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DOWNING COLLEGE ASSOCIATIONa real crisis in the world of attribution, in that we have no method of integratingand evaluating the old skills of connoisseurship with the growing bodies ofscientific evidence.We now know, about as certainly as we could ever hope, that the portrait onparchment was cut from a Milanese book printed on vellum and now in theNational Library in Warsaw. I was pointed in this direction by D R EdwardWright, the American scholar. The version of the Sforziad in Poland wasspecifically produced for the marriage of Bianca, Duke Ludovico’s illegitimatedaughter, to his military commander, Galeazzo Sanseverino in 1496. Galeazzois a known patron of Leonardo. The text of the presentation volume praisesthe life and deeds of Francesco Sforza, the founder of the Milanese dynasty.Tragically, the thirteen-year-old Bianca survived her marriage by only threemonths. Everything fits: the size of the vellum sheet is right; the vellum matchesclosely that in the book; there are three pages missing from the Sforziad; andthe stitch holes still visible along the margin of the portrait match. But, for afew, it still “does not look like Leonardo”.The moral is that how knowledge emerges, especially in a world where manymillions of pounds are at stake, has a huge impact on how it is received. Mynext trade book is to be called Living with Leonardo. There will be plenty ofpicturesque stories, but also a serious purpose. Knowledge and its reception ispowerfully conditioned by the context and means through which it emerges,and by the personalities and vested interests of those involved. The issue ofvested interests is why I never have any financial involvement with the processor with the owners.The Leonardo Loonies keep coming but it is a small price to pay for gettingto know Leonardo da Vinci.Martin Kemp (1960)39