Nude Mona Lisa - sort of...

I suppose everyone will blog this, so it's clearly not a "TYWK..." but it's still odd enough that I thought I would store it for future reference. As depicted in the photo, the painting looks like a parody, but the details at MSNBC (and elsewhere) indicate that it is presumed to be a true Renaissance painting, and a possible DaVinci:

The newly revealed painting, hidden for almost a century within the wood wall of a private library, shows a portrait of a half-naked woman with clear links to the famous (and clothed) Mona Lisa.

The work, which documents suggest was at least based on never-seen similar work by da Vinci, is now on exhibit at the Museo Ideale in the Tuscan town of Vinci, where da Vinci was born in 1452…

"The frontal look, the position of the hands, the spatial conception of the landscape, with columns at the sides, show a clear link with the Mona Lisa's iconographic theme," Alessandro Vezzosi, director of the museum, told Discovery News.

The naked portrait once belonged to Napoleon's uncle, Cardinal Joseph Fesch (1763-1839) and was ensconced within the wood walls of Fesch's private library for nearly a century, before trading more hands within the Napoleon family…

The documentation from the painting's original purchase is not enough to verify the work is by da Vinci, himself. The nude portrait will now undergo scientific and artistic investigations in an attempt to date the work and determine its author. Even if it is not by da Vinci (and it likely isn't, experts say), it may be based on a lost original by the artist himself.

"I think it is very likely that Leonardo da Vinci conceived a naked Mona Lisa," leading da Vinci scholar Carlo Pedretti, director of the Armand Hammer Center for Leonardo Studies at the University of California at Los Angeles, told Discovery News…

According to Vezzosi, the original naked Mona might have been part of a series of erotic portraits by da Vinci and his pupils, which were never really shown because they were considered inappropriate…

"Our quest for naked Mona Lisa's continues. We are now on the tracks of another interesting version in Las Vegas," Vezzosi said.

More at the MSNBC link. I rechecked the story twice to make sure it didn't have an April 1 dateline. The final sentence (looking for another version in Las Vegas??) sounds more like a hunt for dogs playing poker painted on black velvet than a search for a DaVinci, but perhaps there's a real one forfeited by a Count or Emir in payment for a gambling debt.

Dan Brown, are you reading this?