I am writing because I want to praise you for your stance against the authenticity of the Isleworth Mona Lisa, or “Younger Mona Lisa,” that has been much in the news lately.
First of all I should preface my letter
by stating that I am not an art historian, have never been an art
historian, and do not claim to know anything about art. I once read a
novel by Canadian author Robertson Davies titled What’s Bred in
the Bone that dealt with the topic of forging in the modern era.
I only mention it because this story feels like a real-life version
of the plot of that book.
The reason I write to you is because
despite the “scientific evidence,” almost nothing about this
story stands up to simple logic. First off, the Younger Mona Lisa is
sharper, clearer and more colorful than the original. Why would a
painting “10 years younger,” according to the expert consensus,
look sharper, clearer and more colorful than one painted 10 years
later? Then, as you yourself pointed out, the original lacks all of
the subtlety of the authentic da Vinci. The background is crude and
stands out in sharp relief, completely lacking the “blue shift”
that is supposed to accompany a landscape. The face has been
simplified and rounded, the lips have been reddened, the veil seems
to have been completely misunderstood, and aside from a superficial
resemblance, the copy completely fails to “capture the profound
elusiveness of the original”—as you yourself eloquently stated.
Most telling to me is a “horizontal
line comparison” diagram
(photo 4) that was put together by the people now pushing the copy’s
authenticity, more specifically, in its exact concordance with the da
Vinci original. This is the part that doesn’t stand up to logic: If
da Vinci indeed created two paintings more than 10 years apart, and
if he was no longer in possession of the earlier painting, wouldn’t
it be near impossible for him to duplicate the exact point-by-point
proportions of that first painting? Did the model sit for him a
second time, or did he duplicate it exactly from memory? And are
great artists generally in the habit of duplicating themselves—of
creating near-perfect copies of their own paintings? Wouldn’t his
“inner artist” have impelled him to improvise just a little?
This same argument also applies to the
Younger Mona Lisa’s concordance with the famous Raphael sketch
(which is on public display at the Louvre, and therefore available
for copying). I believe (again without knowing anything about art,
but only about human nature) that Raphael, in copying the Mona Lisa,
as an artist himself would have rendered his interpretation of
the great painting—and not a faithful replica, as your modern
scientist might expect. The fact that the Younger Mona Lisa concords
exactly with Raphael’s sketch, far from speaking to the painting’s
authenticity, again simply screams copy to me. Generally speaking,
when something is exactly like something else that came before it,
does that indicate an original or a copy?
Lastly, I would like to address the
mysterious circumstances in which the painting was discovered.
Reuters tell us that:
“It was discovered in 1913 by
collector Hugh Blaker—who had already made several art
discoveries—in a manor house in the west of England where it had
hung for a century unnoticed. How it got there is unknown.”
The BBC offers a similar but less
nuanced version:
“The painting was first discovered in
the Somerset home of an aristocrat, in 1913, by art collector Hugh
Blaker—who took it to his studio in Isleworth in south-west
London.”
A followup Reuters new article adds to
the description of the painting’s discovery:
“The ‘younger’ version first
surfaced in 1913 when British art connaisseur and painter Hugh Blaker
found it in a manor house in western England, recording that it had
been hanging there for about 150 years. For the next 20 years, it
hung in his home in the London suburb of Isleworth, so gaining its
name. But efforts by Blaker, who died in 1936, and subsequent owners
to convince the art world at large of its authenticity failed.”
To my mind, these descriptions harken
back to the plot of What’s Bred in the Bone. First and
foremost, the painting’s existence has not been documented beyond
Blaker’s “discovery” of it. From another BBC article we know
that Blaker’s sister once “lived with the art-collecting Davies
sisters in Powys,” and that Mr. Blaker was “best known as a
picture advisor to the sisters.”
Now, if a rare piece of
art was discovered by the person acting as adviser to the famous
Davies sisters, who would have been the first person to attest to the
painting’s authenticity? However, the story also mentions that
Blaker was never able to convince anyone of the painting’s
authenticity in his lifetime, and that it passed into his sister’s
possession upon his death. Which begs the question, why would the
Davies sisters have passed on the chance to own arguably the greatest
discovery of their lifetime?
What I’ve been implying, and will now
state explicitly, is that I believe any investigation into the
Younger Mona Lisa’s provenance should begin by looking directly
at Mr. Hugh Blaker. Perhaps an inquiry of this sort would lay the
matter to rest once and for all.
I would like to close by mentioning
another artifact that has been in the news this week, the piece of
ancient papyrus recently touted as evidence that Jesus was married.
American professors from Harvard and Princeton were among the
fragment’s most enthusiastic supporters, even while their European
counterparts showed themselves more skeptical. Earlier today, that
same piece of papyrus was dismissed as a “clumsy forgery” by the
Vatican.
In an earlier article (which I no longer have, so I will paraphrase
it) a statement by a more levelheaded person cautioned people to be
skeptical of any new discovery, but especially when
that discovery tells us exactly what we want to hear. While the
Isleworth Mona Lisa is evidently a lot more skillful than the ancient
papyrus, and while its great age (over 100 years by the most
conservative estimate) probably makes it increasingly difficult to
authenticate in matters of the craquelure and such, I believe the
very fact that a “second,” “earlier,” more authentic Mona
Lisa is an object of great desire should make us doubly, triply, a
hundredfold more cautious in accepting it as authentic.
Thank you for your time.
Sincerely,
Miron Huhulea
New York, NY
