Fingerprint reveals Leonardo da Vinci as creator of $150 million artwork

TORONTO — A portrait of a woman thought to have been created by a 19th-century German artist and sold two years ago for about $19,000 is being attributed by art experts to Leonardo da Vinci and valued at more than $150 million.

The unsigned chalk, ink and pencil drawing, "La Bella Principessa," was matched to Leonardo via a technique more suited to a crime lab than an art studio: a fingerprint and palm print found on the 13 ½-inch by 10-inch work.

Peter Paul Biro, a Montreal-based forensic-art expert, said the print of an index or middle finger matched a fingerprint found on Leonardo's "St. Jerome" in the Vatican.

Technical, stylistic and material composition evidence — including carbon dating — had art experts believing as early as last year that they had found another work by the creator of the "Mona Lisa."

The discovery of the fingerprint has them convinced the work was by Leonardo.

Biro examined multispectral images of the drawing taken by the Lumiere Technology laboratory in Paris, which used a special digital scanner to show successive layers of the work.

"Leonardo used his hands liberally and frequently as part of his painting technique. His fingerprints are found on many of his works," Biro said.

Alessandro Vezzosi, director of a museum dedicated to Leonardo in the artist's hometown of Vinci, Italy, said Wednesday he was "very happy" to hear about the fingerprint analysis, saying it confirmed his own conclusion that the portrait can be attributed to Leonardo with "reasonable certainty."

"For me, it's extraordinary there is confirmation" through the fingerprint, although "it's not like I had any doubt," he said in a telephone interview.

Before the fingerprint discovery, Vezzosi said several experts agreed with his conclusion, based on "historical, artistic, stylistic (and) aesthetic" considerations.

Based on its style, the portrait has been dated to 1485-1490, placing it at a time Leonardo (1452-1519) was living in Milan.

Canadian-born art collector Peter Silverman bought "La Bella Principessa" — or "The Beautiful Princess" — at the gallery in New York on behalf of an anonymous Swiss collector in 2007 for about $19,000. New York art dealer Kate Ganz had owned it for about nine years after buying it at auction for a similar price.

One London art dealer said it could be worth more than $150 million.

If experts are correct, it will be the first major work by Leonardo to be identified in 100 years.

Ganz still doesn't believe it is a Leonardo.

"Nothing that I have seen or read in the past two years has changed my mind. I do not believe that this drawing is by Leonardo da Vinci," Ganz said Wednesday.

Silverman said he didn't expect Ganz to acknowledge it's a Leonardo because that would damage her credibility, adding that if she wants to "go against science and say the Earth is not round," then that's her prerogative.

"Thank God, we have the fingerprint because there will still be those doubting Thomases out there saying it couldn't possibly be and giving all sorts of reasons for it. We not only have a fingerprint, but a palm print."

He said the palm print was found in the neck of the portrait's subject, who is believed to be the daughter of a 15th-century Milanese duke.

Silverman said the Swiss collector first raised suspicions about the drawing, saying it didn't look like 19th-century artwork. When Silverman saw it at the Ganz gallery in 2007, he thought it might be a Leonardo, although the idea seemed far-fetched.

"Of course, you say, 'Come on, that's ridiculous. There's no such thing as a da Vinci floating around,' " Silverman said. "I started looking in the areas around da Vinci, and all the people who could have possibly done it and through elimination I came back to da Vinci."

Vezzosi said the portrait seemed to be of a prospective bride and compared its purpose to today's photos for matchmaking agencies.

As for the possibility of finding other Leonardo works, "there are thousands of lost works of Leonardo, mainly pages from codexes or drawings," Vezzosi said, but discovering a lost or undocumented painting would be "much more difficult."

Associated Press writer Frances D'Emilio in Rome contributed to this report.