A Newly Discovered da Vinci????

Sarah Kaufman of the Washington Post writes about rumors which are circulating about the Museum of Fine Art, Boston and a potential painting being attributed to Leonardo da Vinci. As there is only one other da Vinci in the US, at the National Gallery (purchased in 1967 for $5 million, and at the time the highest price paid for a work of art) the story becomes one of interest as we start the new year.

Kaufman contacted several curators at the MFA Boston with standard statements of no comment on potential purchases or items being considered or studied by the museum. It will be interesting to see if the story turns out to be true or not, and the authentication steps taken on the painting.  If it exists.

Kaufman states

At this point, we have only a tantalizing mystery -- perhaps the unspooling of a new Da Vinci code -- dangling on the slender thread of secrets and a handful of clues that emerged this week:

-- The Washington Post receives a tip from a source who wishes to remain anonymous that the Museum of Fine Arts, Boston, has in its possession a painting believed to be by the Italian master, and is in the process of authenticating it. Were it deemed a true Leonardo, such a painting would be only the second one in all the Americas. (The first hangs here, in the National Gallery of Art.)

-- We put a call in to Frederick Ilchman, the Boston museum's Renaissance curator. Does he have such a painting? "Can't tell you anything about it, sorry," he says, before hanging up. (Do we detect a yes in that click?)

-- We try Katie Getchell, the museum's curatorial deputy director, who says through a spokeswoman: "We don't comment on works that the MFA may be studying or considering for acquisition." Asked if this meant that the MFA is, in fact, studying a possible da Vinci painting for purchase, spokeswoman Dawn Griffin says she can say nothing more.

-- We ask Renaissance painting expert Miguel Falomir Faus if he knows anything about the painting. He tells us in an e-mail that he had lunch Tuesday with New York University art history professor Alex Nagel in New York, "and he talked [to] me about the new da Vinci." Faus adds, however, "I have not seen the work (I don't even know its subject)."

-- Nagel, for his part, further stirs the pot with his own e-mail to us: "How can I comment on a painting I haven't seen? Do you have a photo?"

To read the full Washington Post article, click HERE.