View of the exhibition 'Leonardo and the copy of the Mona Lisa.
New approaches to the practice of the Vinciano workshop. 'Eduardo Parra / Europa Press
The news unleashed, almost a decade ago now, a real electric shock. In February 2012, the Prado Museum unveiled an unexpected find around a monolithic, practically immovable figure: that of the genius Leonardo. After restoring and analyzing the copy of the
Mona Lisa
that rested in his warehouses (and that, at some time, he had also exhibited in the room) he came to the sensational conclusion that what until then they considered another version, a piece of little importance, it was actually a unique painting. An invaluable document. It is, in fact, the oldest surviving copy, a version of
La
Gioconda
executed by a disciple of the Vinciano workshop not a posteriori, but, at least for a time, simultaneously with the master. By his side. With its the same procedures and corrections.
Ten years after that revelation, scientific and historiographic advances have made it possible to expand what was already known and to strengthen what was taken for granted with respect to that painting, cataloged with the number 504, which landed in the Prado with the Royal Collections - It has been inventoried since 1666— and of which a landscape was already revealed with the restoration of 2012 without the characteristic
Leonardesco
sfumato
under the layer of black paint that hid it. Among the recent findings, the attribution to the same author, whose name remains unspecified, of two other copies of paintings by Da Vinci stands out: the "Ganay version" of the
Salvator Mundi
(named after its owner, the Marquis de Ganay).
and the
Santa Ana
from the Hammer Museum.
This and other information is now made available to the public in the
Leonardo
“dossier exhibition”
and the copy of Mona Lisa.
New approaches to the practice of the Vinciano workshop
, open until January 23, 2022.
The Mona Lisa del Prado, after its restoration in 2021, when the black background that covered it was erased.Otero Herranz
The attribution to a member of Leonardo's workshop, carried out a decade ago now, arose almost by chance. The Louvre was going to hold a large exhibition on Da Vinci and borrowed its copy of the
Mona Lisa
from the Prado
. A curator of the Parisian museum asked researcher Ana González Mozo, senior museum technician in the technical documentation office, if the piece had been studied. That's where it all started. What followed is rewriting the history (of art). During this time, González Mozo, who would curate the exhibition, has continued to study the panel with a question on the horizon: "What have we learned from —and with— this work?"
The expert responds. To begin with, “very specific practices have been contextualized: making copies in Leonardo's workshop”. Busy in a thousand companies and a perfectionist to the bone, the teacher did not always find time to paint. So his disciples did it for him. In front of the stigmatized vision that we have today of the copy, in the hinge between the fifteenth and sixteenth centuries in which we find ourselves it was, however, a noble task. Depending on the occasion, as González Mozo points out, the pupils were based on drawings and cartoons or, as in the case of the
Mona Lisa in
the Prado, they were giving the brushstrokes behind the teacher. "That is why we know that [the person who copied the painting] was a very close painter, who must have spent many years with him," says the researcher.
Ganay version of the 'Salvator Mundi', attributed to Leonardo's disciple. @ Mat.LOMBARD
The “great advances in image analysis devices”, together with the exhibitions on Leonardo hosted at the Louvre in 2012 and 2019 (the latter framed in the Leonardo Year, which commemorated the 500th anniversary of his death) have contributed to accelerating the research, facilitating conclusions such as that the Madrid copy of the
Mona Lisa
arose from the same hand as the Ganay version of the
Salvator Mundi
and the
Santa Ana
housed in the Hammer Museum in Los Angeles.
This triple authorship reinforces the conviction that he was a close collaborator of Leonardo, given that the copies that the master commissioned him correspond, as González Mozo points out, to some of “his most precious works”. Whether his name was that of one of the two disciples with whom there has been the most speculation - Francesco Melzi and Andrea Salai, who would become Leonardo's lover - is something that is unknown at the moment. “We continue investigating, but that is not the objective. What interests us is to know the processes ”, answers González Mozo. “The sure thing is that he was someone very close, but Leonardo had many students and we know the names of very few. We will have to wait to find out his identity ”.
If something is taken for granted in the Prado, it is that Da Vinci did not participate in the realization of this painting.
"We didn't see it then and we don't see it now," acknowledges the museum's director, Miguel Falomir, who in 2012, when the first finds around the copy of the
Mona Lisa were presented
, held the position of chief of Italian painting at the Renaissance.
"There were media from all over the world at the press conference, the busiest I remember," he recalls.
Everyone wants news of Leonardo, and there would be nothing “more tempting” than to reveal that the Florentine intervened in this work.
"But it is not the case," ditch Falomir.
'Leda with the swan', tempera on panel made from Leonardo da Vinci (1510-20).
Da Vinci did not caress this walnut panel with his brushes, but some of its hallmarks do emerge from the execution of the work. For example, the distinctive red line with which he outlined the eyes of the characters in his drawings (although not in his paintings). "We have also detected gestures of the author in small details of the
Mona Lisa
that he made an effort to hide because Leonardo said that the painting must be a reflection of nature, not the hand of the painter", González Mozo abounds. In addition, these 10 years have given to deepen the study of colored bases, used to modify the color of the layers, a procedure whose origin lies in the impossibility of mixing certain colors with binders such as eggs.
Beyond the technical specificities, the investigations around the
Mona Lisa
del Prado serve to shed light on the practices not only of the Vincian workshop, but of the generality of the Italian workshops in the transition from the 15th to the 16th century.
The importance of the idea as a motor of artistic practice, typically Renaissance, and the tension between the concepts of original and copy, whose function varied according to the commission, are superimposed on Leonardo's renewed vision as a teacher.
"The data do not make sense if we do not put them in relation to the work", summarizes González Mozo.
“We must emphasize the importance of a teacher who teaches to look.
And Leonardo was ”.
The shadow of the 'Salvator Mundi'
At the end of 2011, the National Gallery in London collected nine of the 15 paintings attributed to Leonardo in its blockbuster 'Painter at the Court of Milan'. Along with drawings, sketches and documents, the show included a work that had appeared a few years earlier in a second-rate antiquarian in New Orleans, which the museum attributed not without controversy to the artist: the 'Salvator Mundi'. After a tour of several cities, in 2017 the painting was sold by auction to an unknown bidder for a record amount of 450 million dollars. To this day, his whereabouts are unknown. Despite its attempts to display it at its 2019 exhibition, not even the Louvre has managed to remove it from wherever it may be.Whether the attribution of the Ganay version to the Florentine's disciple will be able to provide new information on this painting and its authorship is something that, at the moment, González Mozo says, it is not possible to assess.