The damaged oil-on-panel portrait was discovered by Nicola Barbatelli, a medieval historian, while he was researching the archive and picture collection of an aristocratic family at Acerenza (population 3,000), an ancient village perched on a rock above the river Bradano near Potenza in the southern Italian region of Basilicata. Mr Barbatelli, who found the painting by chance while researching the history of the Templar Knights and the First Crusade, told The Times that although Leonardo came from Vinci in Tuscany and worked in Florence and Milan, he was known to have visited Basilicata. Alessandro Vezzosi, director of the Museo Ideale Leonardo da Vinci at Vinci, where the artist was born in 1452, said initial examination of the painting showed it was a Renaissance era original and not a later copy. Announcing the discovery on the Museo Ideale website, Professor Vezzosi said that the newly found portrait was “very interesting in itself, and potentially important as a new element in helping to put together the mosaic of what Leonardo looked like. The portrait is to go on show at the end of next month as part of an exhibition on Leonardo at a recently opened museum at Vaglio, near Potenza, together with other paintings, drawings and documents loaned from the Museo Ideale.

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