Is The girl with the blue flower the last painting of Leonardo da Vinci? This true story begins with the discovery of the enigmatic painting entitled The Girl with the Dead Bird, which can be seen in the Gallery of Ancient Painters on the first floor of the Royal Museums of Belgium in Brussels. This little painting is indeed a real enigma in the history of art because, until now, experts have never understood who this little girl is, with her moving and lost look in the distance, holding a dead bird in her hands. Also, until now, this painting could never be attributed to a painter with certainty, for several reasons, including repentances, which further accentuate the mystery.
Through a historical and pictorial investigation that takes us back to 1515 and beyond, Alexandre Bereczki reveals the identity of this young princess who was promised a great future, and also her tragic secret, which remained buried for centuries. However, it is thanks to another painting that the author was able to recognise her and bring her back to life. Extraordinarily, this other painting first called The girl with the blue flower, long hidden in a double-bottomed cupboard away from prying eyes, is one of Leonardo's missing paintings and looks to be the last one painted by the Florentine master at the end of his life, in Amboise, at the Chateau du Cloux. Thus, Leonardo knew "the girl with the dead bird" and even painted her portrait. Several technical details prove this, as the author explains in detail. These two paintings are inseparable, as one sheds light on the other and vice versa; they are each the pictorial testimony and the mysterious key, from a symbolic point of view, to a tragic historical circumstance.
This story is the story of a girl "like no other" in many ways. It is not only the story of the unveiling of her identity, thanks to the existence of two fascinating paintings, but also the revelation of a family secret which, at the time of the girl's life, was skilfully concealed by royal protocol and which, for this reason, has remained buried in the limbo of time and oblivion, until today.
