Focus on this artwork and analyze the The fingerprint dispute.
Pascal Cotte of Lumière Technology in Paris performed a multi-spectral digital scan of the work. The high resolution images were used by Peter Paul Biro, a forensic art examiner who studied a fingerprint on the vellum which he said was "highly comparable" to a fingerprint on Leonardo's unfinished St. Jerome in the Wilderness. In 2010 David Grann published an article about the drawing in The New Yorker, which implied that Biro had been involved with forged paintings attributed to Jackson Pollock.Biro consequently sued the writer and the publisher of the New Yorker Advance Media for defamation in 2011. The judge in the case, J. Paul Oetken, ruled that the article contained eight instances that were capable of a defamatory meaning. He eventually dismissed the case on a technicality arguing that Biro was a limited purpose public figure. An appeals court supported the initial judgment. The New Yorker article was republished in 2018 and Biro sued the New Yorker again for republication of a potentially defamatory article. The case is before the court and a ruling is expected. Biro is an analyst and not an "authenticator". He continues to practice art analytics as he has for the past 40 years.The fingerprint evidence is not cited in the revised Italian edition of the book by Kemp and Cotte or in any of Kemp's subsequent publications. The story of the research and attribution is told in Kemp's Living with Leonardo.
David Grann vellum St. Jerome in the Wilderness The New Yorker Peter Paul Biro multi-spectral digital scan fingerprint forensic J. Paul Oetken