Maybe Leonardo is still hard at work? Better call Dan Brown
A new portrait by Leonardo da Vinci may have been discovered thanks to a centuries-old fingerprint. A Montreal-based forensic art expert says a fingerprint on what was previously understood to be a 19th-century German drawing of a young woman now seems to prove Da Vinci actually painted it. Canadian-born art collector Peter Silverman bought "Profile of the Bella Principessa" on behalf of a Swiss collector in 2007 for about $19,000. New York art dealer Kate Ganz had owned it previously. Now the work may be bounding up the money scale to more than $150 million. If the experts are correct, it will be the first major work painted by Leonardo to be identified in a century, but Ganz is unconvinced. “Nothing I have seen or read in the past two years has changed my mind. I do not believe this drawing is by Leonardo da Vinci,” she said.
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