The Mona Lisa of Montecitorio just... discovered? It's an arcane work and it's not by Leonardo

Many newspapers today spread the news of an alleged “discovery”: a copy of the Mona Lisa unearthed in the storerooms of Montecitorio in Rome (thus headlined Repubblica: “Rome discovers it has La Gioconda, it was hidden in a storeroom in Montecitorio: ’It could be by Leonardo’”). “It’s a copy of the Louvre painting made by Leonardo’s workshop, perhaps even with his own collaboration,” deputy Francesco D’Uva, House quaestor of the 5 Star Movement, told Repubblica. In reality, there is no discovery: the painting has in fact been known for some time. The only news is the possibility of it being moved to the Aldo Moro room in the Chamber to show it to the public. And a further funny fact is that the work was not “in storage,” that is, in a physical place, as many have misunderstood, but “on deposit” (that is, on consignment) from the Galleria Nazionale d’Arte Antica in Palazzo Barberini.

The work is also known as the Mona Lisa Torlonia because in the past it was owned by the noble Roman family, and it is one of dozens of existing copies of Leonardo da Vinci’s celebrated Mona Lisa, and it is not even among those of the best quality (we had also talked about it on these very pages in an article on copies and variants of the Mona Lisa, mentioning also the work that is now being passed off as newly discovered). It is a painting with a well-known history: documented in 1814 in the inventories of the Torlonia family as a “copy of Leonardo da Vinci’s Mona Lisa” (it was attributed to Bernardino Luini by Giuseppe Antonio Guattani, but even this attribution later lapsed as too weak), it became part of the National Gallery of Ancient Art in Palazzo Barberini in 1892, after which, in January 1927, it was granted on deposit to the Chamber of Deputies, and has been in Montecitorio ever since.

In the year of Leonardo’s 500th anniversary, 2019, the Torlonia Mona Lisa was even featured in an exhibition at theAccademia dei Lincei, entitled Leonardo in Rome. Influences and Legacy: the hypothesis of Leonardo da Vinci’s intervention dates back to that very occasion. It was raised by Roberto Antonelli and Antonio Forcellino, curators of the exhibition, who proposed that the work was a product of Leonardo da Vinci’s workshop, with a possible intervention by the master. "For the Torlonia Mona Lisa, the master’s pupils employed colors from his palette,“ Forcellino wrote, according to which ”the painting presents pentimenti incongruous with a copy,“ and ”the glazes in the flesh tones and in the landscape are of a transparency that echoes in a timely manner Leonardo’s execution technique operated in the Louvre painting.“ In essence, according to the restorer, ”the pictorial technique is so refined as to suggest that Leonardo himself put his hand to the chiaroscuro definition of the face since no other painters are known to whom such a light stroke in the rendering of the sfumato can be referred." Cinzia Pasquali, who was in charge of the restoration of the painting, while considering it to be a work of the 16th century and believing the hypothesis that it could be a product of Leonardo’s workshop to be plausible, also told Repubblica in 2019 that “it is a very beautiful object, but it is not Leonardo. It can help us understand something more about him, though.” The painting’s interest is due to some precise factors, for example the fact that “the material with which it was made and the dimensions are compatible with the Louvre painting” and the fact that “the abraded lower surface shows pentimenti quite similar to the ’Paris exemplar. She also went very cautious about a possible direct intervention: ”it is not easy to determine whether in the Mona Lisa Torlonia intervened with his brush," she told Il Tempo last December.

In any case, no one since 2019 has welcomed Forcellino’s hypothesis, which has gone essentially ignored by critics. The news bounced back today even among art historians, who, however, dismissed it without appeal. “It doesn’t deserve so much talk,” Fabrizio Federici says. “Because the news has been arcane for a long time. Because the painting is breathtakingly ugly. Interesting, from so many points of view, but to see ’Leonardo’s hand’ in it, as if it were a Sorrentino film ... then maybe the copy was made in an environment somehow related to the master, but here’s Leonardo I don’t even see a droplet in it.”

Lapidary also Vittorio Sgarbi: “Macché seconda Gioconda! It’s just a modest canvas! Furniture stuff confused by obfuscated minds,” said the volcanic Ferrara art historian. "A modest canvas displayed in a public building, in the Office of the Quaestor of Montecitorio, has been passed off as a second Mona Lisa by Leonardo, who, incidentally, struggled (it took him five years) to paint one. The excitement of dulled minds evoked with great suggestion warehouses, storerooms, dust, avoiding the only relevant word: furniture! And that is, what usually, coming from the deposits of a museum (in this case from the Borghese National Gallery [actually Barberini, ed.]) is requested, starting with the House and the Senate, and then from embassies and prefectures, to furnish rooms open to the public, as Montecitorio has been for years. Everything that deserved to be returned to museums has been in the past decades through a commission that I led. What remained, with the exception of an oversized Rape of Europe by Giandomenico Ferretti, was returned to museums. Leonardo’s copy, painted at least 70 years after his death, has no artistic value and only indicates the fortune of the work, like the countless copies by great masters. Much ado about nothing."

In short, the case can be closed very quickly: the Torlonia Mona Lisa is not the work of Leonardo but a copy, even if it were 16th-century it is very difficult to determine whether Leonardo intervened (not to say that it is almost impossible), and it is not even one of the best copies.

The Mona Lisa of Montecitorio just... discovered? It's an arcane work and it's not by Leonardo

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