Rumors of Another Da Vinci

The Washington Post reports that rumors are spreading of a newly discovered Da Vinci painting:

- The Washington Post receives a tip from a source who wishes to remain anonymous that the Museum of Fine Arts, Boston, has in its possession a painting believed to be by the Italian master, and is in the process of authenticating it. Were it deemed a true Leonardo, such a painting would be only the second one in all the Americas.

-- We put a call in to Frederick Ilchman, the Boston museum's Renaissance curator. Does he have such a painting? "Can't tell you anything about it, sorry," he says, before hanging up. (Do we detect a yes in that click?)

What the story doesn't mention is that the extent of Da Vinci's surviving oeuvre has been long disputed. A century ago dozens of painting were hung over Leonardo's name, but twentieth-century scholarship dismissed many of them. This left a puzzle, because Leonardo is known to have painted quite a few missing paintings, and he was so famous in his own lifetime that his works would have been well worth preserving. Not to mention that some of the works still claimed as Leonardos are diputed in some quarters, including the portrait that surfaced only last year.