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500-year mystery finally solved as gallery reveals lady in its masterpiece is femme fatal Lucrezia Borgia

Her name has gone down in history as a byword for murder and debauchery.

But Lucrezia Borgia’s face has always remained shrouded in myth and mystery. But an art historian has claimed to have solved the puzzle.

A painting owned by the National Gallery of Victoria in Australia has been identified as a portrait of the notorious Italian Renaissance noblewoman painted by the artist Dosso Dossi.

The National Gallery of Victoria paid £8,000 for the painting (right) in London in 1963. Back then it was known only as ‘Portrait of a Youth by an unknown northern Italian painter’.

Now, in the words of gallery director Gerard Vaughan, it is worth ‘many, many millions’.

It took two years of scientific analysis and research in Italy, Australia and the U.S. for the gallery’s art curator Carl Villis to confirm that the person gazing sullenly from the painting was Lucrezia Borgia, painted by Giovanni di Niccolo de Luteri, better known as Dosso Dossi, a contemporary of Titian, Raphael and Michelangelo...
Read entire article at Daily Mail (UK)