THE REAL MONA LISA?

Prado museum finds Leonardo da Vinci pupil's take

A  copy of the world's most famous painting has been discovered by conservators at the Prado in Madrid, allowing us to see the Mona Lisa as she would probably have looked in the 16th century
 Research presented to a recent symposium at the National Gallery suggests the painting was made by a copyist in Leonardo's studio at precisely the same time he was painting the original.
The newly discovered work offers a much fresher version of the enigmatic, captivating young sitter, generally acknowledged to be Lisa Gherardini, wife of the Florentine cloth merchant Francesco del Giocondo.
The story was broken by the The Art Newspaper yesterday, somewhat spoiling the Prado's intention to release the news to the world later this month when conservation was complete.
The work has been in restoration for several months in preparation for an exhibition at the Louvre [entitled Leonardo's Last Masterpiece: The Sainte Anne]. The conservation process has not been finished. The finished painting is going to be presented at the Prado in about three weeks.
At a press conference in Madrid on Wednesday Gabriele Finaldi, the Prado's deputy director collections, said: "It is as if we were in the same studio, standing at the next easel. You can imagine that this is what the Mona Lisa looked like back in the 16th century."
Miguel Falomir, the Prado's director for Italian painting, said the copy gives art lovers and experts a chance "to admire the Mona Lisa with totally different eyes".
He and Finaldi said the museum's best guess was that the copy was done by an apprentice named Francesco Melzi, because of the style observed in it.
Besides the black background, one other difference from the original is the woman in the copy has eyebrows and the Mona Lisa in the real masterpiece does not.
Prado conservators removed the painting's dingy, black background to find – to their astonishment – a Tuscan landscape similar to that in the true Mona Lisa. The Art Newspaper's Martin Bailey, who saw images of the painting with 90% of the overpainting removed, said the discovery could transform our understanding of the original painting.