Given how many notes and sketches he made (that we know of, there probably was even more material that didn’t survive the centuries) and given that he never got around to inventing the Polaroid camera, yes, he would be the type of person to make at least a quick and rough copy of some of his works. Personal archive, ideas to revisit later, samples for job applications, lots of reasons to do so.
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Or just the comparatively easy money of selling another painting without doing all the work of coming up with a new composition from scratch. Kind of like how Gilbert Stuart sold several copies of his famous portrait of George Washington (which were subsequently copied by other artists).
Even a genius artist has got to pay the rent.
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It does not matter to me if Terry Pratchett’s final novel is a worthy epitaph or not, or if he wanted it to be pulped by a steamroller. I have never read a single one of his books and I never plan to. Life’s too short.
Hopefully.
Ain’t nobody going to add “GNU Jonathan Jonest” to their website headers.
(And how do you pulp a book with a steamroller? Idiot.))
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I’m bummed and worried that the younger image reminds me of AI generated images of the Mona Lisa I’ve seen.
As an oil painting she doesn’t have the depth (imo) but not every work is a masterpiece.
On a side note I just recently spent some brownie points with my wife to have have her begrudgingly watch this with me:
There is a shorter version, but this one is better produced. He’s opinionated but I think it’s pretty accessible to people not generally interested in art history.
Well, no. But it’s an interesting idea and it sparked some interesting comments.
did a little color-correction to adjust to the “older” mona lisa, which lost a lot of color over the years; looks pretty convincing to me and I stand to my statement from before;
I would almost say so, yes. she married with 15 and she was 23 as da vinci begun the “classic” painting, 27 as it was finished and she had 5 children in between the marriage and the portrait. and I think it kind of shows. but who knows?
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I’ve been wondering if the subject of this “copy” could be one of her daughters.
then the “copy” would have been the later painting. even if this would be her oldest, she couldnt be older than 11 years at the time when da vinci finished the “old” portrait. doesnt look like a 11-year-old girl, does it?
Could the “copy” have been painted a few years after that, say when the daughter was age 13 or more? I could believe that it’s a painting of a teenager.
sure, could be.
or a young looking, slightly idealised 22-23-year-old Lisa del Giocondo…
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… sitting in the exact same pose, with hair and clothes draped in the exact same way?
“Everything is the same, except for the faces, which are different people who look exactly alike,” would not seem to be the simplest available explanation
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So much for my theory that this is one of her clones, Dua Lisa and Tria Lisa. 
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Interestingly the Prado copy (possibly painted at the same time by a Leonardo pupil) has both the “later” landscape and the columns from the “earlier”. To my eyes the subject looks to be older than one and younger than the other.
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yep. really could be in between near the end of da vincis. not much, though, if. seeing this one again and compared to the others, the “young” one clearly looks more “leonardo” to me than the prado one (and Im not meaning the colors.).
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So, there are at least three.
I have a theory.
Leonardo, being the visionary genius we all know, had a grandiose project that, like many others of his, unfortunately never got to completion.
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