A New Da Vinci Code?

At this point,we have only a tantalising mysteryperhaps the unspooling of a new Da Vinci codedangling on the slender thread of secrets and a handful of clues that emerged this week:

n The Washington Post receives a tip from an anonymous source that the Museum of Fine Arts,Boston,has a painting believed to be by the Italian master,and is authenticating it.

n We called Frederick Ilchman,the Boston museums Renaissance curator. Does he have such a painting? Cant tell you anything about it,sorry, he says,before hanging up. (Do we detect a yes in that click?)

n We try Katie Getchell,the museums curatorial deputy director. Her spokeswoman says: We dont comment on works that the MFA may be studying or considering for acquisition.

n We ask Renaissance painting expert Miguel Falomir Faus if he knows anything about the painting. He reveals in an e-mail that New York University art history professor Alex Nagel talked (to) me about the new Da Vinci. Faus adds,however,I have not seen the work.

n Nagel stirs the pot further with his own e-mail: How can I comment on a painting I havent seen? Do you have a photo?

No,we dont have a photo. We have an imagination,though,and its taken off for some beautifully lit marbled hall,where we stand before a swirl of pigmenta plump infant? another half-smile under almond eyes?from the enchanted left hand of da Vinci himself.

Why does da Vinci fascinate us so,500 years after his death? For one thing,his outsize talents raced in all directions. A tinkerer and a polymath,he was a sculptor,architect,inventor,scientist,writer and musician in addition to being a painter,and you could slap a few more titles in there as well.

He went highbrow and low: he crafted parade floats and cathedral domes,designed helicopters far ahead of their time. He gave the world its best-known religious painting,The Last Supper.

His paintings brought him the most renown. Among them: the instantly recognisable Mona Lisa,two Virgin of the Rocks,a St. Jerome in the Wilderness,an Adoration of the Magiworks without precedent for their innovative varnishing and binding techniques,their perfect replication of muscle,bone and human expression,their delicate tones.

A da Vinci discovery made news in October,when a drawing thought to be that of an unknown 19th-century German artist was attributed to the Italian master,and valued at more than $150 million. But doubts remain among some experts about its authenticity. Stamping any new finding as definitively da Vincis would be exceedingly difficult,says John Brewer,author of The American Leonardo: A Tale of Obsession,Art and Money.

We all have this fantasy that weve gotten better and better at authenticating, he says. But the new technologiesforensics,infrared imaging and so on will only tell you whether its not by someone. But to be able to say yes as opposed to saying no depends on the cultured eye of the expert. And thats intuitive.