- Welcome, everyone. Good evening, my name is Priya Natarajan. I'm an astrophysicist and
I'm the current Director of the Franke Program in
Science and the Humanities. We are delighted to host
today's event that represents the confluence, literally,
of Art and Science. We will see a wonderful
story unfold on screen, the story of "The Lost
Leonardo", and we have the absolute pleasure of the protagonist, the artist and conservator
Professor Dianne Modestini in the audience with us today, and she will be speaking
at the end of the showing of this documentary, and we'll
have a wonderful conversation and Q&A from all of you. And we are also delighted
following the documentary to have one of our own Dr. Irma Passeri, who will be joining this discussion. Before I start, I would like
to thank our benefactors, Mr. and Mrs. Richard and Barbara Franke, for making possible not just this flagship
interdisciplinary program at Yale, but many other events and activities that cross-disciplinary boundaries and enable new innovative
conversations across silos in the academic setting. I'm required to give you this notice that this event is being
recorded, photographed for educational, archival,
and promotional purposes, including use in print on
the internet, and other forms of media by attending this event today, you agree to the possibility of your voice or likeness captured
by these means and used for such purposes without
compensation to you, and hereby waive any related
rights of privacy or publicity. So, I also want to remind
you, following the event, we will have a reception
upstairs in the Student Lounge, Room 131, immediately afterward. So, on to today's wonderful
speaker, Dianne Dwyer Modestini. She's a Clinical Professor
in the Kress Program in Paintings and Conservation Emerita at NYU's Institute of Fine Arts. She's an internationally
renowned conservator of master and 19th-Century paintings. She received a BA in Art
History from Barnard in 1968. After graduation, she
spent a year in Florence where she studied Drawing at the Academia de Bella Arte in Italian. In later years, she was to
return often to this beloved city where in 1996, she began and directed the Restoration Program
at the Villa La Pietra. She's on the Board of the Foundation Roberto
Longhi in Florence. she obtained an MA and a
Certificate of Advanced Study in Art Conservation from the
State University of New York. She was appointed the Assistant
Conservator of paintings at the Metropolitan Museum of
Art, where she was responsible for the collection of American
paintings in the preparation of the reopening of the American Wing. Ms. Modestini was engaged by
the Samuel Kress Foundation in 1983 to undertake
a comprehensive survey of Kress paintings that had been donated to 18 museums around the
United States in 1961 under the Foundation's
Regional Gallery Program. In the late 1980s, she initiated
a pilot class combining the results of her ongoing survey of the disbursed Kress collection, and her new role as an educator. The success of the class led to the launch of the Samuel H Kress Program in paintings and conservation in 1989. The purpose of it, I want
to tell you a little bit about this program because
it's incredibly unique. The purpose of the Kress
Program is to provide students with an opportunity to complete
the study and restoration of a painting under the
guidance of Ms. Modestini. Assisted by a Kress fellow, a
young professional conservator in the context of an
advanced treatment class. And this is, what is in
store as a treat for those of us science geeks as well who love art, and are science geeks. With the progress of instrumental analysis in the burgeoning interest
in the study of materials and techniques amongst art historians, the course has expanded to
include many technical topics, including the Study of
polarized light microscopy and cross-sectional
analysis of paint samples to identify pigments and
non-destructive identification of their constituents
with X-ray fluorescence, and SCM/EDS imaging with the ultraviolet digital X-ray radiography, infrared reflectography, and multi-band reflectography
are also employed. In May 2017, Ms. Modestini
received a Doctor of Humane Letters, Honorees
Kaza from Fairfield University. Her book "Masterpieces"
on the "Life and Work of Mario Modestini" was published in 2018. So, this introduction was
just to give you a sense of the incredibly illustrious career that Professor Modestini
has had, and put for you in the context what you are going to see in this absolutely wonderful documentary where very much like a
scientist she uncovered. She had this moment of discovery. So, I'm dying to ask her more about this when we are done with the film, but, so I invite you all to
enjoy watching this film, and staying for the panel
discussion afterward. Okay, so I would like to
invite Dianne and Irma for the panel discussion but before that, let me give you a brief
introduction to Irma, who is our Susan Morse
Hilles Chief Conservator at the Yale University Art Gallery. And she has had a very long
and distinguished career in the field of conservation. She was trained at the
prestigious, I'm not gonna say it, my Italian is not good enough in Florence, where she worked on a very important conservation
projects involving paintings by Peter Paul Rubens. In 2000, she came to Yale
as a guest conservator, and then joined Yale fully in 2004. And she is the Chief
Conservator, and I am delighted to have her to be in
conversation with Dianne today. Please, welcome. (everybody applauds) Now, it's something to be
seeing an image of this from Dianne's laptop, (chuckles)
so it's quite a treat. Thank you for that. I think the mics are working. - They're working?
- Yes. So, I think I'd like to
give Irma the opportunity to ask a question or
two before we open it up to the audience and continue, okay? - So, I have a question
for you, which is, if. - We can't hear you.
- Yeah, closer to the mic. - Is it on?
- Yeah, it is, oh, okay. - My question to you is, if
you had found the painting in a museum setting, and would you have changed
your approach to conservation? And in particular to the
reconstruction of the areas of losses, if you feel
like in a museum setting, you would have like sort
of approached things slightly differently, and if
perhaps you would have used a sort of advisory committee
to help that process prior to actually your restoration. - Well, it's a scenario
that didn't happen, and that is very far from,
I mean, it's just coming from a different direction. The museum owns a Leonardo da Vinci, and they decide to restore it. Yes, there's a committee and all of that. And, you know, it's always would be nice to have that kind of advice. In terms of my restoration, I wouldn't do anything different. Yeah, there's, you can't see it. You know, I created this
website and you can go on it and see, there's a image,
there's an ultraviolet image of the painting, which
shows my restorations and the original, and you
can see that they are, they can, in fact, I did an
overlay also to check myself. And you can see that the retouching or the end painting corresponds exactly with the areas of loss. And that also, a very
important point is that the areas of loss are
surrounded by passages of paint that are absolutely intact,
that have all these thin layers of modeling, which are,
you know, in the... For the flesh tones, there
are about five different very thin paint layers, and had that not been the case, if as we say in conservation all the paint had been slightly worn away, I wouldn't have been able
to do that restoration, but I would've had to do
something much more neutral. But because there were
these adjoining areas that were so perfectly preserved,
I felt that it was even almost necessary in order to, you know, to make them read properly, to do the kind of restoration that I did. - I'm curious about
something else, you know, I'm a scientist and we
have these little moments of discovery, you know, they
may not be shattering sometimes just the joy of figuring
things out for oneself. And, of course, there's
the dramatic eureka, whatever that is associated
with scientific discovery. I'm curious what emotional
state you were in when it dawned on you.
- Mm-hmm. - That moment when you thought
you saw it was a Leonardo, what did it feel like? - Well, I had already, at that point, I had been working on it
for quite a long time, and I knew that by that time I had all the art historical information about it, Martin Kemp had given his opinion, and, but I was still, to myself
not entirely convinced or maybe not that, I mean,
to the point where I could, you know, put my life on the line and say, "Yes, I think this is by
Leonardo, it's not by Luini, it's not by Butroffio,
it's, you know, this is... This can only be by Leonardo." - But did you suspect that
at the first look already? - At the first look, no, I
didn't because it was, I didn't, first of all this, you know, was a period when my husband was very ill. I actually didn't wanna work
on the picture, I tried- - The prominence was a bit dodgy, right? - No, the prominence is actually not so, I mean, it's not- - Where it was procured at
first resurfaced, right? In New Orleans and the sort of obscure. - Yes, yes, eventually, of
course, the Wall Street Journal. - (speakers talking over each
other) I knew that it was in the Cook Collection.
- Right. - So, it's not that it
didn't have any prominence , it's just that there's no
prominence before 1900, but that's true of many, many pictures. So, I didn't, you know, in the beginning, I really didn't feel that I had the kind of time or energy to do it, and I was taking care of Mario, and he was not really
not well at that stage. And it wasn't until I showed it to him, and he reacted the way he did, that I decided to take
it on because he hadn't. - No, he, I mean, it was clear, he thought it was something serious worthy of investigation.
- Yes, he's, in fact, he mentioned, he says
by a very great artist, degeneration after Leonardo, Mario had studied
extensively early Leonardo, which he know really well. So, this quite late Leonardo in a way, is kind of something
like the next generation, so, it kind of eventually all makes sense. But it, the fact that
he responded to this, he hadn't responded to anything, you know, for almost a year. And, you know, I would
try to show him paintings, show him catalogs, and he
would just brush them away. So, this was, it was something, you know, he took it in his hands and
he looked at it, you know, for a very long time. And then he said, "You know, this is by a very great
artist," and so I thought, "Wait a minute, I'm missing something." Yeah, that... - That you should look harder. - Yes, yeah. - We'd like to open up but we will continue the conversation, but if anyone has a pressing question and the walking mic is behind you. You have it Frederick? - [Attendee 1] I was just curious, so the prominence has been
established through 1900, and then I guess, a Wall Street
Journal article will tell me how it got to the Auction
House in Louisiana and selling for a $1,000, - Yeah, it's also on my website. - Okay, and did you know
anything about the prominence of the damage to it? Could you analyze like their splinter? So, a piece of wood went
through wood and why it, how it got from being part of this king, like the trunk King Charles or whether to being something that
somebody stored somewhere. - It was a discard.
- Was vulnerable. - Yeah.
- Thank you. - It had a, the painting,
it had an English cradle. A cradle is a kind of a
wooden lattice that's glued to the back of the panel
to keep it straight. And the type of cradle
was definitely English. And I asked a panel
paintings restorer in London to confirm this, which he did. And then I also asked
him if he had, because, I've seen little, you know,
where there's a slight step, I've seen a little bit of
shaving down on pictures from time to time but nothing like this, because someone had clearly taken a plane and just went right through
the picture, you know, taking off, you know, original paint. It was just, it was a
handyman, you know, it was... And I asked them if they
had seen anything like this, and they said they had
seen it on Tudor portraits that from country houses. So, that was just kind
of one little clue that, you know, that may, that
it was in England in the, you know, late 18th,
early 19th century still. - I think there was a question there? - [Attendee 3] Yes, thanks. Thanks so much for
joining us this evening, and especially for sharing your insights. I'm curious to know about the thumbprint, whether it was analyzed, identified, what happened to to the thumbprint? - It's not a thumbprint. It's a painted thumb. - [Attendee 2] Oh, okay, so
I thought there was a print of the artists. - No, there are some,
you know, fingerprints in some paintings by Leonardo. There are some in Ginevra. There's some in the Saint
Jerome in the Vatican but there, now, this is just
what we call a pentimento. It means a change of mind. And there are other
changes in the painting, but they're all very slight. And they're, I'd wonder, I've always
wondered why he went through so much trouble to make some
of the changes that he did because it meant revising a
whole part of the painting. He moved the hand holding
the orb, he moved it. He moved the hand slightly
down and slightly to the left. And he moved the mantle so
that he could put in two pieces of black, and this caused
him to have to change the whole structure of the cost bands, those embroidered bands. And it was, I mean, it's such
a slight adjustment that, but it clearly meant a great deal to him. And this is why it's also,
it's another, I think, compelling reason for
the attribution is that, and that he worked on it over
a very long period of time. Because if you compare it to,
people often compare it to the St. John the Baptist in Louvre, which was painted very quickly. It was painted practically all in one go. And it has these terrible
contraction cracks where the paint slipped because the paint underneath
it wasn't sufficiently dry. And the Mona Lisa also, has
many contraction cracks. The Salvador Munich has
hardly any cracks at all of that type in the paint layer. Also, the Belle Pleione has a series of very significant drying cracks. So, it's, and from the cross
sections, you can see how thin, the thin buildup of these layers of color. So, and from what I think,
as far as I can tell from the Naples copy, which
is I think the earliest one, it was probably, he probably
began to work on this picture before 1500 in Milan, and
then, continued to work on it in Florence, in Milan, in Rome, Milan again, in Rome, and in France. I think it was a long... It had an extremely long gestation. - Oh, the mic. - [Attendee 4] Yes, I have it here. - Okay. - [Attendee 4] Well, the
painting was in your possession. Was it insured?
(everybody laughing) If so, by whom, I mean, not the insurer, but who decided to do that and for what presumably
earthly amount did it start at- - You know, I-
- Be insured. - I don't really know because
until it went to London, and it was, well, at
least Robert Simon felt that he had enough art
historical opinion to say that it was by Leonardo. I have no idea what he insured it for. - Mm. - After that, in fact, he said that the insurance was becoming
very costly on, you know, that. So, that's one of the reasons
they brought a partner in and, anyway, but so, but I have no idea what they insured it for. - Hmm. I was just curious actually, as you were doing the restoration, like the NYU Faculty from
the Art History Department or students were they sort of like coming to sort of like look and offer
advice or provide opinions? - Mm, no, no. I worked on it usually on
weekends or I would begin in the late afternoon and
work on it in the evening. The only person, the only
colleague that I asked to look at it is Dorothy Mann. So, it, you know, wasn't the... I just needed to work it out for myself. - Mm.
- Mm. - I think the mic is here. Can throw it. (everybody laughing) Throw soft. - Oh, I see. - [Attendee 5] Take me out
before I can ask a question. - Mm. - [Attendee 5] I guess my
question, I have two questions. You know, in the film they talk about the best conservator in
the world, et cetera, and I wanted to know what
makes someone as a conservator the best conservator. - Oh, that was just silly. - [Attendee] I know, but I just- - I mean they just made that up, you know, - [Attendee 5] I just thought about what makes a good conservator and I also, in order to be thought of, so what would esteem a conservator? And also, I was wondering
how you felt like when you were doing the retouching, you separated yourself from
the hand of the artist, and yourself, I mean, I'm
an objects conservator and my first real knowledge of inpainting techniques are
from Irma who uses a very, a visible inpainting technique,
which I feel like you, I understand her approach in
separating her own technique from the techniques of the artist. And I was wondering what your approach was to your inpainting? - Well, I try to... I tried to imitate the entire layer structure
working in myself in very thin layers, for
example, in the flesh tones. The first, Leonardo's first
layer is a very deep hot pink. So, I under painted it with that. And then, it was just a
kind of series of, you know, very thin glazes and
stumbles, and then editing, you know, I was constantly,
you know, taking off what I had put in and sort
of paring it down a bit, and which also burnished
it until, to make sure that it hadn't gone outside
the limits, but that it was, you know, I mean, that's all actually. That's how I work always anyway, so- - [Attendee 5] I was just curious how, if you're imitating their
techniques or, I mean, it sounds like you're
imitating what was built up on rather than, you know, creating something like a visual reconstruction
rather than like a technique. - I don't understand what you mean. - [Attendee 5] Well, I'm thinking
of like how, for example, as you said, mostly
when I'm thinking about like if you look at it up close, would you be able to
tell your brush strokes from Leonardo's brush strokes? Whereas if you would
look up close at some, like something that's done.
- Yeah. - [Attendee 5] Technique, for example, I can see that they're tiny
lines, but like if I step, I really have to look through them. But if I step away, I
can, it comes together as a complete picture. - I see.
- I'm wondering. - No, you would have
to be very, very close to the picture indeed,
to be able to see them. - To see your-
- Yes. - [Attendee 5] But you can tell which? - Well, I have this ultraviolet image, which is part of the documentation. - [Attendee 5] Oh, absolutely,
I just, for the viewer to see what, when
they're interacting with- - I don't work that way, yeah. - Because this a different
style technique, right? - Yeah, it's a different
approach, and I've always, you know, it's kind of
an Italian approach. - Yeah.
- And I've always, I mean, all my training from the, you know, from the very beginning, I've always worked in
this way to try to imitate the adjacent original
as quickly as, you know, as well as possible. But there are all sorts of
different problems that come up with every picture, you know, as I said, this particular painting had
perfectly preserved passages of original next to losses, which this carpenter or
whoever worked on had planed right down to the wood.
- Mm. - So, I... You know, I could have, you know, that... So, that was the, you know, I say that was the only reason I could do it. It's not, you know, but,
and if you have, you know, different kind of picture,
the different kind of damage, something that's, you
know, extremely abraded where you sort of work, you know all to tone down little losses
all over the picture until you get something
that's more cohesive. But it's just, it changes
with every, you know, with every picture. There's not a formula
that you can just say, "Oh, this is what you do." But I mean, I have a
formula for my materials. - Right, so actually, that's
a question I have for you. When you were talking about
the sort of the five layers, is the chemical composition of
the pigments, are we able to, this is a naive question. Are we able to completely
reproduce the compositions that he might have used now? - No, because for one thing,
we don't use lead white. - Right. - And I don't know, and, of
course, it can be poisonous, but I think that I would be afraid that the medium that I use
wouldn't bind it well enough so that it wouldn't react with
the atmosphere and blacken. - Right. - So. instead-
- So, potential damage. You're very worried about that. - Mm, so instead, most
conservatives use titanium oxide, the rutile form, crystal form, which is stable. It's not as opaque as lead white, and there are colors that you can't use. - Because he probably, I mean, they probably had organic
pigmentation, right, which is- - There are some colors that
faded that you, you know, that you can't use. There are some, you know, there are, yeah, certain colors that alter like, you know, realgar or prevent that, you know, so you have to substitute
materials that are stable. - Mm.
- Yeah. (speakers faintly talking over each other) - There, yeah. - [Attendee 6] So, I believe
I noticed two different frames on the painting.
- Yeah. - [Attendee 6] Can you tell
me anything about that? - Well, you know, they-
- Is the original really a fancy one, like
out of period or fake or- - Look, they did, you know, a lot of this of this filming they did,
they were reenactments. - Right. - So, the painting the frame
that was on the painting when they sold it, which is at this... It's this frame, yeah. Obviously, they didn't have anymore but Robert Simon still had the frame that had been
on it when he bought it, which was the frame that
was on it when it was in the Cook Collection,
- mm. - Because it still had
the inventory numbers of the Cook Collection on the back of it. So, that's what the frame, so that, the gold frame that you see, that's the Cook Collection frame. - Mm. So, I was curious sort of the chemistry of the reconstruction of these colors. Like, I would like to
hear a little bit more. - Oh, well, so in terms
of reconstruction of law, areas of losses, well, in, I would say in Italy we have
a tendency to use a visible inpainting technique
for loss compensation. It's a theory that was
developed in the late 1930s, early '40s by Cesare Brandi who was a, who's to be considered the
father of the Italian theory of restoration, of modern
theory of restoration where he, and the Laura Maura developed this technique that is called trateggio, where you use vertical lines, you just oppose and you
superimpose pure colors, or you mix-max of two colors,
and you create this grid. And the whole point is to
hold back the personality of the conservator. So, you're reconstructing like almost that there is like some
sort of filter between the work of art and the conservator, and that your reconstruction is visible and judgable, so that when you- - So, there's a separation
that's inbuilt as the, it pulls back that- - The gaze should be able to discern. - Yes. (speakers talking over each other) So, when you're close up,
you see the area of loss. You can recognize and judge
the work of the conservator when you're far away. So, you basically value the, you try to come to balance
the historical value of the work of art by not
imposing your own work. And then, from an aesthetic point of view, you still allow the work of
art to be appreciated because- - To be also made whole, right? I mean, part of the challenge, different ways of looking at it. - Yeah.
- Is what way do you want to make this thing whole and back to- - Yes, and how you let the artist be the predominant voice
and not the restorer. - Yeah. - And their, yeah, and their sort of various ways of thinking about that and doing it. - But I love the sort of, there's a detective aspect to all of this, which I have to admit
observation in general sort of trying to figure out, you know, what was Leonardo thinking? Like, why did he change his mind, right? - Why did he- - That's the- - Well, I don't know if there, if how many scientists
there are here, but- - I see several. (laughs)
- Okay. Yeah, so the orb is something that has been very much discussed. Art historians. - Ah, it's actually a
rendering of the globe. - Yes.
- Of the world. - Yes, it's the, I think
it's meant to be the cosmos. - Mm-hmm. - I would love to have a
long discussion with you about this sometimes.
- Yeah, okay. (laughs) - That's supposed to be
the cosmos and because the whole painting has to do
with eternity and, you know, and time and at the lower right on the bottom there, can't see them very well, but you could see these little dots. - Yep. - And a geologist that I
saw. (speakers cross-talking) he gave up on it.
- Oh, he did? - Yeah, but it was in, they
had sort of had a fight. - And so, they had a fight. (laughs) One like I see it, Luis, he has kept on with this, and he's... These are, the little white dots are, he's absolutely convinced
are fluid inclusions in the crystal. - Ah, okay. - And not some art historians insist that they're air bubbles. - Oh, I see. - And he says, "No, no, it's not. They're absolutely, and
this is quartz Krystal. - Right. - And he's hesitated to publish this because it has a lot of implications for the history of crystallography. - Correct. - Because it would make
Leonardo the first person to have observed and studied crystals. - As well. - As well, as all the
other things he he did. - Things on top of everything
else that he did right, yes. But I think that's really fascinating. It hadn't occurred to me
until you just pointed out that I think what's very interesting, I don't know a whole lot
about the actual solid orbs, but do know about the maps,
the versions of the universe, the way the sort of the cardiographic
one-dimensional representations. So, it'd be very interesting
to see if this kind of maps on to some other rendering of the cosmos. - It would from that time,
and, you know, of course, it's the, that the only part
that's well-preserved are where the inclusions are.
- Yeah. - And the rest of it is very abraded, but there are those three white dots- - Yeah.
- Mm. - Which are original, and
that must signify something. - It looks like the Pleiades, but I don't wanna be quoted on that, but- - Yeah, yeah, someone
suggested that it was, oh, what is it? Some kind of Triangle.
- Yeah, that's the Pleiades. - A kind of constellations
that was only discovered in, by Emery Govis Bucci or
something like that, is it? - Yeah, I can't remember
the name of him now- - Well, there is this rendering of one of the earliest renderings
in the Western world that survived is called
the Nebra sky disk. And it's actually a copper plate, and it has the three, it has the Pleiades, and it has the sun and the moon, and we don't know what it
was used for or whatever, but it's very curious, yeah, with the-
- Yeah. - We should have an offline conversation, not geek out on the possibilities of which constellation it might be. - Yeah. - But I'm also very curious, right, that is there, there is a
real difference in the blues, right, on the fabric, the shroud and the fold. And that orb, I mean there
is a very clear outline right where the orb sort of ends and a... - Yes, there is a, if you
would look at the clean state, you would have to see I did
this, and work with watercolor. You could see the edge is to define it. But what should happen, and it, you can sort of see it, but it's damaged, is that the drapery scene through the orb should be magnified. - Right, that's where I was going. I was going about whether
this was actually a glass orb or is it actually agate or something else. - You know what I mean,
if it's opaque material. And I think it's meant to be transparent, translucent, right, because you are... I think you are seeing
the fold of the drapery. - I think so. But, yeah, it's damage
because there's a painting, there's a Salvator Mundi by door in the Metropolitan Museum
of Art, it's unfinished. And he also has an orb and
because it's not finished, but you can see very clearly that he, that the drapery folds are
magnified behind the orb. - So, what's time are we talking about? - Very well preserved,
about the same time, yeah. - So, they were definitely
grinding glass at that point and making lenses in the Netherlands. - Mm. - Galileo gets it in 1602, and before that there
are these spy glasses, and they already knew how
to grind lenses very well. Turns out that Spinoza
was one of a master lens. Baruch Spinoza was a master
lens grinder, actually. So, that's very interesting. - Yeah.
- Yeah. - Yeah, well this is, I said that it's- - So, I mean, you know, when I saw this, so I saw this documentary
sometime in the Summer. It's on Netflix, by the way. And, to me, you know, as a layperson, not a professional in this field, but kind of obsessed with art in general, and in love with it. What clinch did for me was the observation that you made about the lip. - Mm-hmm.
- Mona Lisa's lip, or the lack of the lip as it were, right? - Yeah. - And so, is that, was that for you also somewhat convincing? - Yes, yeah. Because I was having such
a hard time with that. It's still not right.
- Mm. - But you know, that is big, and it's because it's just
like blowing smoke, you know, that is that transition, so. - Irma, what do you think of the lip, Mona Lisa's lip versus
Salvator Mundi's lip? - I think it's, for me, it's very hard because I actually haven't
seen the painting in person. So, I, in one sense, I
would have loved to have that sort of one-on-one-
- Close up, yeah. - For me, actually, the question of the lip brings
another question is like, how do you read right
through areas of loss, because that is the biggest
problem is like to sort of like, consider losses such, you
know, like elements of noise, and that we sort of want
to, you know, lock them or, and so, how do you get
those moments of like, oh, I can recognize the hand of one artist or another one through
those fragments of colors. And I think, you know, and, at least here, we have so many students,
fellows, and interns that come in, and one of the, you know, great aspect is to give them
that sort of close looking, and teaching them how to
actually go beyond those areas of damage and really focus on those. - But I mean, look, I mean, but I think one thing is
quite clear that at the end of the day, there is
a lot of subjectivity. - Yes.
- Oh, oh, absolutely. - Because you have the best
equipment, you have the data. - Yeah.
- But, and it is, it's something that is
highly subjective, right, that is very, very clear.
- It's very subjective. - And I have to admit that I
did see that Leonardo Exhibit in London.
- Mm. - But all the drama about
the painting came after. - Yes.
- So, when I saw it, it didn't even occur to me that
it may or may not whatever, because, you know, I was one
of the crowd who thought, "Okay, there it is."
- Yeah. - And so, it's been fascinating. - Yeah, that it, all the drama erupted. Yeah, when, well, when Christie's- - Yes, I guess when, I mean, I guess when money got
entangled with it is when I guess a lot of- - Although, the first, some
people like the Jerry Falk, I know Jerry Falk, he's very funny. - Yeah.
- He's extremely funny. But anyway, now he got all upset about it when they made the attribution
at the London Exhibition. And also Jacque Franck and there, but, so. But anyway, but it wasn't,
it didn't reach that. It didn't have that fever
pitch until it was sold. - So, one final question
before we head out to the reception, yeah,
there's a question in the back. - [Attendee 7] I actually
don't think that the, was it pentimento, was
that your discovery would kind of ensure that it wasn't a original because a copyist who's a
protege, who can paint that well, wouldn't paint what they're seeing wrong. That Wrong.
- Exactly. - Yes, exactly. - And a forger could do it to
make it really look authentic. But is that, has that ever happened where a forger has actually
painted in the pentimentos as well as the final product? - Probably. Probably some of them were so clever. But it is, I said, it's very telling. But when you're talking about
an attribution to Leonardo- - Yeah.
- Yeah, that's the thing. I mean, yeah, it's
definitely a pentimento, but still could have been by
Luini or somebody else, so. - So, anyway, let's thank
Dianne again, and Irma for. (applauding drowns out speaker) (everybody applauds) That was super great. (Pleasant music)
