A copy of the famous Mona Lisa by Leonardo da Vinci, painted around the year 1600 on an oak panel and of a quality deemed "exceptional", will be auctioned in Paris on November 9 by Artcurial, after having been exhibited at Vienna and Brussels.
This reproduction, rediscovered six months ago during a family inventory in the vicinity of Paris, is estimated between 150,000 and 200,000 euros, but the craze for the star icon of the Louvre could raise the stakes.
In June, a 17th-century copy, the controversial Mona Lisa Hekking, soared to 2.9 million euros.
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The same finesse of the features, the same ambiguous smile, the same velvety outline thanks to the fade (the famous “sfumato”) popularized by Leonardo da Vinci. In the replica exhibited at the end of October in Brussels before being shipped to Paris, the anonymous artist perfectly imitated the face of the original Mona Lisa.
"It is not uncommon to see a copy of the Mona Lisa, but this one is in a wonderful state of preservation and above all it was painted on oak panel",
while the other copies are mainly on canvas, underlines the auctioneer Matthieu Fournier. Above all, a century after the creation of the original masterpiece (1503-1506), the artist
"has completely imbued himself with the master's style, which is extremely touching"
, unlike other paintings. where copyists
"put their foot down and betray the time of execution"
, he continues.
If we do not know its author, the copy is attributed to "the School of Fontainebleau", a group of painters active in the 16th century around the castle of Fontainebleau, near Paris, where the work of Leonardo da Vinci was exhibited between the reign of François 1st and that of Louis XIV.
"A moving testimony on the state of the Mona Lisa in the 16th century
"
“This painting is so faithful that it was necessarily done in front of the original. He shows us what the Mona Lisa was when the copy was made ”
, with
“ very clear colors ”
, observes Matthieu Fournier. The copyist was to be
“in the very environment where the Mona Lisa acquired by François I was then kept: in Fontainebleau. The talented painters belonging to what has been called the Second School of Fontainebleau still gravitated there under the reign of Henri IV
”.
However, the panel exhibited today at the Louvre
"is extremely yellow with a misty caramel varnish"
, and very difficult to restore due to the technique used of multiple layers of glaze: the copy sold by Artcurial therefore offers
" a moving testimony to the state of the Mona Lisa in the 16th century, unfortunately altered since then ”.
The care taken in this reproduction also proves “
the major importance of the acquisition carried out by François Ier - well before the revival of celebrity which will bring the theft of which it will be the object at the beginning of the XXth century - and the immediate fascination exercised by this immortal smile on the painters of his adopted kingdom
”
.
Some details nevertheless betray the imitation: a background decoration drawn with ample strokes, much less worked and detailed than that of Leonardo da Vinci, large ostensible columns framing the Mona Lisa while they are thin and almost invisible in the original, or a different touch in the fabrics of the dress.
The painting will be visible from Friday 5 to Monday 8 November in the premises of Artcurial in Paris, at the Rond-Point des Champs-Élysées, before its auction.