Is This A New Leonardo Da Vinci?
As Christie’s aggressively marketed Leonardo da Vinci’s Salvator Mundi before the work sold for an astonishing $450m last November, the art world raged anew with questions about the painting’s attribution—even though London’s National Gallery had largely settled the debate by including the work in its 2011-12 Leonardo show. This spring, the Worcester Art Museum (WAM) in Massachusetts will put the complex process of identifying a Leonardo at the heart of a new exhibition. The Mystery of Worcester’s Leonardo (10 March-3 June) makes the case that a work that has been in the museum’s collection since 1940, A Miracle of Saint Donatus of Arezzo, pictured (around 1479-85), should be credited to the Renaissance master.
