Leonardo Ermine

Engineer Pascal Cotte has spent three years using reflective light technology to analyse Leonardo da Vinci's The Lady with an Ermine, which shows Cecilia Gallerani, a young beauty in the Milanese court who was mistress to Ludovico Sforza, the Duke of Milan, nicknamed "the white ermine". Cotte's pioneering technique Layer Amplification Method (LAM) allows stages in the painting to be separated, as shown here. Previous examinations using X-ray and infra-red analysis have revealed far less detail (CLICK).