A group of historians claim Leonardo da Vinci painted the work, dubbed¹ the 'Early Mona Lisa', more than a decade before his masterpiece portrait and depicted² the same Italian merchant's wife.

 

It was unearthed³ before the First World War but lay hidden in a Swiss bank vault⁴ for 40 years, while a consortium carried out secret tests before unveiling it in 2012 - though many experts still insist it was one of a litany of inferior copies.

 

Today, as the painting's first public exhibition was unveiled in Singapore, the Swiss-based Mona Lisa Foundation claimed it has discovered new details about the painting's past which strengthen the view it is by Da Vinci.

 

It was already known that it was bought from a Somerset aristocrat⁵ in 1913 by English art dealer⁶ Hugh Blaker, who kept it in his studio in Isleworth, south west London, before selling it to American Henry Pulitzer in the 1960s. Before that, however, the painting's journey was a murky⁷ one.

 

Now the Foundation claims it has identified strong evidence that the Somerset home where the painting was bought in 1913 could be Montacute House - one of England's finest Elizabethan mansions⁸ now run by the National Trust.

 

The claim, seen by the Reuters news agency, would fit if true. The Phelips family which owned Montacute fell on hard times and secretly sold their possessions just before the First World War, leaving the manor⁹ in 1911.

 

In 1915 the house was taken over by future Foreign Secretary Lord Curzon, and it was later put up for sale in 1929. By 1931 it was so dilapidated that it was being valued ‘for scrap’ at £5,882.

 

Diaries kept by Blaker - who tried several times unsuccessfully to have the painting authenticated¹⁰ - were lost, but the researchers say the brief references which remain to the house indicate it was Montacute.

 

Now that the house has been restored, it was used as a filming location for the 1995 version of Sense and Sensibility starring Emma Thompson and Hugh Grant, and its Long Gallery houses more than 60 Tudor and Elizabethan portraits on loan from the National Portrait Gallery in London.

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