Leonardo strikes again!

The Washington Post has given ink to rumors that a previously-unknown painting by Leonardo da Vinci has turned up in Boston.

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.)

The reference goes to the portrait of Ginevra de' Benci, which is really two pictures in one, since there's a design on the reverse of the panel. Incidentally, the bottom third of Ginny was cut off at some point -- no-one knows when or why.

But is she really the only Leonardo in the country? The National Gallery has another work in its collection, the Dreyfus Madonna (or the Madonna with a Pomegranite) which many have attributed, at least in part, to the young Leonardo. The drawing is awkward, but the glazing is superb. These days, the National Gallery credits the work to Lorenzo di Credi, though others still favor Leonardo.

There are a few other claimed American Leonardos. In a previous post, I recounted the strange tale of the Lansdowne Madonna, sometimes called the Redford Madonna, a second version of the Madonna of the Spindle which was stolen from its Scottish home a few years back. (It was recovered.)

A few years back, I asked an official at the National Gallery how they can defend their claim that Ginevra is the only American Leonardo, since it has long been known that a wealthy personage in the U.S. had purchased the Lansdowne for $150 million. All I heard was sputtering.

What was not generally known until recently was the identity of that wealthy personage. One of my readers solved the mystery: The current owner is, almost certainly, Stavros Niarchos, the Greek shipping heir. For reasons best known to himself, he keeps his Leonardo on private display. I guess it's the sort of thing that impresses girls. That means Paris Hilton and Lindsay Lohan can see Baby Jesus and his Mother, and you can't.

("You own your own Leonardo? That's hawt!")

Until experts get a Lindsay-eyed view of the thing, they can't be certain that Leonardo painted it. I think he did. I like the mountains in the Lansdowne/Redford/Niarchos better than I like the background in the Scottish version.

So what might the new Boston painting be?

The "big fish" among the lost Leonardos is the Salvator Mundi, which is known from his drawings. Many fully-painted copies of this work exist, but the only one which exactly matches the drawings is owned by the Marquis de Ganay, who believes it to be by the master himself. That work has undergone extensive repainting in sections, but I still have reason to believe that it is the real deal.

If the new Boston piece is a Salvator Mundi, I'll probably be able to tell within a couple of hours of seeing a reproduction whether or not it is a copy. Yes, that's a large claim. No, I won't tell you how I'll know. Not yet.