For that is what the Monna Vanna is. The Mona Lisa, which Leonardo worked on obsessively for years and kept with him until his death in , is a painting of veiled ambiguities. Lisa Gherardini del Giocondo, the Florentine woman who posed for it, wears a diaphanous silk headcovering almost too thin to see, and subtle mysteries resonate from her shadowed eyes to the distant riverscape. There is a drawing by him depicting his beautiful painting St John the Baptist, but instead of ending at the waist as the painting does, the sketch shows a robust erection. Leonardo was twice accused of homosexuality a capital offence in Renaissance Europe , which may be one reason he left Florence to work in Milan. One thing is for sure — the fluid gender of this nude shows why Leonardo is still modern years after his death.

At that time, the work was attributed to Leonardo. Curators believe the charcoal sketch was likely made in preparation for producing an oil painting of the nude subject. In the new study, undertaken at the world-renowned Center for Research and Restoration of the Museums of France C2RMF beneath the Louvre, scientists examined the image of a semi-nude woman more closely. Microscopic examination reveals that the portrait was drawn from the upper left-hand portion of the page toward the bottom right, which indicates the primary artist was likely left-handed, like Leonardo.

Subscriber Account active since. Free subscriber-exclusive audiobook! Get it now on Libro. If researchers are able to definitively attribute the drawing to Leonardo, it would be a groundbreaking discovery that would help art historians better understand both the artist and the period in which he worked, the curator says.

Art experts may have solved a riddle that has been baffling them for years: whether a drawing of a nude woman, bearing a striking resemblance to the Mona Lisa, is a Leonardo da Vinci original. Following extensive testing, investigators from the Center for Research and Restoration of the Museums of France C2RMF say the charcoal drawing, known as the "Monna Vanna" or "Nude Mona Lisa," was completed in da Vinci's studio and may have been the work of the master himself. The drawing was previously thought to have been completed by da Vinci's students.