A curator at the Louvre Museum in Paris has stumbled upon some unknown drawings on the back of a painting by Leonardo da Vinci that look like they might be by the Italian master himself. The extraordinary find was made by chance, when Louvre staff unhooked Leonardo’s ‘The Virgin and Child with Saint Anne’ from the museum wall as part of a broad programme of study and restoration of paintings by Leonardo, including the ‘Mona Lisa’. It was such an astonishing discovery that other Louvre staff present at the time could not believe it and initially said the marks on the wood must be stains. After the initial find, the museum conducted detailed tests on the back of the painting. It said the drawings recalled some of Leonardo’s known works and suggested that the child and lamb could have been sketches for the painting on the other side of the piece of wood.

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