Portrait of a girl may be Da Vinci portrait

October 14, 2009 09:08:02 AM

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A portrait of a girl belonging to a private collector may be a previously unrecognised work by Leonardo da Vinci, experts said Tuesday, after a fingerprint appeared to match that of the Italian master.

A Paris laboratory found the left-hand fingerprint on the work drawn in ink and chalk in January and established that it was "very similar" to one found on a da Vinci work in the Vatican, said laboratory director Jean Penicault.

The painting belongs to Canadian-born collector Peter Silverman and would conceivably be worth tens of millions of euros.

Penicault said the findings were submitted to art historian Martin Kemp from Oxford University and that he considered it to be the work of the Italian Renaissance master.

Kemp speculated that the profile of the young girl whose hair hangs in a long single braid could be the portrait of Bianca Sforza, daughter of the Ludivico Sforza, the 15th-century Duke of Milan.

The Lumiere Technology laboratory has been carrying out in-depth analysis since 2007 on the painting using carbon dating and infrared techniques to uncover the centuries-old fingerprint.

Silverman purchased the work a few years ago and was told it only dated back to the early 19th century.