Controversy around the Virgin with the Laughing Child
The masterpiece The Virgin with the Laughing Child has always been attributed to the Florentine master Antonio Rossellino (1427-1479), but a recent study sees Leonardo da Vinci’s hand (1452-1479), which would make this work one of the few sculptures by the creator of the Mona Lisa to have survived.
The news was published in The Guardian on March 9, 2019; the Italian expert Francesco Caglioti, a Neopolitan specialist on the Italian Renaissance, is convinced that the sculpture exposed in the Strozzi Palace was sculpted by Leonardo da Vinci.
This contradicts the work of John Pope-Henessy, former director of the Victoria and Albert Museum, who attributed The Virgin with the Laughing Child to Antonio Rossellino, a famous Florentine sculptor influenced by Donatello’s style. According to Francesco Caglioti, Leonardo most likely sculpted The Virgin with the Laughing Child in Andrea Del Verrochio’s workshop around the age of twenty, towards 1472.
The expert offers several arguments to support his theory: the style of the Virgin’s robe, the smile of the Child Jesus, and a few sketches of children’s smiles by Leonardo that have been preserved.
The battle between experts has only just begun: if the Neapolitan professor’s theory is proven, the masterpiece exhibited in the Strozzi Palace will be one of the very few sculptures of the Tuscan artist to have been identified.
Sources: The Guardian / FSSPX.News – 3/21/2019
