considerably over a century, having been purchased in Italy, with other paintings, by an ancestor as an original masterpiece of Leonardo's, and it had hung for a hundred years in his old Manor house in Somerset. The great beauty, the highly artistic and the supreme technical qualities, with the ineffable calm and the golden glow of the Isleworth masterpiece, stamp it at once as the work of the great master, while its age is contemporaneous. It is not, in any way, a copy, even from Leonardo's own studio, for the pose of the head, several minor details, and the whole unfinished background, are different from the accepted version in the Louvre, while the picture itself is larger.
Here I can do no better than quote some extracts from an article in the 'New York Times' of February 15, 1914, which was written by the well-known impartial art critic and expert, Mr. P. G. Konody, who, expecting to find one of the numerous copies, after a long and close examination of the painting, described it in the following terms: —
- 'An exceptionally interesting version of the Mona Lisa has recently turned up at Isleworth, London. Let it be said at once the picture in question has nothing whatever to do with any of the innumerable early or late French copies which have from time to time been boomed into prominence. It is not only vastly superior to all of them, but it is of such superb quality that it more than holds its own when compared with the much-restored and repainted Louvre masterpiece. What is even more significant is that it is in no sense of the word a " copy," but varies in some very important points from the Paris Mona Lisa. The design is altogether different. There is far more background; the spacing is infinitely more pleasing; the head is inclined at a different angle; the background is quite different and far less assertive than in the Paris picture; the features are more delicate, and, let it be boldly stated, far more pleasing and beautiful than in the Louvre version.
- 'But there are more potent reasons to attach the greatest importance to the new discovery. There is in the collection of the old master drawings at the Louvre an original pen drawing by Raphael, which is reproduced in Müntz's great work on Leonardo, and which is generally admitted to be a memory sketch by Raphael of Leonardo's Mona Lisa. Now this memory sketch is framed at both sides by two columns, of which no trace is to be found in the Paris Mona Lisa. These columns appear in the identical place in the Isleworth picture and are of immense value to the harmonious balance of the composition. . . . However, no specious
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