1202 - Leonardo da Vinci, nach

Leonardo da Vinci, nach Leonardo da Vinci, copy after Mona Lisa Oil on canvas (relined). 80 x 54 cm. Provenance Collection Lyversberg, Cologne. – Collection Virnich, Bonn. - Lempertz, „Sammlung Jakob Johann Lyversberg“, Cologne, 26.5.1971, lot 49. – Since then in private collection, Germany in third generation. Literature Ch. S. Schier: Beschreibung einiger Gemälde der Lyversberg‘schen Sammlung zu Cöln, in: Colonia 14 (1.11.1822), p. 54. - K. G. Jacob, M. J. De Noel u. J. J. Nöggerath: Köln und Bonn mit ihren Umgebungen, Köln 1828, S. 101. - Catalog der Lyversberg‘schen Gemälde-Sammlung in Cöln, Cologne 1837, lot 62. - F. Kugler: Die Lyversberg’sche Gemäldesammlung, in: Museum. Blätter für bildende Kunst 46, V. (1837), p. 362. - S. Mädger: Jakob Johann Nepomuk Lyversberg, Kaufmann und Kunstsammler, in: Exhib.-Cat.: Cologne 1995: Lust und Verlust. Kölner Sammler zwischen Trikolore und Preußenadler, Josef-Haubrich-Kunsthalle, Köln 1995, p. 200f. - H. Kier and F. G. Zehnder (Ed.): Lust und Verlust II. Corpus-Band zu Kölner Gemäldesammlungen 1800-1860, Köln 1998, p. 223, no. 62. ‘Portrait of a graceful, utterly charming woman; by Leonardo da Vinci’ – this is how Christian Samuel Schier described the present painting in 1822 in the journal Colonia. At the time, the work belonged to the Lyversberg Collection, which Schier presented in detail for the first time in this and two further articles. Jakob Johann Nepomuk Lyversberg (1761–1834) was a Cologne-based tobacco and wine merchant who built up a significant art collection, which he made accessible to visitors from afar at his home on Cologne’s Heumarkt, including the Crown Princes of the Netherlands and Prussia, as well as Karl Friedrich Schinkel, Friedrich Schlegel, Johanna Schopenhauer and, in 1815, probably also Johann Wolfgang von Goethe. They are all therefore likely to have seen this painting, which, according to Schier—who still regarded it as an autograph work by Leonardo da Vinci—found its way from Italy into the Lyversberg collection. Following Lyversberg’s death in 1834, the initial plan was to auction off the collection, including this painting (‘Portrait of Mona Lisa, wife of Franz del Giocondo / Leonardo da Vinci’). However, after the auction catalogue had already been compiled and printed in German, English and French, the collector’s four daughters withdrew the paintings and divided them amongst themselves. It was not until 1971, following the death of the last descendant, Christine Virnich, that this highly significant collection was finally auctioned at Lempertz. Works from this provenance are now held, amongst others, at the Wallraf-Richartz Museum in Cologne – including the Lyversberg Altarpiece by the Master of the Lyversberg Altarpiece, so named provisionally after this work – the Musées Royaux des Beaux-Arts in Brussels, the Musée du Louvre in Paris, the National Trust in London and the Norton Simon Foundation in Pasadena.