Restored da Vinci back on show

Maev Kennedy

London: One of the U.K. National Gallery's most precious paintings, Leonardo da Vinci's Virgin of the Rocks, will go back on display on Wednesday after an 18-month conservation project revealed details lost for a lifetime under a coat of darkening varnish.

The conservation work has convinced the gallery's experts that their painting, a later version of one in the Louvre in Paris, is entirely by Leonardo, one of the greatest geniuses of the Italian Renaissance — and not, as previously thought, partly by his small factory of assistants. The study also established it was never fully finished.

The painting has been in the National Gallery collection since 1880 but its uneven finish — with some areas, such as the faces, complete and others, including the angel's hand, barely sketched in — always puzzled scholars. The mystery deepened in 2005, when X-ray and infrared photography revealed not one, but two, very different underdrawings.

The work was done in the gallery's own conservation studio, after extensive discussion with experts in other countries, including at the Louvre. Conservation work on old masters is a contentious subject, irreparable damage having been done in the past using now discredited methods. However, the curator, Luke Syson, and director of conservation, Larry Keith, argued it was essential to tackle the Leonardo because the varnish applied in 1948 was unstable and yellowing, and was trapping dirt in fine surface cracking.

Although the picture keeps its sombre, even eerie, atmosphere, Guardian art critic Jonathan Jones describes it as appearing “freed from an amber prison”. — © Guardian Newspapers Limited, 2010