A portrait of a younger Mona Lisa, which its owners claim was painted by Leonardo Da Vinci before his more famous version, has gone on display.
The painting is being exhibited in public for the first time in Singapore.
Its owners say expert tests and analysis confirm Da Vinci painted it 10 years before the better-known version.
But its authenticity is disputed. Da Vinci expert Martin Kemp said it was “just another copy of the Mona Lisa, an unfinished one, and no more than that”.
Prof Kemp, emeritus professor of the history of art at Oxford University and the author of several books on Da Vinci, said: “The fact it’s being shown in Singapore and is not getting an outing in a serious art museum [or] gallery is significant in itself.
The painting, he said, was “routine in handling”. He continued: “Leonardo’s landscapes always seethed with a sense of life. It’s inert.
“The drapery is inert, and what Leonardo did was he could always give the sense that even something static like drapery had a life to it, a vitality and an inherent movement in it, and this is a heavy-handed, static picture.”
