Since the 1920s a debate over the attribution of “Portrait of a Woman Called ‘La Belle Ferronnière,’ ” has been the stuff of legal dramas and scientific analysis, aesthetic disputes and connoisseurship differences.
This artwork, not a Leonardo, has made a name for itself.
Initially some scholars believed that the painting, which depicts a woman whose penetrating eyes cast a sideways, almost spooky glance at the viewer, was the work of Leonardo da Vinci. It was, they said, the second version of a painting of the same subject that is in the permanent collection of the Louvre. Other experts, including the notorious art dealer Joseph Duveen, dismissed the canvas as a fake without ever having seen it, claiming, “The picture is a copy, hundreds of which have been made of this and other Leonardo subjects and offered in the market as genuine.”
Today 21st-century technology has dashed any hope that the painting is Leonardo’s work, but its appearance at Sotheby’s, where it is being sold on Jan. 28, has once again raised many unanswered questions, chief among them: Who painted the portrait and when? And how much will a collector pay to own a portrait that comes with a history of controversy as well as vestiges of that old Leonardo magic, no matter how misplaced?
“This picture is not by Leonardo, I’m certain of that,” said George Wachter, director of Sotheby’s old master paintings department worldwide. “But he is such a potent name that there are people who want to touch anything that has to do with him.”
That it is a pretty, well-painted picture coupled with its celebrity and association with Leonardo is thought to add to its value, Mr. Wachter said. Sotheby’s estimates that it could bring $300,000 to $500,000.
The story of how the painting got from Kansas City, Mo., in the early 20th century to Sotheby’s today begins in 1919 with the marriage of a car salesman from the Midwest named Harry Hahn to a young Frenchwoman, Andrée Lardoux.
Mrs. Hahn’s godmother, Louise de Montaut, gave the painting to the couple as a wedding present. At the time the work was thought to have been by Leonardo. Even so, the couple soon decided to sell it to the Kansas City Art Institute for at least $250,000.
When a reporter from The New York World got wind of the transaction, he telephoned Duveen. It was 1 in the morning, and a sleepy Duveen answered. When asked what he thought of the portrait, he instantly pronounced it a fake. His hasty response set off a much-publicized legal battle between the Hahns and Duveen.
“The whole saga is unbelievably strange but it’s true,” said John Brewer, author of “The American Leonardo,” a book that was published last year and chronicles the history of the painting.
The case went to trial in New York Supreme Court on Feb. 6, 1929, and according to “The American Leonardo,” it was a media zoo, with reporters and members of the public lining up each morning to get into the courtroom. On Duveen’s side were experts who argued that the painting was a fake, while the dealer himself said his opinion “was formed by my study of all the great pictures of the world.” The Hahns tried to prove their point with their own battery of experts and with what scientific tools were available at the time. But the case ended in a hung jury, and Duveen finally settled out of court, paying the Hahns $60,000 in damages.
Last year the Hahns’ daughter, Jacqueline, curious about the painting that has been so much a part of her family history, took it to the J. Paul Getty Museum in Los Angeles so conservators and experts could examine it.
Scott J. Schaefer, curator of paintings at the Getty, said the painting he had read so much about — a three-quarters profile of a woman thought to be Lucrezia Crivelli, a mistress of Ludovico Sforza, the duke of Milan — was not what he expected when it was unwrapped. “It was so much better than we thought,” Mr. Schaefer recalled. “This wasn’t just some copy of a painting but a skillful interpretation.”
Yet scientific analysis did not provide the answers he had anticipated. “When I looked at it, I thought it dated from about 1820 to 1830,” he said. Many experts thought it could have been the work of a French neo-Classical painter like Ingres. “But science disappointed us,” Mr. Schaefer said.
For starters, while the Louvre painting is on panel, this painting was on canvas. Poplar panel was a typical material for late 14th-century Florentine portraits like this one was thought to have been, while canvas was a material that became more common later. Studies also showed that the canvas was primed with a double red pigment that was typical of French paintings from the late 17th century to the late 19th century. Pigment analysis also revealed the use of lead-tin yellow, a color employed in the 17th century that reappeared again only in paintings dating from the mid-20th century.
These findings suggest that the “Portrait of a Woman Called ‘La Belle Ferronnière’ ” was probably painted before 1750. “After that it would have been hard to believe that lead-tin yellow would have been used because the formula for it was lost,” Mr. Wachter said.
When learning about the pigments, Mr. Schaefer said, “suddenly I had to rethink things. It has to have been painted earlier than I imagined.” Still, he said, the mystery of the portrait only adds to its romance: “It’s still a conundrum.”