Leonardo Leonardo da Vinci In the Studio: Lee Bul Where Art and Medicine Meet Fake Leonardo Earns $1.5 Million Louvre Remains Attendance Champion Starry Night Most Popular Work of the Decade A Portrait, Once a Leonardo, Heads to Auction

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Kate Ganz, a Manhattan dealer, acquired the work at a 1998 Christie’s auction, where it was offered as a 19th-century German School portrait. She says that she considered that it was a Leonardo, but rejected the notion after careful scrutiny and consultation with art historians. She showed the work at a 2007 show in her gallery and sold it for the purchase price, minus a buyer’s discount.

“At the end of the day, when you talk about connoisseurship,” she said, “it comes down to whether something is beautiful enough to be a Leonardo, whether it resonates with all of the qualities that define his handwriting — sublime modeling, exquisite delicacy, an unparalleled understanding of anatomy — and to me this drawing has none of those things.”

But earlier this year the Paris-based Lumiere Technology, a company specializing in multispectral digital technology, announced that its study of the piece had led to a Leonardo attribution.

So far a critical consensus has yet to form around the attribution. One person who does accept it is the Canadian collector and art advisor Peter Silverman, who points out that the work is done by a left-handed artist, which is rare, that carbon-14 tests date it to a period between 1440 and 1650, and that the Lumiere Technology analysis turns up many similarities to the Mona Lisa.

The drawing was purchased from Ganz by Downey Holdings, a Jersey, England-based company that Silverman advises. As the attribution saga has gone on, Silverman has changed his story. At first, he claimed that he discovered the work while a visiting another collector. He now admits that be bought it after seeing it at Ganz’s show, changing his story, he claims, to protect Ganz’s identity.

Silverman says that he bought the work for a Swiss collector, who wishes to remain anonymous.