User:Amandajm/Leonardo da Vinci, investigation, attribution and speculation

The Renaissance polymath Leonardo da Vinci (April 15, 1452 – May 2, 1519) is subject to ongoing speculation about his personal life, ideals and motives, as well as the content, meaning and scope of his works. The fascination with Leonardo appears to have begun within his own lifetime and was strengthened by the publication of his biography in Vasari's Lives in the 16th century. This article concerns recent theories about his life and works.

Leonardo has often been described as the archetype of the Renaissance man, whose unquenchable curiosity was equalled only by his powers of invention. He is widely considered to be one of the greatest painters of all time and perhaps the most diversely talented person ever to have lived. His art works include Mona Lisa, The Last Supper and his iconic drawing of the Vitruvian Man. Leonardo is also revered for his technological ingenuity, with models of many of his inventions displayed at museums across the world.

According to art historian Helen Gardner, the scope and depth of his interests were without precedent and "his mind and personality seem to us superhuman, the man himself mysterious and remote". Marco Rosci points out, however, that while there is much speculation about Leonardo, his vision of the world is essentially logical rather than mysterious, and that the empirical methods he employed were unusual for his time. Both these aspects of Leonardo are reflected in the plethora of theories and investigations that surround every aspect of his life and work, which range from the sensational, to the fanciful, to the scientific.

Leonardo as an Arab
In 2006, Luigi Capasso, director of the Anthropology Research Institute at Chieti University stated that experts at the institute had determined that fingerprint analysis suggested that Leonardo's mother was of Middle-Eastern origin as a feature found on one of the fingertips was common to 60% of the Arabic population. The idea that Leonardo's mother could have been a slave who came to Tuscany from Constantinople — now Istanbul, Turkey has also been the object of documentary research.

Leonardo and the Priory of Sion
In the novel The Da Vinci Code by Dan Brown (2003), Leonardo da Vinci is cited as a member of a secret society called the Priory of Sion, a society which (in the context of the novel) exists to preserve the truth that Jesus was married to Mary Magdalene and that their line of descendants continues. In the preface of the book, Brown makes the claim: ''FACT: The Priory of Sion, a European secret society founded in 1099, is a real organization. In 1975 Paris's Bibliothèque Nationale discovered parchments known as "Les Dossiers Secrets", identifying numerous members of the Priory of Sion, including Sir Isaac Newton, Sandro Botticelli, Victor Hugo and Leonardo da Vinci.''

"Les Dossiers Secrets" had been introduced into the Bibliothèque Nationale in 1967 by Pierre Plantard who had the help of Philippe de Chérisey in creating the parchments, and of Gérard de Sède in developing the idea of the Priory of Sion. De Sède also published, beginning in 1967, several books claiming that other information about the Priory of Sion had been discovered elsewhere in France.

The mysterious Mona Lisa
Study and speculation concerning Leonardo's best kown portrait, the Mona Lisa range from scholarly attempts to ascertain the identity of the sitter, known in Italy as La Gioconda (the joking one), to attempts to prove that she is Leonardo's gay lover, otherwise his youthful companion Salai, in drag. Clear evidence has been discovered that she was Lisa Gherardini, wife of Francesco del Giocondo, making her indeed "la Gioconda" and accounting for the smile, which Leonardo possibly used as a symbol of the name, just as he used a juniper bush (ginevra) behing the head in a portrait of a young lady presume to be Ginevra de Benci.

Sigmund Freud theorised that Leonardo's repressed relationship with his mother Caterina caused him later to paint her face as the Mona Lisa. This theory has been elaborated on in further writings, including a novel. Recently a claim has been made that tiny letters have been painted in the eyes of the portrait, the symbolic initials of the names of Leonardo and his mother.

In a novel "The Romance of Leonardo da Vinci" by Dmitri Merejcovski, it is suggested that Leonardo imbues the portrait with his own inner sentiments to the extent that it represents a synthesis of artist and model. Other writers have taken this in a much more literal manner and attempted to prove by various means that the Mona Lisa is in fact a portrait of the artist himself. In an attempt to prove this, a request has been made to exhume Leonardo's body.

Until recent years most speculation about this painting has been focussed on the fact that there are a large number of early copies. It has been suggested that one of these copies, rather than that in the Louvre Museum, is the "original" and that the present painting is perhaps a second version by the artist.

Holy Family
This tondo painting of the Holy Family in the Borghese Gallery, showing the Virgin Mary and Joseph adoring the Infant Christ has earlier been attributed to several Renaissance painters including Domenico Ghirlandaio, Lorenzo di Credi and Raphael. Since 1926 it has been more solidly attributed to Fra Bartolomeo. A cleaning by restorer Elizabetta Zatti revealed a fingerprint, which sparked a theory, published in 2005. In the stated belief that "that Leonardo is known to have deliberately left fingerprints hidden in some of his works as a kind of signature", images of the fingerprint were sent to Poland for comparison with a fingerprint discovered in the painting of the Lady with an Ermine. Further news on this attribution has not been forthcoming. (Contrary to the "signatory" nature of such fingerprints, Leonardo is known to have used his fingers to smooth and blur paint, particularly to create his famous "sfumato". Many of Leonardo's students and imitators adopted the master's techniques.)

Repentant Magdalene
This work shows a semi-nude female figure, draped in a red cloak and a gauze veil, standing against a distant landscape which occupies the upper quarter of the picture. The figure has her head turned and eyes averted to the left. She draws the gauze veil over her lower torso, whilst clasping in her left hand a portion of the cloak, folded to resemble a vulva. The painting has been previously regarded as the work of Giampietrino whose works consists mainly of semi-nude figures of Biblical and historical women, including Mary Magdalene, Cleopatra and Lucrezia. In 2007, the painting, described as a "Repentant Magdalene", was attributed to Leonardo da Vinci by Carlo Pedretti, who suggested that it was by the master, perhaps with the hand of the assistant, rather than the other way around. Carlo Pedretti's attribution of this painting is not accepted by other scholars. Carlo Bertelli, (former director of the Brera Art Gallery in Milan), who said this painting is not by Leonardo and that the subject was perhaps not the Magdalene, but be a Lucretia with the knife removed.

Christ carrying the Cross
This painting was attributed by Sotheby's to Gian Francesco Maineri, who painted a number of such scenes with the figure of Christ similarly positioned. A similar image, without the tormentors, is in the Hermitage Museum, St Petersburg. The painting was purchased by a US businessman in 2003 and attributed, by its owner, to Leonardo da Vinci. The attribution is based on the similarity of the tormentors to drawings made by Rubens of the Battle of Anghiari. According to Forbes Magazine, Leonardo expert Carlo Pedretti said that he knew of three similar paintings and that "All four paintings, he believed, were likely the work of Leonardo's studio assistants and perhaps even the master himself."

La Bella Principessa
This was attributed to Leonardo by Martin Kemp.

The Lucan portrait of Leonardo da Vinci
The work was formally attributed to Leonardo by Leonardo specialist Professor Peter Hohenstatt for the Sorrento City Council's investigation in 2009.

The Voynich Manuscript
The Voynich Manuscript is a manuscript of 200 pages, dating from the late 15th century, written in a script which has never been deciphered and illustrated with pictures depicting quaint female figures, fanciful botanical specimens and charts relating to astronomy. It was discovered at a Jesuit Monastery in Northern Italy in 1912 and is now in the Beinecke Rare Book Library of Yale University. It has been suggested by Edith Sherwood that the book was authored by Leonardo while he was still a child.