Art experts find a possible new Leonardo da Vinci

October 15th, 2009 - 10:43 pm ICT by Aishwarya Bhatt  

Toronto, Oct 15 (THAINDIAN NEWS) There is a great possibility that a new portrait by Leonardo da Vinci may have been discovered thanks to centuries-old fingerprint and palm print.

Peter Paul Biro, a Montreal-based forensic art expert, said that a fingerprint on what was presumed to be a 19th-century German drawing of a young woman has convinced art experts that it’s actually a Leonardo da Vinci creation.

Canadian-born art collector Peter Silverman bought “Profile of the Bella Principessa” at the Ganz gallery in New York on behalf of an anonymous Swiss collector in 2007 for about $19,000.

New York art dealer Kate Ganz had owned this painting, which is in the news, for more than a decade, after buying it at auction for a similar price.

Ganz doesn’t believe it is. “Nothing that I have seen or read in the past two years has changed my mind, I do not believe that this drawing is by Leonardo da Vinci,” Ganz told The Associated Press on Wednesday.

She declined to comment further.

“Leonardo used his hands liberally and frequently as part of his painting technique. His fingerprints are found on many of his works,” Biro said. “I was able to make use of multispectral images to make a little smudge a very readable fingerprint.”

“I would say it is priceless. There aren’t that many Leonardos in existence,” Biro said. He said he had heard that one London dealer felt it could be worth 100 million British pounds (more than $150 million).

One London art dealer now says it could be worth more than $150 million.

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