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Mark Booth has made his first acquisition since joining Hodder & Stoughton, snapping up world rights, excluding Italy, to Leonardo's La Bella Principessa by art historian Martin Kemp.
United Agents' Caroline Dawnay brokered the deal, for "a good sum", late last week. The book will be published under the H&S imprint, rather than Booth's as-yet-unnamed new venture, and is due out next spring, coinciding with an exhibition of the painting, which Kemp has definitively identified as being by Leonardo Da Vinci.
Dawnay said the identification of the painting as one by the Renaissance artist was "the most important art history discovery for 100 years". She added: "The book is about the painting—about the sitter, the date of the picture and how it fits with others by Leonardo, and the detective work that went into [attributing it to Da Vinci] . . . It will have wide appeal because the picture is just so utterly beautiful. When people think of Leonardo, a picture swims into their minds . . . and one will never think of him again without thinking of this picture."
On identifying the picture, Kemp, emeritus professor of the history of art at Oxford University, said he thought it was "too good to be true". But eventually "all the bits fell into place like a well-made piece of furniture". The sitter is thought to be the daughter of Ludovico Sforza, duke of Milan.
Dawnay added: "[The acquisition] is extremely exciting . . . Mark's not a known editor in this field, but the world is his oyster inside Hodder and it's possible he will publish the book even before he launches his own imprint."
Booth said: "To discover a new work of art by Leonardo da Vinci, who left us so little but dilated the human imagination so much, is a truly historic event, and it is wonderful to have the top Leonardo expert and the man who authenticated the portrait, to tell us its story, how it suddenly came to light, what it tells us about Leonardo's world and the tragic story of the beautiful young woman who inspired him."