New Leonardo portrait discovered?

A new alleged self-portrait of Leonardo da Vinci has been recently discovered by medieval historian Nicola Barbatelli in the archives of a wealthy southern Italian family at Acerenza.

The oil portrait, which would be only the second known self-portrait by da Vinci (the other being a red chalk drawing at the Biblioteca Reale in Turin), was originally though to be a portrait of Galileo. Barbatelli thinks that there are some later additions and some repainting in the work and that "it's date and provenance still have to be established with certainty," but the work will still be exhibited at a show about da Vinci later this month.

I have to say, I'm very skeptical about this. Barbatelli seems to base most of his "discovery" (of an already known painting, I might add) on extremely subjective criteria, saying that "the posture, the sytle and technique were reminiscent of the portrait of Leonardo in the Uffizi." While stylistic analysis is in many cases a necessary evil in determining an attribution, significant futher tests and expertise is needed here. Renaissance artists were skilled copyists, and simply "reminiscent" won't cut it when trying to prove this was actually by da Vinci's own hand. Barbatelli's jump to attribute this painting to such an iconic artist as da Vinci, considering the rarity of self-portraits by the artist, seems like quite a jump.

It will be interesting to see what reaction this gets from art historians and da Vinci experts, and if this yields a closer stylistic analysis, more specific dating, and some concrete evidence of da Vinci's connections to southern Italy. I'll keep my eyes peeled for future developments.