For people who buy, sell or collect old art, the hope of unearthing a new work by a big name is a motivating dream. And names don’t come much bigger than that of Leonardo da Vinci.

对于买卖和收藏古老艺术品的人们来说，发掘著名大师的未知作品堪称鼓舞人心的梦想，而最有名的大师恐怕莫过于列奥纳多·达·芬奇(Leonardo da Vinci)了。

For eight years, the Canadian collector Peter Silverman, who lives in Paris, has been trying to convince the art world that a drawing of an aristocratic young woman he bought for around $20,000 is a long-lost masterpiece by Leonardo, potentially worth as much as $150 million. Now the controversy surrounding the drawing, “La Bella Principessa,” has taken a new turn. Shaun Greenhalgh, the notorious British art forger who is thought to have created fakes that spanned centuries of art history, has declared it to be his work.

八年来，现居巴黎的加拿大收藏家彼得·席尔瓦曼(Peter Silverman)一直都在试图说服艺术界，自己手上有一幅遗失已久的达·芬奇真迹，这幅贵族年轻女子的肖像名为《美丽的公主》(La Bella Principessa)，是他花大约二万美元买来的，可能价值1.5亿美元。现在，围绕着这幅画作的争议又进入到新的一轮。臭名昭著的英国艺术品伪造者绍恩·格林哈尔(Shaun Greenhalgh)所仿造的赝品跨越艺术史上的几个世纪，如今他声称这幅画是自己的作品。

Mr. Greenhalgh says the subject was not an Italian noblewoman, but a check-out girl named Alison who worked at a supermarket in Bolton outside Manchester in northwest England.

格林哈尔说，图上的女人不是什么意大利贵妇，而是英格兰西北部曼彻斯特市郊外博尔顿某超市内一个名叫艾莉森(Alison)的女收银员。

That sensational claim emerged on Nov. 29 in an article in The Sunday Times by the art critic Waldemar Januszczak, who is part of a consortium that has just published a memoir by Mr. Greenhalgh, “A Forger’s Tale.” Mr. Greenhalgh, who in 2007 was sentenced to four years and eight months in prison on forgery-related charges, was responsible for a number of well-documented fakes, including a Gauguin sculpture of a faun bought by the Art Institute of Chicago and an Egyptian alabaster sculpture of a princess purchased by the Bolton Museum. Now he has added “La Bella Principessa” to the list.

这个耸人听闻的声明出现在11月29日的《星期日泰晤士报》(The Sunday Times)的一篇文章里，作者是艺术评论家瓦尔德马尔·雅努茨扎克(Waldemar Januszczak)，他所隶属的财团刚刚出版了格林哈尔的回忆录《伪造者的故事》(A Forger’s Tale)。格林哈尔因涉及伪造艺术品，于2007年被判入狱四年零八个月。他所仿造的艺术品包括一尊高更的农神雕像，被芝加哥艺术学院购买；以及一尊古埃及公主的大理石像，被波士顿博物馆购买。如今他把《美丽的公主》也加入了这个名单。

Mr. Januszczak says Mr. Greenhalgh was about 20 years old when he made “La Principessa,” while he was working at the supermarket in the late 1970s.

雅努茨扎克说，格林哈尔创作《美丽的公主》时20岁左右，当时是20世纪70年代末期，他在那个超市上班。

“To draw her he says he bought an old land deed that had been written on vellum, and finding the ‘good’ side to be too ink-stained to use, turned it over and drew on the rough side instead, as Leonardo would never have done,” Mr. Januszczak wrote in The Sunday Times.

“他说，为了给她画像，他买来了一张旧地契，是用上等羊皮纸做成的，上面写了字，他发现，纸张‘好’的那一面上有太多墨水字迹，所以就把它翻过来，在粗糙的一面上画画，列奥纳多从来不这么做，”雅努茨扎克在《星期日泰晤士报》的文中写道。

Mr. Greenhalgh was unavailable to comment.

格林哈尔先生未能置评。

“It’s ludicrous and absurd,” Mr. Silverman said in a telephone interview. “It’s shameless that an art historian should stoop to that level to promote his book.”

“这太滑稽，太荒唐了，”席尔瓦曼先生电话采访中说，“一个艺术史学家为了宣传新书，竟然做出这么有失身份的事，真是无耻之极。”

Mr. Silverman said he would pay Mr. Greenhalgh 10,000 pounds, about $15,000, if he could reproduce “La Bella Principessa” on vellum in front of a committee of experts. “And he goes back to jail where he belongs if he doesn’t,” he said.

席尔瓦曼说，他愿意付格林哈尔1万英镑（约合1.5万美元），看他能不能当着一个专家委员会的面，在羊皮纸上重新画出《美丽的公主》来。“要是他画不出来，就回监狱呆着去吧，”他说。

The story of “La Bella Principessa” and its attribution started in January 1998, when Kate Ganz, an art dealer in New York, bought a hea·or $21,850 with fees at Christie’s in New York. Executed in pen, ink, chalk and watercolor on vellum, it was cataloged by Christie’s as “early 19th century, possibly German.”

《美丽的公主》及其作者鉴定的故事始于1998年1月，纽约艺术品交易商凯特·冈兹(Kate Ganz)以21850美元（含交易费）的价格，从纽约佳士得买来了这幅身穿意大利文艺复兴时期服饰的年轻贵族女子的半身侧面像。这幅画以钢笔、墨水、粉笔和水彩在羊皮纸上绘制而成，被佳士得标记为“19世纪初，可能是德国作品。”

Nine years later, in January 2007, Ms. Ganz sold the drawing, which she described as “based on a number of paintings by Leonardo da Vinci and may have been made by a German artist studying in Italy,” to Mr. Silverman for the original purchase price, minus a dealer’s discount.

9年后的2007年1月，冈兹把这幅画以原价减交易商折扣的价格卖给了席尔瓦曼，她当时对它的描述是，“可能是一个在意大利学习的德国艺术家根据一幅列奥纳多·达·芬奇的画临摹的”。

In June 2008, Lumière Technology, a company in Paris that specializes in digital scanning, announced that its analysis had determined that the portrait was by Leonardo. The work was subsequently valued at 100 million by the London art dealer Dickinson, who offered it for sale to selected clients. Timothy Clifford, a director of the National Galleries of Scotland from 1984 to 2006 who joined Dickinson as an adviser in 2007, declared the drawing a genuine Leonardo in an article in The Times of London in October 2009.

2008年6月，法国数码扫描公司“光明技术公司”(Lumière Technology)声称，经分析，公司认为这幅画是出自列奥纳多本人之手。因此，这幅作品被伦敦艺术品交易公司迪金森(Dickinson)标价为一亿英镑，并向高级客户提供这幅作品的出售。蒂莫西·克利福德(Timothy Clifford)于1984年到2006年担任苏格兰国家艺术馆馆长，2007年出任迪金森的顾问，2009年10月，他在《伦敦泰晤士报》上发表文章，认为这幅画是列奥纳多的真迹。

The attribution has also been endorsed by a half-dozen Leonardo scholars. Martin Kemp, an emeritus professor in art history at Oxford University who began researching the work in 2005, was an early convert, identifying the sitter as Bianca Giovanna Sforza, the illegitimate daughter of Ludovico Sforza, the duke of Milan from 1494 to 1499.

这个结论还得到了半打列奥纳多专家的背书。马丁·肯普(Martin Kemp)是牛津大学的艺术史荣退教授，他从2005年开始研究这幅作品，是最早相信它是真迹的人之一，他认为画面上的人是比安卡·乔万娜·斯福尔扎(Bianca Giovanna Sforza)，是于1494年至1499年任米兰公爵的卢多维克·斯福尔扎(Ludovico Sforza)的私生女。

Research by Mr. Kemp and Pascal Cotte, a co-founder of Lumière, suggested that the drawing had been removed from a Sforza family album, now in the National Library in Warsaw, made to celebrate the 1496 marriage of Bianca to the Milanese military commander Galeazzo Sanseverino.

肯普与光明技术公司的联合创建者之一帕斯卡·科特(Pascal Cotte)认为，这幅画是从斯福尔扎家族的画册中被拿出去的，该画册于1496年制作，是为了庆祝比安卡与米兰军事指挥官加里亚佐·桑瑟夫内洛(Galeazzo Sanseverino)的联姻，目前收藏于华沙国家图书馆。

Those developments prompted the owner of the drawing when Christie’s sold it to Ms. Ganz, Jeanne Marchig, the widow of the artist and restorer Giannino Marchig, to sue Christie’s for breaches of fiduciary duty and of warranty, as well as negligence and negligent misrepresentation, claiming they should have known it was a Leonardo.

佳士得把作品出售给冈兹时，该画像的主人是艺术家与艺术品修复家詹尼诺·马奇格(Giannino Marchig)的遗孀珍娜·马奇格(Jeanne Marchig)，因为这一事态的发展，她起诉佳士得公司违反信托与担保责任，以及疏忽和做出草率鉴定，她主张，佳士得本应鉴定出那是列奥纳多的真迹。

The suit was rejected by a United States appeals court in 2011 on the grounds that the statute of limitations had expired. In a separate suit against Christie’s, concerning the loss of the drawing’s frame, Ms. Marchig stated that the drawing had been in her husband’s collection by 1955, long before Mr. Greenhalgh is supposed to have made it.

该诉讼于2011年被美国一上诉法庭以诉讼时效过期而拒绝。在另一项起诉佳士得遗失了这幅作品的边框的诉讼中，马奇格女士指出，这幅画于1955年便归她丈夫所有，远远早于格林哈尔声称的创作时间。

As a Leonardo, “La Bella Principessa” has yet to win over the art establishment. The work has not been shown in any major national museum, and it was not included in the landmark exhibition “Leonardo da Vinci: Painter at the Court of Milan” at the National Gallery in London from November 2011 to February 2012.

艺术界权威尚未彻底认可《美丽的公主》是列奥纳多的真迹。这幅作品还未在任何大型国家级博物馆展出，2011年11月至2012年2月于伦敦国家博物馆举办的重大展览“列奥纳多·达·芬奇：米兰宫廷时期画作”(Leonardo da Vinci: Painter at the Court of Milan)也没有收入这幅作品。

That show did, however, include a recently rediscovered Leonardo, “Christ as Salvator Mundi,” circa 1499, which was bought in 2013 by the Russian collector Dmitry E. Rybolovlev for $127.5 million from Yves Bouvier, a Swiss businessman and art dealer.

不过，那次展览确实收入了一幅新近发现的列奥纳多作品：《救世主基督》(Chirist as Salvator Mundi)，创作时间约在1499年，是2013年俄罗斯收藏家德米特里·E·雷波诺列夫(Dmitry E. Rybolovlev)以1.275亿美元从瑞士商人与艺术交易商伊夫·布维尔(Yves Bouvier)手中买下的。

Mr. Rybolovlev sued Mr. Bouvier after discovering that he had paid the sellers, the New York dealers Alexander Parish and Robert Simon, between $75 million and $80 million for the work.

后来雷波诺列夫发现，为这幅作品，布维尔只付给卖主纽约交易商亚历山大·巴利什(Alexander Parish)与罗伯特·西蒙(Robert Simon)7500万到8000万美元左右，便对布维尔发起了诉讼。

Last Tuesday, meanwhile, Kasia Pisarek, an independent art historian who specializes in attribution, became the latest scholar to make a case against a Leonardo “Principessa.” In a paper presented at a conference in London, she ran down a checklist of what she termed “inconsistencies” — the lack of any documentation or copies, the presence of just three stitch-holes in the side of the vellum sheet ( the Sforza volume in Warsaw has five) and what she saw as anatomically incorrect quality of the drawing itself.

上周二，专门鉴定艺术品作者的独立艺术史学家卡西娅·皮萨莱克(Kasia Pisarek)成了最新一位为列奥纳多的《美丽的公主》发起诉讼的学者。她在伦敦的一次听证会上呈送文件，列举了这份作品的“矛盾清单”——它没有任何相关文件记载，也没有复制品、羊皮纸边上只有三个装订孔（华沙收录的斯福尔扎家族画册有五个装订孔），还有她眼中其他一些不符合真迹特质的细节。

Her conclusion was that “the present attribution to Leonardo must be deemed unreliable.”

她的结论是，“列奥纳多是作者这个结论是站不住脚的。”

The drawing itself is at the Geneva Freeport storage warehouse and is not for sale, Mr. Silverman said, who added that in 2012 he had been offered $60 million for it but had rejected the offer. “I want the drawing to be shown all over the world so that people can decide for themselves,” he said. “But the experts who won’t accept it have refused to see it. Bureaucrats don’t like to take a chance. They’re afraid of controversy.”

席尔瓦曼先生说，这幅画作目前被存放在日内瓦自由港，不做出售之用，他还补充说，2012年，有人曾经出价6000万美元，但被他拒绝了。“我希望这幅画能在全世界展出，让人们自己来判断，”他说，“但是那些不接受它的专家们拒绝看它。官僚主义者们不愿把握机会，他们害怕争议。”

By various accounts, then, it would seem that “La Bella Principessa” is either a real Leonardo worth tens of millions; a 19th-century Italian Renaissance style drawing worth tens of thousands; or a modern fake worth hardly anything at all.

出于种种原因，这幅《美丽的公主》要么就是价值数千万的列奥纳多真迹；要么就是价值数万美元的19世纪意大利文艺复兴风格作品；再不就是一文不值的现代赝品。

But adding characters like Shaun Greenhalgh and Alison from the supermarket into the mix will liven up the debate — and make it ever more difficult to discern what the scientifically minded Leonardo would have recognized as the truth.

但是随着绍恩·格林哈尔与“超市艾莉森”等人卷入混战，争议无疑进一步升级了；列奥纳多是个相信科学的人，如今，要找到他渴求的真相，更是难上加难。