La Bella Principessa.
Pisarek and allegations of forgery

Portrait of a young Lady by Leonardo da Vinci

After “Artibus et Historiae” declined to publish my response to Katarzyna Krzyzagórska-Pisarek’s article in Artibus et Historiae (XXXVI, 215, pp. 61– 89), it has been posted in up-dated form on the Art in Authentication website:

http://authenticationinart.org/aia-archive/aia-literature/ under the the title: Martin Kemp, Leonardo Da Vinci, La Bella Principessa: Errors, Misconceptions, And Allegations of Forgery, Oxford, 2016.

One of the big problems with the field of connoisseurship is that it often becomes overly personalised. It involves complex issues of perception and cognition that are quite malleable. We should be able to disagree in matters of fine judgement without impugning someone’s competence and integrity – unless of course their competence is not up to the job, in which case the demonstration of errors will be enough.

In my essay I have concentrated on criteria other than those of style and “eye”.
My other piece on the AiA website deals with the different kinds of evidence, and how they might be evaluated:

http://authenticationinart.org/pdf/papers/Science-and-judgment-by-eye-in-the-historical-identification-of-works-of-Art-Martin-Kemp3.pdf