Just a short update on that gorgeous drawing, which is gaining recognition as a Leonardo at the moment, and which I wrote about briefly earlier this year. If nothing else, it gives me an excuse once again to run a picture here.
Apparently, a forensic art analyst, Peter Paul Biro, has now found a fingerprint on it that he says corresponds with prints found on Leonardo’s unfinished Saint Jerome in the Vatican.
I don’t know. There are still too many mysteries attached to this sheet for me to quite buy it: unusual support (vellum), unusual technique (coloured chalks), no provenance, and even the slightly too spectacular prettiness. But many people who know much more about Leonardo than I, including Martin Kemp who’s quoted in the article, seem to concur, and it is an extraordinarily fine-looking work.