The "Beautiful Princess" (La Bella Principessa) is probably a drawing made in the 1490s, which was recently attributed to the Italian artist Leonardo da Vinci. This may be a portrait of Bianca Sforza, an illegitimate daughter of Ludovico Maria Sforza, then Duke of Milan.

The colorful drawing was created on parchment with pen, ink and chalk in three different colors and raised on oak wood in the course of their history. Small puncture holes on the edge indicate that she was originally involved in a book. This was probably the Warsaw Sforziad, from which the drawing was later removed for unknown reasons. For Leonardo da Vinci as the author speak, among other things, the proportions of the portrait, which follow the aesthetic rules that it has defined in his records. Members of the Sforza family were always portrayed in profile and the clothes depicted correspond to the Milanese fashion of the 1490s.

The "Beautiful Princess" was first offered by Christie's in 1998 as a 19th century German drawing and sold for a price of $ 21,850. In 2008, another sale followed at a similar price, this time to the Canadian art collector Peter Silverman. He did some tests because he assumed that the portrait was a 15th century drawing. After a radiocarbon test seemed to confirm his suspicions, Silverman contacted da Vinci experts, who eventually attributed the drawing to da Vinci. Since the publication of the test results, the work has been at the center of a public debate about its authenticity, and the validity of some of the other tests has been partially questioned by the press. While the theory of the origin of the drawing has been repeatedly confirmed and rejected by experts, various sources have since valued their value at over $ 100 million.

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Beautiful Princess by Leonardo da Vinci. Available as an art print on canvas, photo paper, watercolor board, uncoated paper or Japanese paper.
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