Unknown portrait of Leonardo da Vinci discovered in ancient Italian village

A previously unknown portrait of Leonardo da Vinci which shows he had bright blue eyes, long grey hair and a droopy moustache has been discovered in an ancient Italian village.

• The damaged oil-on-panel portrait of the Renaissance genius was found  in the archive and picture collection of an aristocratic family in Acerenza, near Potenza in the southern Italian region of Basilicata.
• The painting was originally believed to portray Galileo Galilei, the astronomer, and shows a man in three-quarter profile wearing a hat with a feather in it.
• Nicola Barbatelli, medieval historian, who found the painting while researching the Knights Templar, said that although Leonardo came from Vinci in Tuscany and worked in Florence and Milan, he was known to have visited Basilicata.
• It could even be a self-portrait, as it has da Vinci’s trademark ‘Pinxit Mea’ written on the back.
• Mr Barbatelli told The Times: ‘We know that Leonardo had ties to a Florentine family, the Segnis, who had property in Acerenza in the Sixteenth Century.’
• Alessandro Vezzosi, director of the Museo Ideale Leonardo da Vinci in the town of Vinci where the artist was born in 1452, said an initial examination showed the painting was a Renaissance era original, not a later copy.
• He said he was investigating whether the painting was by Cristofano dell’Altissimo, who painted the da Vinci portrait in the Uffizi Gallery in Florence.
• Only one self-portrait of da Vinci is believed to be authentic, a red chalk drawing dated from 1512 held at the Biblioteca Reale in Turin.
• On the Museo Ideale website, Professor Vezzosi said the portrait was ‘very interesting in itself, and potentially important as a new element in helping to put together the mosaic of what Leonardo looked like’.
• The authenticity and date of the portrait still has to be established ‘with certainty’ however. The family which owns it has asked to remain anonymous.
• He told the Discovery Channel that the plume on the hat may have been added at a later date, and that one eye appeared to have been repainted.
• ‘I also have some doubts about the mouth,’ he said.
• Mr Barbatelli added: ‘I could see at once it was not Galileo. The posture, the style and technique were reminiscent of the portrait of Leonardo in the Uffizi.’
• The portrait will go on show at the end of March as part of an exhibition on da Vinci at a museum at Vaglio, near Potenza, along with other paintings, drawings and documents loaned from the Museo Ideale.