2023-10-23 10:07:46
French collectors bought a painting online this year without knowing its history, and French and Italian experts have just authenticated it as a masterpiece by the Italian Renaissance painter and architect Raphael. dates from his meeting with Leonardo da Vinci around 1505.
“When I saw it for the first time in a photo on the internet, this Saint Mary Magdalene immediately captivated me,” one of the collectors, who requested anonymity, told AFP.
They bought it from a London gallery for 30,000 pounds sterling (about 34,500 euros). “When she arrived, seeing her was even more moving, even though she was very dirty,” she recalls.
Thinking that it was a painting from the school of Leonardo da Vinci, he requested the opinion of Annalisa Di Mariaa member of the UNESCO group of experts in Florence (Italy), who authenticated the work in September.
This reassignment “does not change its spiritual beauty in any way,” adds this thirty-year-old, a collector like his father, who wants to share the “exceptional” discovery with the general public by entrusting it to a museum.
The experts’ conclusions were published by the specialized magazine ‘ISTE, Open Science, Arts et Sciences’whose editorial board includes Philippe Walterdirector of the French National Center for Scientific Research and former director of the Louvre laboratory.
After countless analyses, including the visualization using infrared light of the layers of carbon hidden by the paint pigments, the painting could be attributed to RafaelFrench name of Raffaello Sanzio (1483-1520), explains Di Maria.
These analyses, “based on the latest advances in science, revealed the ‘regrets‘, that is, the readjustments carried out by the painter until the final version of the work. Also his technique of ‘dusting‘, the transfer of a drawing from a first support to the final support,’ as with Da Vinci’s Mona Lisa, the expert details.
Two other versions of the Magdalene were catalogued, one of them is attributed to Perugino, teacher and later collaborator of Raphael.
The one painted by Raphael on a poplar panel in a 46 x 33 cm format is “of great mastery and incredible finesse of execution that, added to the scientific elements, testify that the portrait comes from this genius,” Di Maria emphasizes.
Influence of Da Vinci
The searches in Florence city archives They also allowed us to trace the origin of the painting that “was considered lost”according to the specialist.
Before its purchase by French collectors, “it belonged to a private collection in the north of England and ended up at a small auction, where the London gallery acquired it thinking that it was a painting from the school of Leonardo da Vinci,” details Nathalie Popis, specialist in applied mathematics in Renaissance art.
This discovery “shows the influence of Leonardo da Vinci (1452-1519) on Raphaelwho emancipated himself from Perugino’s art at the time of their encounter and adopted his ‘sfumato’ technique, the superposition of very thin layers of translucent monochromatic enamels, the experts add.
Perugino’s exhibition
Your model is probably Chiara Fancelliwife of Perugino, to whom the Magdalena found in the Pitti Palace in Florence is attributed.
«Another version, whose attribution is yet to be determined, is found in the Borghese villa in Rome. There are no records until 1693, when numerous copies were circulating,” continues Popis, who carried out comparative studies of the saint’s face together with Jean Charles Pomerol, member of the Paris scientific committee and former president of the Parisian university Pierre et Marie Curie.
None of the experts interviewed by AFP wanted to estimate the value of the recovered Magdalena.
Before the publication of the study and without providing counter-expertise elements, its attribution to Raphael was contested by some sources in Italy, among them the president of the Academy Raffaello d’Urbino (another name attributed to Raphael, according to his hometown), who They consider that it is “surely a prototype of the Perugino”, according to the Arts Journal.
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