National Gallery accused of altering Leonardo attribution for loan

Martin Kemp, professor emeritus at Oxford University and a leading Renaissance scholar, has accused the National Gallery in London of changing the attribution of the Madonna Litta to secure a loan from the Hermitage Museum in St. Petersburg for its 2011-2012 exhibition Leonardo da Vinci: Painter at the Court of Milan. The painting, dating from the 1490s, is traditionally attributed to Leonardo's pupil Giovanni Antonio Boltraffio, based on a design by Leonardo. Kemp stated in The Art Newspaper that the National Gallery, whose curators previously agreed with the majority of experts that the work was by Boltraffio, altered the attribution because the Hermitage insisted it be cataloged as a Leonardo. Tatiana Kustodieva, curator at the Hermitage, cataloged the Madonna Litta as a Leonardo from 1491-95, citing "indisputable evidence." Luke Syson, then curator at the National Gallery (now at the Metropolitan Museum of Art), acknowledged differing views in the exhibition catalog but avoided stating his own opinion. Kemp also noted an inconsistency: a drapery study for the Madonna Litta was cataloged as by Boltraffio in the same exhibition, which could confuse viewers.