A panel of experts is meeting today at the Royal Castle in Warsaw to discuss the pros and cons of the travel plans of Leonardo da Vinci’s painting Lady with an Ermine.

The Czartoryski Foundation, which owns the work, wants to show it at a major exhibition of the Italian Renaissance portrait at Berlin’s Gemaeldegalerie in August but Poland’s chief arts conservator has refused to grant its permission.

The Foundation hopes he will re-consider his decision, particularly in view of the fact that the plans to show the painting at the National Gallery in London in November had already been approved.

Today’s panel is the initiative of the National Museum in Kraków, whose experts claim that the all-too-frequent travels of the painting may prove harmful for its condition.

The Czartoryski Foundation is represented at the panel by David Bull from the United States, who examined Leonardo’s masterpiece in 1992.

The painting is currently in Warsaw. The Czartoryski Museum in Krakow, where it is part of the permanent exibit, is now undergoing a thorough refurbishment.

Lady with an Ermine is one of Leonardo da Vinci’s twenty extant works and one of his four female portraits. It depicts Cecilia Gallerani, a young lady who entered the Milanese court around 1490 and became a mistress of the Duke Lodovico Sforza and the mother of his son.

It was the Duke who commissioned Leonardo to paint the portrait. (mk)