Sensational discovery in Rome: found a second Mona Lisa which could be by Leonardo Da Vinci
In a deposit in Montecitorio, seat of the Chamber of Deputies, a painting was found very similar to the famous Mona Lisa by Leonardo Da Vinci and which, according to experts, could have been painted by the Tuscan genius himself or by his students.
An extraordinary discovery that could rewrite the history of one of the most famous pictorial works in the world, the one that took place in Rome in 2019 and made known in these last hours, as told by the newspaper La Repubblica.
In a depot of Montecitorio, seat of the Chamber of Deputies, a painting was found very similar to the famous Mona Lisa by Leonardo Da Vinci and which, according to experts, could have been painted by the Tuscan genius himself or by his students under his supervision.
The link between this work and Leonardo was revealed by the commissioner of the Chamber, Francesco D’Uva. This is a copy of the painting in the Louvre made by Leonardo’s workshop, perhaps even with the same collaboration as him the exponent of the Five Star Movement explains to Repubblica. The painting will now be kept in the Aldo Moro room of the Chamber: the Chamber of Deputies is the right place, it receives over 200,000 visitors a year, including more than 60,000 students.
On the Chamber’s website there is a detailed description of the work with lots of images. The work, we read, arrived in the National Gallery in 1892 from the Torlonia collection, in whose inventories it is documented starting from 1814, as a copy of Leonardo da Vinci’s Mona Lisa. Giuseppe Antonio Guattani, drafter of the Torlonia inventory of 1817-1821, had attributed the painting to Bernardino Luini, a reference later omitted in the successful inventories of the Roman collection.
The work is mentioned, still in the nineteenth century, in a commentary on the 1851 edition of Vasari’s Lives, together with other copies derived from the famous Leonardo masterpiece: “in Florence in the Mozzi house; in the Madrid Museum; in the Villa Sommariva on Lake Como; at the Torlonia in Rome; in London at Abraham Hume, and at Woodburn; and in the Hermitage in Petersburg and finally another copy in the Munich Picture Gallery.
Unfortunately, the previous material events of the painting are still substantially unknown, which was transferred to canvas, perhaps in France in the second half of the 18th century, as the handwriting of a sheet of paper glued to the frame would suggest, written in French, which explicitly mentions the operation of transporting the painting.
Equally uncertain is the identity of the copyist, and even his generic geographical and chronological location, nor, in this sense, is the direct comparative analysis with Leonardo’s original of great help, since it is a copy that aspires to diligently replicate his model.
After the scrupulous cleaning and restoration carried out in 2019, the canvas of the National Galleries still allows us to appreciate not only the faithful adherence of the design to the prototype – more pronounced than other known copies of the Mona Lisa today – but also a series of details that can perhaps helping to shed light on the long and troubled genesis of Leonardo’s famous table, still not entirely clear, as well as on the history of its early and successful reception.
In particular, the drafting of the landscape in the background, the cut of the frame and certain details in the rendering of the clothing, such as the lace protruding from the neckline of the dress, may suggest that the unknown painter had the opportunity to study and replicate the original in different and probably more legible conditions than those in which it appears today.
