Following the publication of his latest book, The Gioconda Lost and Recovered, Gérard Boudin de l’Arche explains:
“It is the excellent TV show by the BBC “Secrets of the Mona Lisa” presented by Andrew Graham Dixon which sparked my interest in the Gioconda portrait, because this show was able to reveal one of those secrets : there was evidence of the existence of another portrait of the Gioconda painted by the Italian master. Therefore a sort of police investigation through the past had to be undertaken both in Italy and France to find out.
Pieces of evidence, some very recent, led me to focus on a portrait rediscovered in England at the beginning of last century, improperly named “the Isleworth Gioconda“. There were two paintings and two sponsors : Giuliano de Medici and Francesco del Giocondo. The Isleworth painting was the first one begun in 1499 or 1500. The second one some years later. No less than two stages of inquiries were necessary to bring about the essay The Gioconda lost and recovered which tells, the very likely, up-to-date story of those two portraits. So we may confirm now that two portraits appeared to have been painted by Leonardo : actually one in the Louvre Museum in Paris, the second (or, really, the first) the ‘Earlier Mona Lisa‘ as presented by the Mona Lisa Foundation. ”