Montecitorio, is the Gioconda Torlonia really Leonardo’s?

Is it or is it not Leonardo’s? The debate among art experts is heated over a copy of the Mona Lisa, kept in the Chamber of Deputies. Is called Gioconda Torlonia, measuring 70 centimeters by 50, it was probably made in the sixteenth century, transported from table to canvas in the eighteenth century, kept for a long time in France and then inventoried – from 1814 – in the Torlonia collection in Rome and arrived at the National Gallery of Ancient Art in 1892 The next step was the delivery to Montecitorio in 1927.

This is where the commissioner Francesco D’Uva (M5S), which supports Leonardo’s authenticity, has brought it to the fore. The work was in his office, but he wanted to move it to the Aldo Moro room precisely to make it more visible. “It is a copy of the painting in the Louvre made by Leonardo’s workshop, perhaps even with his own collaboration,” said D’Uva.

Even art historians Antonio and Maria Forcellino are convinced of the preciousness of the Gioconda Torlonia, whose quality they described in nine pages of the catalog of the 2019 Roman exhibition on Leonardo in Rome. The historical official of Alessandro Cosma, in the card that appeared in the same catalog, writes that the copy, which is only one of the many existing, “takes up many details in a precise manner” of the original. More cautious Rossella Vodretformer superintendent of Rome, who in 2005, listing the painting, had classified it “Not very high quality”. According to the art historian Claudio Strinati it is “plausible” that it may be a work of Leonardo’s workshop, but «in my opinion it is a painting of medium quality that does not seem to denote the imprint of an excellent hand of Leonardo».

The critic Vittorio Sgarbi, on the other hand, rejected the work without appeal, which dismisses it as “a modest painting of furniture”. “Not the shadow, but Leonardo’s nightmare,” writes the deputy in a note. “Everything that he deserved to be returned to museums has been in recent decades through a commission that I have led.”

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And again: “Leonardo’s copy, painted at least 70 years after his death, it has no artistic value and indicates only the fortune of the work, like the innumerable copies of great masters ».

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Source: Vanity Fair

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