Free Leonardo's Lost Princess by Peter Silverman Page A

give his subject eyebrows and eyelashes.
    He was not alone in this fascination. Art scholars have long debated the barren brow, trying to make sense of it. Most peculiar was the evidence that eyebrows and lashes once existed in the painting. Giorgio Vasari, who wrote the book The Lives of the Artists in 1550 (considered the first art history book, in the modern sense), describes the Mona Lisa thus: “The eyes are bright and moist, and around them are those pale red and slightly livid circles seen in life, while the lashes and eyebrows are represented with the closest exactitude—with separate hair drawn as they issue from the skin.” 8
    Although it is uncertain that Vasari ever saw the portrait in person, he did know the Giocondo family so it is possible he might have viewed it. Vasari was also a great admirer of Leonardo’s writing at one point, “Occasionally heaven sends us someone who is not only human but divine, so that through his mind and the excellence of his intellect we may reach to heaven.” 9
    Evelyn Welsh, a professor of Renaissance studies at Queen’s College in London, wrote extensively about women’s styles and fashions of the period. She declared, “I would absolutely stake my life on it that Lisa had eyebrows. She had eyelashes.” 10
    Was she right? Using his magical technology, Cotte was able to discover a single strong brushstroke in the eyebrow area. Thank God—the Master did not leave his subject without! They had merely been lost to time and restoration. (It is unlikely, however, that the real eyebrows will ever be restored, except in digital form. Physically touching the painting would be a task fraught with danger. I know of no one who would be willing to take it on, now that the painting has achieved such iconic status.)
    Buoyed by his success with the Mona Lisa , Cotte now had a new ambition: to digitalize all of Leonardo’s paintings and create a database. His next stop was the Czartoryski Museum in Kraków, Poland, where Leonardo’s Lady with an Ermine was on display. This was one of Leonardo’s most famous works, a portrait of Cecilia Gallerani, who was a mistress of Duke Ludovico il Moro Sforza’s at the Court of Milan during the period when Leonardo was working there in the 1490s.
    Invited by Prince Czartoryski and his foundation to digitalize the portrait, Cotte set to work. Studying his digital impressions of Lady with an Ermine , he found that Leonardo’s brilliance was masked, to some extent, by overly rigorous restorations and overpaintings.
    “Although the painting’s overall condition is excellent, it is covered with innumerable tiny repaints,” he reported. “Those have been suppressed by computer, thus freshening up the tones in the Lady’s lovely face, her décolleté, the embroidered ribbon around it, the pearl necklace, her right hand, the black ribbon of the sleeves, the blue mantle and the red velvet of the gown, etc. The ermine had been retouched in the past equally. Thanks to the computer restorers its white fur, meticulously depicted by Leonardo, can be viewed again.” 11
    He also discovered, to his horror, that restoration work had resulted in the partial removal of Cecilia’s eyebrows and eyelashes, and he wondered if the same fate had befallen the Mona Lisa.
    Cotte’s multispectral imaging camera opened up a new arena of art exploration and authentication. Leonardo’s blending method—called sfumato —was delicate and integrated. Prior to the existence of the digital process, there was no way to remove restoration touches or varnish without jeopardizing the integrity of the art itself. Indeed, one expert in the Leonardo technique once fretted that to touch the face in the Mona Lisa would be to potentially erase the famous smile. But now Cotte had found a way to do the job without jeopardizing the painting.
    In time, Lumiere Technology began to emerge as a vital player in the expertise and study of art history with a process that modified the