Collector says he's found another Leonardo
A Canadian art collector credited last year with discovering a previously unknown drawing by Leonardo da Vinci believes he may have found another piece of artwork -- a 520-year-old sculpted scene depicting the beheading of John the Baptist -- with a figure created by the Italian Renaissance master.
Just six months after Peter Silverman garnered global attention over his re-identification of La Bella Principessa as a Leonardo drawing -- boosting the value of the chalk-and-ink portrait of a young woman from $19,000 to an estimated $150 million -- the Montrealborn art connoisseur told Canwest News Service that experts are now seriously examining his proposed re-attribution to Leonardo of a young man holding a tray in the martyrdom scene, a clay sculpture created by a 15th-century artists' workshop for the baptism area of a Florence church.
The terracotta bas-relief is being displayed this month -- alongside La Bella Principessa -- at a Renaissance art exhibition in Sweden, where Silverman's tentative claim about Leonardo's "youth with a tray" is being scrutinized by scholars.
"The decision to include this very recently 'rediscovered' bas-relief in the exhibition might be controversial and perhaps premature," states the curators' catalogue to the newly opened Renaissance art exhibit in Gothenburg, Sweden. "We decided to throw caution to the winds, regarding the show as a suitable moment and optimal forum to present the work both to the general public and to scholars."
The clay sculpture is generally believed to have been produced in the renowned Florentine studio of Andrea del Verrocchio, who mentored the young Leonardo da Vinci and other artists in the 1470s as they polished their skills as sculptors and painters.
Made from terracotta -- a hardened clay that is often used by sculptors to create models for larger metal works -- the 42-centimetre-wide beheading scene was produced to guide the creation of the full-scale silver bas-relief decorating a church baptistery in Florence.
Last year, U.S. art historian Gary Radke proposed that two of the figures in the silver version of the sculpture -- including the young male holding a tray on the far left -- were created by Leonardo.
Silverman, who had acquired the clay model of the scene at a 1995 auction in London for about $6,000, immediately began seeking expert opinion on whether Leonardo may also have been involved in the creating the terracotta piece -- which is missing several elements but still has the tray-holder intact.
"It would seem to be reasonable to assume that if the silver piece was partly due to Leonardo, the terracotta -- being a final study for the silver relief -- would be the original model," says Silverman, who collaborates in his art purchases with an unidentified Swiss collector.
"It seems that the attribution is being received quite favour-ably and is being endorsed by some top art historians," he says.
The art world first became aware of the clay sculpture in the 1890s, when it was in the possession of an Austro-Hungarian diplomat. The piece was previously sold in 1926 at an auction in Austria.
The Antiques Trade Gazette, a U.S.-based art publication that revealed the Principessa discovery last fall, topped a recent article about the terracotta sculpture with the headline: "Has Silverman found another Leonardo?"
Allessandro Vezzosi, a Leonardo expert who helped build the case for the Italian master's authorship of La Bella Principessa, writes in the Swedish exhibition catalogue that the skill exhibited in the crafting of the clay figure "raises a number of questions and enables the formulation of some intriguing hypotheses."
He argues that "on the basis of recent scientific analyses" of the terracotta sculpture -- and from details of its creation seen in high-resolution images by the Paris-based art-photography firm Lumiere Technology -- "the issue of its authorship can and must newly be addressed and clarified."
Leonardo "is often praised as a sculptor, yet to this day, no work exists that has been assigned to him with certainty," Vezzosi says. "Leonardo's hand may indeed be imagined" at work in the sculpting of the young male figure.
