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DOWNING COLLEGE ASSOCIATIONOne week I received two. The best of them are paintings by the host of followersand imitators. Leonardo was copied and pastiched like no other painter. Mostare no-hopers from considerably later that bear no close relationship toLeonardo at all. Sometimes they come with fat files of technical examinationthat tell us nothing of value and, of course, they are frequently diagnosed asbeing full of codes.There are also the deliberate forgeries. With Leonardo drawings fetching aminimum of £10 million, the attraction is obvious. One the cleverest is a sheetof engineering drawings that emerged from under the end-papers of an 18thcenturybook. The style of the drawings was impressive, as were the notes thataccompanied them, but the machines were incoherent in form and function.Then, hugely against expectations, two major discoveries came alongtogether. Nothing like them has emerged for over a century. I will forgo the jokeabout London buses. Both crossed my path five years ago. One, the SalvatorMundi that made its public debut at the National Gallery in London duringthe mobbed Leonardo show, has won a notable degree of acceptance. The other,a profile portrait on vellum of a very young lady, which I christened La BellaPrincipessa and which we now know represents Bianca Sforza, had provedmightily controversial.Salvator Mundi.La Bella Principessa.37