And on the anniversary of Leonardo's passing, here's the twist: a new portrait of the genius pops up

There could be no shortage of twists and turns on the 500th anniversary of Leonardo da Vinci’s death (the great Renaissance genius died in Amboise on May 2, 1519): the newspaper The Art Newspaper gives news of the “discovery” of a second portrait of Leonardo, kept in the Royal Collection, which would thus be added to the only known portrait, the one attributed to Francesco Melzi (Milan, 1491 - Vaprio d’Adda, 1570) and also kept in the collections of the British royals in Windsor. Although it is not actually a real discovery: the sheet was already known, but no one had identified it with a portrait by Leonardo (only Kenneth Clark, in 1935, had opened to the hypothesis, but without elaborating on it).

The drawing depicts the profile of a man with a beard and is among Leonardo’s folios preserved in British collections. The work will go on display for the first time from May 24 at Buckingham Palace, where a show entitled Leonardo da Vinci: a Life in Drawing, a major exhibition that will present two hundred Leonardo drawings from the Royal Collection to the public, is already scheduled to run until October 13.

The “rediscovered” portrait will be compared with one attributed to Francesco Melzi. Art historian Martin Clayton, a specialist in Leonardo’s drawings and head of drawings and prints at the Royal Collection Trust, said that “it is hard not to think that this is an image of Leonardo, drawn quickly by a pupil while Leonardo was in France in the last years of his life.” Clayton retrieved the drawing during his research for the Buckingham Palace exhibition, and he thinks it is a portrait of Leonardo because the figure is very similar to the one drawn by Francesco Melzi in the only known portrait, and also, an added detail, it does not contrast with the descriptions of Leonardo’s contemporaries, who present him to us as a fine-looking, handsome man.

Also appearing alongside the probable portrait of Leonardo are a study of a horse’s leg (possibly by Leonardo’s own hand) and a portrait of a young man, perhaps the same pupil who drew the other portrait. “An image of Leonardo made while he was alive, at any given time,” Clayton suggests, “is not of great importance as a work of art in itself, but it is extremely important, even moving, as a testimony to the man.”

Pictured: the sheet with the “new” portrait of Leonardo da Vinci.

And on the anniversary of Leonardo's passing, here's the twist: a new portrait of the genius pops up

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