Salvator Mundi’ and the limits of certainty by Tim Harford, FT, 6/12/2019

Tim Harford discusses the controversy over the attribution off the Salvator Mundiand my take on the issue.

<<Yet as the criminologist Federico Varese points out, it is curious that we insist on a binary distinction. We feel powerfully that the painting is either an autograph Leonardo, or it is not. As a matter of logic that may be true, but as a matter of practicality we do not know and we will never know. There is some evidence of Leonardo’s involvement, but the evidence is circumstantial. We are relying heavily on intuition — albeit the intuition of people with deep expertise. Regrettably but unsurprisingly, the experts differ.>>