page_title: Shaun Greenhalgh
section_title: La Bella Principessa claim
hierarchical_section_title: Shaun Greenhalgh / Career after release / La Bella Principessa claim
caption_attribution_description: attributed to Leonardo da Vinci Italiano: Villa Reale di Monza. English: Villa Reale in Monza.
context_page_description: Shaun Greenhalgh is a British artist and former art forger. Over a seventeen-year period, between 1989 and 2006, he produced a large number of forgeries. Teaming up with his brother and elderly parents, who fronted the sales side of the operation, he successfully sold his fakes internationally to museums, auction houses, and private buyers, accruing nearly £1 million.
  The family have been described by Scotland Yard as "possibly the most diverse forgery team in the world, ever". However, when they attempted to sell three Assyrian reliefs using the same provenance as they had previously, suspicions were raised. Apprehended, Shaun Greenhalgh was sentenced to prison for four years and eight months in November 2007.
  The Victoria and Albert Museum in London held an exhibition of Greenhalgh's works from 23 January to 7 February 2010.
  The Metropolitan Police’s Art and Antiques Unit built a replica model of the shed where the works were created and labelled Greenhalgh "the most diverse art forger known in history". Many of his fakes, including the Amarna Princess, Risley Park Lanx, and works by Barbara Hepworth and Thomas Moran, were displayed.
context_section_description: In November 2015 as part of the publicity for the upcoming A Forger's Tale, an article in The Sunday Times put forward Greenhalgh's claim that he was the creator of La Bella Principessa attributed to Leonardo da Vinci.
  A December 2015 article in The New York Times also promoted Greenhalgh's claimed authorship of the work, which it said he had made in the late 1970s, around the age of 20, using vellum recycled from a 16th-century land deed and the face of a supermarket check-out girl named "Alison" who worked in Bolton.
  Greenhalgh repeated his claim to be the creator in a May 2017 interview with Simon Parkin in the Guardian, noting that he had studied the work again when it was exhibited at the Villa Reale di Monza in 2015.
  The Postscript chapter in Greenhalgh's 2017 autobiography provided further details about his claim, identifying the sitter as "Bossy Sally from the Co-Op" (p. 356).
  Art historian Martin Kemp said he found the claim hilarious and ridiculous.
caption: La Bella Principessa on display at Villa Reale Monza in 2015
exif: {"Image Make": "Panasonic", "Image Model": "DMC-TZ4", "Image XResolution": "180", "Image YResolution": "180", "Image ResolutionUnit": "Pixels/Inch", "Image Software": "Ver.1.0", "Image DateTime": "2015:07:04 10:00:16", "Image ExifOffset": "174", "EXIF ExposureTime": "1/10", "EXIF FNumber": "47/10", "EXIF ExposureProgram": "Program Normal", "EXIF ISOSpeedRatings": "400", "EXIF ExifVersion": "0221", "EXIF DateTimeOriginal": "2015:07:04 10:00:16", "EXIF DateTimeDigitized": "2015:07:04 10:00:16", "EXIF ComponentsConfiguration": "YCbCr", "EXIF CompressedBitsPerPixel": "4", "EXIF ExposureBiasValue": "0", "EXIF MaxApertureValue": "86/25", "EXIF MeteringMode": "Pattern", "EXIF LightSource": "Unknown", "EXIF Flash": "Flash did not fire, compulsory flash mode", "EXIF FocalLength": "71/5", "EXIF FlashPixVersion": "0100", "EXIF ColorSpace": "sRGB", "EXIF ExifImageWidth": "2448", "EXIF ExifImageLength": "3264", "EXIF SensingMethod": "One-chip color area", "EXIF FileSource": "Digital Camera", "EXIF SceneType": "Directly Photographed", "EXIF CustomRendered": "Normal", "EXIF ExposureMode": "Auto Exposure", "EXIF WhiteBalance": "Auto", "EXIF DigitalZoomRatio": "0", "EXIF FocalLengthIn35mmFilm": "84", "EXIF SceneCaptureType": "Standard", "EXIF GainControl": "High gain up", "EXIF Contrast": "Normal", "EXIF Saturation": "Normal", "EXIF Sharpness": "Normal"}