Louvre Loans a Leonardo da Vinci Masterpiece to Japan for the First Time in 52 Years
The grande dame of French Museums has not set a Da Vinci there since Watergate
Portrait of a Woman, the painting almost universally known as La Belle Ferronnière, has temporarily left Paris for Tokyo and is now on view in “Masterpieces of the Renaissance from the Musée du Louvre,” which opened at the National Art Center on September 9. The roughly 530-year-old portrait has never been exhibited in Japan before.
The Louvre has not sent one of its Leonardo da Vinci paintings there in 52 years. Its previous loan was the Mona Lisa, whose 1974 appearance at the Tokyo National Museum became an event that drew over 1.5 million people. This time, the attraction is a less-traveled da Vinci—and one with its own centuries-old identity problem.
In fact, La Belle Ferronnière is not really the painting’s title at all. The Louvre now catalogues it as Portrait of a Woman, and the true name of the sitter remains unsettled. The leading candidate is Lucrezia Crivelli, who served Beatrice d’Este and became the mistress of Beatrice’s husband, Ludovico Sforza. The case rests partly on a poem by da Vinci’s contemporary Antonio Tebaldeo referring to a portrait of a woman named Lucrezia painted by the artist. Isabella of Aragon and Beatrice d’Este herself have also been suggested, although none of the identifications have been proven.
The lady is the centerpiece of an exhibition of more than 50 works drawn from the Louvre, ranging across painting, sculpture, prints, drawings, and decorative arts, and including Botticelli, Titian, Dürer, Cranach, and El Greco. But the da Vinci carries a particular weight. Exceedingly few paintings are securely associated with the artist, and those held by the Louvre seldom travel.
Japan waited more than half a century for another Leonardo from the Louvre, but five other da Vinci paintings presented by their lenders as works by the artist had been exhibited in Japan between Mona Lisa and La Belle Ferronnière. They include Cracow’s Lady with an Ermine, which toured the country in 2001 and 2002, the Uffizi’s Annunciation in 2007, the unfinished La Scapigliata in 2012, the Ambrosiana’s Portrait of a Musician in 2013, and the Buccleuch Madonna of the Yarnwinder in 2016.
“Masterpieces of the Renaissance from the Musée du Louvre” is on view at the National Art Center, Tokyo, through December 13, 2026.