A Second Mona Lisa?

Challenges of attribution and authentication and various possibilities for evaluating a work of art

Salvatore Lorusso, Andrea Natali, Jean-Pierre Isbouts, John Asmus, Vadim Parfenov, Salvatore Lorusso, Andrea Natali

• Publisher: L'Erma di Bretschneider
• Year: 2021
• eBook ISBN:
  9788891321572
• Topic: Art
• Subtopic: Art General

The topic of attribution and authentication of art works is a well-known one and is currently the subject of heated debate. To arrive at a univocal scientific truth, however, it is necessary to integrate historico-humanistic and technical-experimental skills with a subjective and objective evaluation. The first part of the volume deals with experimentation relating to three valuable artifacts of different material composition: a painting, a sculpture, a codex. The second part of the research regards the emblematic case of the Mona Lisa and its uniqueness. The question connected to this study is: "Is there a second Mona Lisa?" Is the Isleworth Mona Lisa, also known as the Earlier Mona Lisa, a second version of the Louvre Mona Lisa painted by the Renaissance genius Leonardo da Vinci? In order to provide an answer regarding attribution, a methodological path was applied to the painting on canvas "Mona Lisa with columns" (St. Petersburg), establishing that it was a copy, albeit a well-executed one. Numerous versions and copies of the Mona Lisa were also studied, basing their examination on the in-depth archival-bibliographic research of the many paintings on the same subject. The findings highlighted the distinction between two authentic versions by Leonardo, i.e. the Louvre Mona Lisa and the Isleworth Mona Lisa and two copies, i.e. the Prado and the Reynolds Mona Lisas. The latter two, considered to be the most complete and qualitatively better that many others are, in fact, either copies of previous Mona Lisas or of the two authentic versions. The final considerations are dedicated to the chronological sequence of historical sources, stylistic and aesthetic analyses, artistic techniques and experimental investigations to prove the authentication of the Isleworth Mona Lisa by Leonardo. Salvatore Lorusso is a former full Professor of the University of Bologna. He is a Foreign Member of the Russian Academy of Natural Sciences; Emeritus Professor of the Cultural Heritage Institute of Zhejiang University, China; former Visiting Professor of the Academy of Social Science of Zhejiang University, China; Visiting Professor of the Faculty of Arts, Lomonosov Moscow State University, Russia; former Vice-president and now, a Councilor of the Società Italiana per il Progresso delle Scienze (SIPS-established in 1839). Direttore Generale of the Accademia della Cultura Enogastronomica. His biography appears in the 2016 Marquis Edition of Who's Who in the World. He is the founder and director of two book series relating to the specific issues pertaining to the sector of cultural and environmental heritage. He is the author of over 430 publications in national and international journals and of 22 volumes and monographs covering commodity science, cultural heritage and environment. In 1997, he founded the Diagnostic Laboratory for Cultural Heritage at the Ravenna Campus of the University of Bologna and remained head of the Laboratory for eighteen years. In 2001, he founded and is Editor-in-Chief of the historical-technical Journal "Conservation Science in Cultural Heritage". His scientific work deals mainly with the study of the "system-artifact-environment-biota" and diagnostic, analytical, technical and economic evaluation within the context of the protection and valorization of cultural and environmental heritage. Andrea Natali carries out research, teaching and consulting activities in the field of "Conservation of Cultural Heritage". He graduated in "Conservation of cultural heritage" at the University of Tuscia; he has received two research grants from the Department of Cultural Heritage of the University of Bologna; has a Master in "Community Narrators" from the University of Tuscia (Viterbo). He is the owner of the company, Andrea Natali "Conservazione Beni Culturali".