Second Mona Lisa may have been painted at the same time as the original

She is not the Mona Lisa, but you might think of her as Mona Lisa’s sister, who – after more than 500 years – is finally having her debutante party.

The Art Newspaper has reported that conservators at the Prado in Madrid now believe that a copy of the Mona Lisa in the museum’s collection that was long thought to have been executed much later than the original may have been made by a student of Leonardo as Leonardo was creating the masterpiece.

Conservators compared infrared images of the Prado’s copy with ones taken in 2004 from the original in the Louvre and found that the under-drawing of the replica closely resembled that of the original before it was finished, suggesting that the copy may have been made at the same time and that the two works were painted next to each other, as the work evolved in the early years of the 16th century.

The discovery, which was announced at a conference in January in London, was made after conservators removed black over-painting from the copy to reveal a landscape background similar to the one in the original.

The replica is scheduled to go on view at the Prado by the middle of February. Officials at the museum said the discovery was important chiefly for what the copy might say about the original, whose surface has been somewhat obscured since its creation. The Art Newspaper reported that the restored copy shows more detail of the spindles of the chair in the painting, the frill on the edge of the fabric on Mona Lisa’s chest and the semi-transparent veil around her left shoulder, arm and elbows.

http://artsbeat.blogs.nytimes.com/2012/02/01/prados-mona-lisa-copy-may-have-been-made-in-tandem-with-original/