mountains very similar to that in the original painting was also observed beneath the black background. When conservators removed the black paint, a rich landscape was revealed giving clues as to what the landscape in the Louvre Mona Lisa (now covered by layers of dust and obscured by darkened varnish) must have looked like.26

Now if these two versions of Mona Lisa were to be authenticated, through scientific analysis alone, it would probably be difficult to identify the original through the sole consideration of the data collected on the pigments, the binding materials, the underdrawings and the wooden supports. One would expect the scientific investigation to reveal the same palette, a comparable craquelure, identical binding media, closely similar underpaintings and inconclusive results with regard to the supports. In cases like this one, the dry objective data would not on its own be sufficient.

As Byrne writes, only a competent expert eye could have captured some of the characteristic elements, belonging to Leonardo:

Like a criminal leaving clues, the painter wants us to identify him, a kind of Freudian slip, manifest in the individualized physiognomic details like ears, toes, fingers, particularly, conspicuous in the ‘spontaneous’ part of the artistic process.27

In this particular case, where science was unable to show decisively that the Prado Mona Lisa is not by Leonardo, only with connoisseurship and a well-trained eye can there be decisive discernment between the original and the copy. From the very outset, the expert would probably perceive in the original painting a decisiveness of execution which would expectedly be lacking in the copy. An evaluation of the technical method that pervades the artwork would then ensue and entail a close examination to name a few, of the brushwork, the colouring scheme and the interplay of the light and colour. More

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