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[Britany Lincicum]

In 2010, Kemp first suggested that da Vinci painted the portrait, and since then, art historians have debated over both its origin and the painter. In fact, several art historians contacted by LiveScience said they wouldn't comment on the piece or wouldn't return emails. An earlier examination of the artwork by a gallery in Vienna led the director there to say it was not a da Vinci, and they are unswayed by the new evidence.

From storage to source

 The portrait was sent to Christie's in 1998, with art historians there suggesting the piece came from 19th-century German artists called the Nazarenes, who mimicked the Renaissance style. (This was disproved after carbon dating estimated the portrait's creation between 1440 and 1650.) It was titled "Head of a Young Girl in Profile to the Left in Renaissance Dress."

Kemp wasn't convinced and started looking into the painting's history. He first saw the portrait as an attachment to an email in 2008, and immediately recognized da Vinci's left-handed style. He went to see it in Zurich and his co-author, Pascal Cotte, engineer and founder of art analysis start-up Lumiere Technology, examined it in Paris.

Kemp and Cotte then published "La Bella Principessa: The Story of the New Masterpiece by Leonardo da Vinci," (Hodder Hb, 2010) claiming the work might be a da Vinci, a claim that many respected historians have disagreed with, some vehemently. [History's Most Overlooked Mysteries]

The portrait is made on vellum, a specially prepared skin normally used for writing and printing. No work by da Vinci has been found on vellum before, though it was frequently used in books. Researchers believe the portrait came from a book, because three stitch holes are visible on the portrait's left margin. It is also made of chalks and ink, not paint.

A wedding gift

"The chance of identifying the vellum book it came from was pretty small, a needle in the haystack, one would say," Kemp told LiveScience. That was, until American art historian David Wright, of the University of California at Berkeley, suggested that Kemp look at a set of bookstitled the "Sforziad."

There were at most four copies made, Kemp said. Aside from the copy in the National Library in Warsaw, there is a copy in London and one in Paris. Each book was custom-made and had different art and cover pages; evidence that this portrait had been "ripped" out was only found in the Warsaw book. The image was probably removed during the 18th century when the book was rebound, Kemp said.

Da Vinci was an artist in the duke's residence for several years between 1481 and 1499. He was the only left-handed artist in the court at that time, the researchers said.