The Lure of Leonardo

Abstract

In the summer of 1920 the New York World reported that Sir Joseph Duveen, the self-avowed most powerful art dealer in the world, had dismissed as a copy or fake a recently imported work that claimed to be the original La Belle Ferroniere by Leonardo da Vinci (fig. 1). He poured scorn on the French expert who had authenticated the picture, and he asserted that the true, original La Belle Ferroniere was in the Louvre in Paris (fig. 2). The owners of the picture, Andree and Harry Hahn of Junction City, Kansas, sued Duveen in the New York courts for slander of title, claiming that Duveen's remarks not only made it impossible for them to complete a sale that was already being negotiated with the Kansas City An Institute, but to sell the picture at all.

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