MILAN — Assertions that an eminent scholar had authenticated a portrait by Leonardo da Vinci tantalized art lovers with the prospect of a new masterpiece and inflated a backroom bidding war worth tens of millions of euros.
But Carlo Pedretti, long-time director of the Leonardo center at the University of California, Los Angeles, said Wednesday that he drew no such conclusion.
“I never attributed this painting to Leonardo,” Pedretti told The Associated Press by telephone from Tuscany. “I only said it merited more study.”
The oil-on-canvas painting of noblewoman Isabella D’Este was seized this week in Switzerland under an Italian probe into whether the painting had been illegally expatriated. Financial police said in a release announcing the seizure on Tuesday that the work had been attributed to Leonardo by Pedretti — an assertion also made in an Italian magazine cover story in 2013 that tantalized Leonardo admirers with the possibility of a new masterpiece.