"Prado copy proves Mona Lisa was painted later"
March 15 2012
Picture: Museo Prado/Royal Collection
The latest theory spinning off from the Prado's much-hyped copy of the Mona Lisa is that it proves Leonardo finished the original much later than thought, possibly up to 1519. He began it in 1503. This is because, say specialists at the Prado, infra-red images of a part of the background in the copy relate to a drawing of rocks by Leonardo in the Royal Collection, which is dated on stylistic grounds to 1510-15. From The Art Newspaper:
When the Prado copy was being studied, infrared images revealed that a section of the original design for the rocks beneath the paint surface had been based on a drawing now in the Royal Collection. Martin Clayton, the senior curator at the Windsor print room, dates the drawing to 1510-15 on stylistic grounds.
The Prado copy of the Mona Lisa was worked on side by side with the Louvre painting, so this connection has important implications for the dating of Leonardo’s original.
Louvre specialists went back to photographs taken of the original Mona Lisa in 2004. They realised that the design for part of the rocks on the right side in the Prado copy also appears in the underdrawing of the original, in a blurred form. This can just be made out in an emissiograph, an image made using an x-ray technique.
I must say, I don't like conclusions based on images that 'can just be made out' in x-rays. Anyway, have a look for yourself at the images, and see if you can spot the compelling similarities between the rocks in the Royal Collection drawing, and the rocks in the under-drawing in the Prado copy. No - I can't either. They look vaguely similar, that's all.
So it seems we're back to over-interpretation of the infra-red images again. Incidentally, if the Mona Lisa really was painted over a much longer period than previously believed, doesn't that make it less likely that the Prado's copy was painted alongside it? I can't quite get my head round the concept of Leonardo beginning a painting in 1503, and then having some student sit alongside him, in different countries, following him slavishly till as late as 1519. It doesn't make any sense. And who was this long-suffering student of whom we have never heard?
