La Belle Ferronière (Portrait of a Woman Called La Belle Ferronière) - Provavelmente Pintado por um Seguidor de Leonardo da Vinci
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OST - 55x43 - Após 1750
This striking
and (in)famous portrait is another version of a composition in the Louvre,
thought to depict Lucrezia Crivelli, a mistress of Ludovico Sforza, the Duke of
Milan. Depicting a lady in three-quarters profile, the sitter in the
present painting is seated behind a stone balustrade that is only just
suggested by the strip of gray paint at the bottom. The woman gazes out
of the canvas, while a slight smile is just suggested by the upturned corners
of her mouth. Her hair is parted down the center and pulled back, and she
wears as jeweled headband across her forehead. The sitter's pale, milky
skin is offset by the rich red gown and green ribbons she wears, and the
square, embroidered neckline of her gown is complimented by her delicate
necklace.
Although the attributions of both the present painting and the work in the
Louvre have in the past been the subject of debate between experts and
scholars, it is today typically agreed that the Louvre version is either by
Leonardo himself or one of his pupils, while the present version is thought to
be a later copy. The history of these judgments, however, is not nearly
as straightforward as the above would seem to imply. On the
contrary, the history of the present painting is intertwined with the fields of
connoisseurship and art history as they emerged and asserted themselves in the
early part of the 20th century. The story of La Belle Ferronnière is as
much about the aesthetic and scientific foundations of modern art history as it
is about the authenticity of the painting itself.
This Belle Ferronnière was
brought to the United States in 1920 by newlyweds Harry and Andrée Hahn.
Harry, an American serviceman during World War I, had met and married a young
French woman named Andrée Lardoux. With the war over, Harry returned home
to Kansas City with his new bride and this picture, a wedding gift from
Andrée's godmother, Louise de Montaut. Shortly after their arrival in the
U.S., the Hahns decided to sell their picture, contacting several dealers on
the East Coast as well as local dealers in Kansas City. Later, they
claimed to have nearly reached a deal with the Kansas City Museum for $250,000,
when a reporter at the New York
World, who had heard that a woman in Kansas City was trying to sell
a Leonardo, telephoned the famed art dealer Sir Joseph Duveen in London to ask
his opinion on the painting. It was 1AM on the morning of 17 June 1920
when Duveen answered his phone. The art dealer had never seen the Hahn's
picture, but nevertheless he told the reporter that it must be a copy and that
the real work was in the Louvre. Although he couldn't know it at the
time, this seemingly routine telephone call would unleash a decade long legal
battle that brought not only Duveen himself, but also the very foundations of
connoisseurship, under trial.
In November 1921, the Hahns served papers on Duveen at his gallery in New
York City. He was being sued for slander, for as the Hahns claimed, his
comments to the press had not only been false, but also had been purposely
calculated to drive them and their picture from the market. Duveen
rallied a host of art experts to his side, including Bernard Berenson, Wilhelm
Valentiner and Roger Fry, who all unanimously agreed that the Hahns' picture
was a copy. He even orchestrated - at his own expense - a confrontation
between the Louvre's and Hahns' pictures in Paris. There too, the
unanimity of opinion between the various art experts was almost unheard of in
the history of connoisseurship: the Louvre's picture was the original,
while the Hahn's was a later copy. Duveen could sense his victory in the
courtroom.
But as the trial began, it became clear that the jury was not on his side.
The average American had little patience for a group of "experts" who
could not provide one bit of hard, factual evidence that the work was a copy,
and who, when asked to explain how they had reached their conclusions about the
pictures, were reduced to vague statements about the superiority of their
"eyes." The Hahns' lawyer saw his opportunity: while
Duveen's counsel was attempting to show how unified this disparate group of
experts was in their opinions on the Hahns' picture, the Hahns' lawyer began to
poke holes in this unified front by questioning the experts on their opinions
of the Louvre picture. Many had written articles in the past claiming
that it too was a copy. If, he asked the jury, the experts had changed
their opinions of the Louvre painting, what was to say that their current
opinions of Hahns' picture might not also change? In 1929, with no
scientific or archival evidence to back up the testimony of Duveen's experts,
the jury could not reach a decision, and the case ended in a hung jury. Duveen
ultimately settled out of court, paying the Hahns $60,000 in
damages.
This settlement did little to change the market's opinion of the
authenticity of the Hahns' picture. Duveen continued to dominate the
international art market, and the picture was locked away in a bank vault in
New York during the Depression and World War II. In 1947 Harry Hahn
published a book, The Rape
of La Belle, which blasted the art establishment for its treatment
of the picture, and which claimed to conclusively prove that it was by
Leonardo. The book coincided with renewed efforts to sell the picture,
both in the United States and abroad. Some of these attempts included
figures from the art world, such as the renowned conservator Helmut Ruhemann,
who opined that the Hahn painting was, in fact, a Leonardo, and the
controversial promoter of pictology, Maurits van Dantzig. However, it all
came to nothing and the work disappeared from public view.
In 1993, La Belle Ferronnière was
examined by Leonardo expert Professor Martin Kemp. While Kemp did not
think that the painting was a Leonardo, he did believe that it had age, dating
it to the first half of the 17th century. He also suggested an
attribution to a northern European painter, perhaps Laurent de la Hyre.
Recent technical examination of the painting has revealed compelling new
evidence about the genesis of the picture, much of which supports Kemp's
theory. As noted, while the Louvre example is painted on poplar panel,
the expected and typical support for a late quattrocento Florentine portrait, the Hahn picture
is painted on canvas, a material which became more common in the
following centuries. Indeed, the priming layer on the canvas is a double
red pigment, common in French pictures from the late 17th to the early 19th centuries.
Pigment analysis has also suggested a date ante quem for the picture. Most compelling
is the use of lead-tin yellow, a color which was employed by artists from very
early and up until the late 17th century. After that time, however,
it began to be replaced on the artist's palette by other yellows, such as
Naples yellow and ochre, and the formula for lead-tin yellow itself was
eventually lost and appears to have disappeared by the early nineteenth
century. It was not until 1941 that scientists were able to isolate the
composition of the compound, and in particular the presence of tin, which
separated it from other yellow pigments. These features, then, would suggest
that the Hahn Belle Ferronnière was
most likely painted by a French artist (or an artist using French materials) in
the years up to about 1700/50, after which time some of the pigments
used would have become obsolete, unavailable or forgotten. It is
important to remember, however, that technological advances are currently
improving our knowledge of artists' materials, and it is possible that future investigations
will yield new information on the use of this and other pigments. Such
findings are enticing, for they suggest that La Belle Ferronnière may finally emerge not only
from the shadow of Leonardo da Vinci, but also from close to a century of
controversy and critical neglect, to be understood on its own terms.
Um retrato que
acreditava-se ter sido pintado por Leonardo da Vinci foi vendido por mais de
1,5 milhão de dólares em Nova York nesta quinta-feira, cerca de três vezes o
preço máximo estimado antes do leilão.
A casa de
leilões Sotheby’s disse que outra versão do retrato, “La Belle Ferronniere”,
está no Louvre em Paris e essa é a obra que hoje é reconhecida como tendo sido
pintada pelo próprio Da Vinci ou por um de seus alunos, enquanto a pintura
vendida em Nova York era uma cópia posterior.
Acredita-se
que o retrato seja de Lucrezia Crivelli que era a amante de Ludovico Sforza, o
duque de Milão, e foi pintado em alguma época antes de 1750 por um discípulo do
mestre renascentista.
Mas por mais
de 80 anos a identidade do artista estava em disputa e a controversa obra foi
tema de um julgamento de difamação nos anos 1920, e de dois livros publicados.
“A história de
‘La Belle Ferroniere’ é tanto sobre os fundamentos estéticos e científicos da
história da arte moderna quanto sobre a autenticidade da obra em si”, dizia uma
nota no catálogo da Sotheby’s.
Em seu site na
Internet, a Sotheby’s informou que a o retrato, de artista desconhecido, foi
vendido por 1,538 milhão de dólares, comparado a estimativas de 300 mil a 500
mil dólares. Não foram dadas informações sobre o comprador.
“La Belle
Ferronniere”, foi levado aos EUA nos anos 1920 pelo norte-americano Harry Kahn
e sua esposa francesa Andree, que receberam a obra como presente de casamento.
Acreditava-se
que fora pintada por Da Vinci e foi autenticada por um especialista francês.
Mas quando
Kahn tentou vender a obra no Instituto de Arte na Cidade de Kansas, EUA, por
250 mil dólares, Joseph Duveen, um grande comerciante de artes em Londres,
disse a um repórter que tinha certeza de que era falsificado.
O incidente
iniciou uma longa batalha que colocou em dúvida a legitimidade de Duveen mas
também as fundações dos especialistas em arte, segundo a Sotheby’s.
