In 100 years, a Da Vinci comes to light

TORONTO/PARIS: Art experts believe they have identified a new Leonardo da Vinci - in part by examining a fingerprint on the canvas.

A picture released on Tuesday by Paris-based Luminere Technology laboratory shows a detail of a portrait of a young lady, which could be a piece of Italian artist Leonardo da Vinci. The Paris laboratory found the fingerprint (top left) 'highly comparable' to one on a Da Vinci work in the Vatican, which was painted early in the artist's career.[Agencies]

Peter Paul Biro, a Montreal-based forensic art expert, said on Tuesday that a fingerprint on what was presumed to be a 19th-century German painting of a young woman has convinced art experts that it's actually a Da Vinci.

Canadian-born art collector Peter Silverman bought Profile of the Bella Principessa at the Ganz gallery in New York on behalf of an anonymous Swiss collector in 2007 for about $19,000. New York art dealer Kate Ganz had owned it for about 11 years after buying it at auction for a similar price.