The Isleworth Mona Lisa: Leonardo's prequel, or a later copy of La Gioconda?

It is the world’s most famous smile, in the world’s most famous painting – but it may not be unique.

Experts claim to have confirmed that an earlier version, unearthed last year, is also the work of Leonardo da Vinci.

The so-called Isleworth Mona Lisa, which shows a significantly younger subject, may be several years older than its more famous counterpart.

The Mona Lisa, which has been on display in the Louvre in Paris for three centuries, has long been regarded as the only one painted by the Italian master.

But recent tests have shown that the other portrait is almost certainly da Vinci’s work, according to a Swiss-based art foundation.
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She is older than the rocks among which she sits; like the vampire, she has been dead many times, and learned the secrets of the grave; and has been a diver in deep seas, and keeps their fallen day about her; and trafficked for strange webs with Eastern merchants: and, as Leda, was the mother of Helen of Troy, and, as Saint Anne, the mother of Mary; and all this has been to her but as the sound of lyres and flutes, and lives only in the delicacy with which it has moulded the changing lineaments, and tinged the eyelids and the hands.

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