Recent scans of a painting by Leonardo Da Vinci revealed the master artist tried three times to get the picture right. There are enough differences in each "version" for historians to gather valuable information not only on Da Vinci's technique, but also fashions of the Renaissance. The work currently hangs in Wawel Castle in Poland.

Like Us on Facebook

"Lady With An Ermine," painted circa 1490, is a portrait of Cecilia Gallerani, mistress to Da Vinci's then-patron, Ludovico Sforza, the married Duke of Milan. Seated against a black backdrop, the young woman is dressed in red with a blue cloak and orientated to the viewer's left, although she gazes over her shoulder to the viewer's right. Her distinctive hair style, known as a coazone, smooths her hair to her head with two bands of hair bound on either side of her face and a braid down the back, all held in place by a fine gold-threaded gauze veil and a black band.

Central to the composition is the ermine (also known as a stoat) she cradles in her arms. Associated with purity and moderation, ermine pelts were often used to trim royal garments and are still used in modern-day heraldry.

Using a technology called the Layer Amplification Method (LAM) to analyse each addition to the oil painting as it was rendered, French optical engineer Pascal Cotte discovered the the different stages Da Vinci took as the work materialized. 

"The LAM technique gives us the capability to peel the painting like an onion, removing the surface to see what's happening inside and behind the different layers of paint," Cotte explained to the BBC. "We've discovered that Leonardo is always changing his mind. This is someone who hesitates -- he erases things, he adds things, he changes his mind again and again."

Most art experts believe the painting was touched up over the years, long after Da Vinci finished the portrait. This in turn begs the question of what the original work was.

"Lady with an Ermine" is one of only four paintings Da Vinci did where the sole subject was a woman. It was long postulated that the flat black background, a marked departure from Da Vinci's usually ornate backdrops, hid a scene that had been ruined by a later restoration and simply covered up.

The scan revealed the original version not only was against a black wall, but was a fairly direct portrait of Gallerani in a red dress and coazone, but with no cloak or ermine. In the second rendition, the cloak is added on, as is a somewhat slightly-built ermine in its gray summer coat. Da Vinci changed Gallerani's posture in order to show her holding the feisty animal.

In the final version of the painting, Da Vinci switched the ermine's summer pelt with its more distinctive white fur that only appears in the winter molt and a more muscular physiology.

Da Vinci was a notorious perfectionist, and was as famous for his works as for being unable to know when to stop.

Also speaking to the BBC, Martin Kemp, a professor of history of art at Oxford University, said Cotte's scans represented a "remarkable" revelation.

"It tells us a lot more about the way Leonardo's mind worked when he was doing a painting," he said. "It helps explain why he had so much difficulty finishing paintings." 

TagsLady with an Ermine, Da Vinci