The Holoverse has teamed up with MakersPlace to present the world’s first hologram NFT (“HNFT”) of a verified Leonardo da Vinci masterpiece, La Bella Principessa, a portrait of a young aristocrat from Milan dressed in beautiful renaissance style, which will be auctioned on MakersPlace on April 21, 2022, with a starting bid at $100,000.
The Leonardo da Vinci hologram NFT comes in both digital and physical formats. The original canvas is scanned into a multi-gigabyte photogrammetry image that lets the viewer zoom in to experience the work in more detail than the naked eye can see.
The unique 1:1 hologram will be encased in a crystal case (73cm x 73cm x 12cm), which is viewable in daytime and night, and will be delivered with white-glove service to include the installation of the artwork.
In 1998, a portrait in pastel and chalk on vellum was brought to a pair of art scholars who realized, after careful determination, that the piece before them was a previously unknown work by Leonardo da Vinci. La Bella Principessa (also known as Portrait of Bianca Sforza) is kept in cold storage and has only been exhibited three times.
The portrait will soon enjoy human eyes again, but this time as a half-a-billion-pixel 3D hologram floating inside a crystal glass case, care of The Holoverse.
About The Holoverse
The Holoverse is the brainchild of Laserman Industries, a live performance technology group who have extended their holographic capabilities into the world of digital art.
The Holoverse team uses a formula that includes Minting an image with a minimum of 670 million pixels as the NFT and placing the Holo NFT (“HNFT”) in the Smart Contract as a Redeemable asset.
The Holoverse team has obtained exclusive commercial rights for creating the da Vinci NFT through a collaboration with the Italian company Scripta Maneant and their partnership with the private owner of the physical painting.
The Holo NFT or “HNFT”
This holographic NFT (or “HNFT”) is the first of its kind — combining history and technology, physical and digital assets in the sale of a unique NFT, which will be up for auction on MakersPlace on April 21st.
The work includes multiple components:
- A high-resolution 425MB static image NFT.
- A multi-gigabyte photogrammetry image of the original canvas.
- A unique 1:1 hologram (HNFT) with crystal display case.
Please note: The physical HNFT component will be delivered free of charge to the purchaser of the NFT by the Holoverse team.
With the unlockable photogrammetry image included in the purchase of this work, you can explore the canvas in never before possible detail. The hologram is generated by rotation at very high speed (900 rotations per minute) of four blades containing 256 micro LEDs and microprocessors, which use an algorithm to compose the work in the air. The apparatus is contained within a crystal case of 73cm x 73cm x 12cm.
And with La Bella Principessa, you don’t even have the opportunity to view the work in person as it is one of the few remaining Leonardo’s in private hands. The original work is under lock and key held in the Geneva freeport.
The original will be part of an exhibition in the Europe this Fall, but it is not on permanent loan to a museum and has, to this point, only been on display three times since its revised attribution in 1998.
The unlockable image brings new capabilities for viewing, and the hologram creates another life for the work in the physical world. With over 670 million pixels, viewers can zoom in and explore the artwork in such high detail, even Leonardo’s fingerprints can be seen.
About La Bella Principessa
The work is a profile portrait in colored chalks and ink on vellum. The piece is believed to have been taken from an important manuscript about Francisco Sforza, the founder of the ducal dynasty of Milan, and his family.
This image depicts a fashionable young woman in a beautiful renaissance dress and hair netting. The sitter is believed to be Bianca Sforza, a young aristocrat from Milan.
It was likely commissioned by Leonardo’s employer, Ludovico Sforza, the Duke of Milan, to celebrate the marriage of his beloved but illegitimate daughter, Bianca, in 1496 to an Italian nobleman. Her future husband was the captain of the Milanese military forces and a patron of Leonardo.
Tragically, Bianca died within months of her marriage due to pregnancy complications. She was the subject of many portraits in her young life, being a great beauty born into an aristocratic family, but this was likely her last portrait.
Attribution of La Bella Principessa
Several historic indicators reveal this context and da Vinci’s attribution to the viewer:
- The extremely high quality of the work and the left-handed hatching are beautiful indicators of Leonardo’s authorship of the portrait.
- The overall stylistic considerations of the design, such as the detail of the eye, which Leonardo believed to be “the window to the soul.”
- The knotwork ornamentation in the sitter’s sleeve corresponds to patterns Leonardo explored in other works and the logo designs for his Academy.
- The overall dress and hairstyle indicate that the sitter was a member of the Court of Milan during the 1490s.
- The proportions of the head and face reflect the rules of portraiture that Leonardo articulated in his notebooks.
- The evidence of the combination of black, white, and red chalks (the trois crayons technique). Leonardo was the first artist in Italy to use these pastels, a drawing technique he had learned from the French artist Jean Perréal, whom he met in Milan in 1494.
- The vellum includes a palmprint in the chalk pigment on the neck of the sitter, which is characteristic of Leonardo’s unique blending technique.
- Three stitch holes in the left-hand margin of the vellum indicate that the leaf was once in a bound volume.
- Even the format of the vellum support is an exact match to the format used for several of his portraits.
To give credit where it is due, most of these notes on the piece have been gathered from texts on La Bella Principessa by:
- Martin Kemp, from the University of Oxford; Leonardo da Vinci, La Bella Principessa, Errors, Misconceptions, and Allegations of Forgery
- Carlo Pedretti, late Art History Professor at UCLA and Armand Hammer Chair in Leonardo Studies
- Nicholas Turner, former curator at the British Museum and the Getty Museum
- Alessandro Vezzosi, director of the Leonardo Museum in Vinci, Italy
- Cristina Geddo, an expert on Milanese and Lombardo region renaissance art
- Mina Gregori, Head of Art History at the University of Florence
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