And in fact, the debate on who can be the author of the Doria Table has been long and complex. Many have insisted on Leonardo's possible autography, being able to count on several indizî, first of all the fact that in the oldest document that mentions it, an inventory of the collections of the Dorias (its ancient owners, hence the name) dating back to 1621, the work is mentioned as "a battle of soldiers riding Leonardo da Vinci" (and later, in the will of Mark Anthony Doria of 1651, there is talk of a "group of 'horses Leonardo da Vinci"). Of course, two seventeenth-century documents in themselves say little, but those who in the past supported an attribution to Leonardo were clinging to other elements, all summarized by the scholar of Mediterranean civilizations Louis Godart in his book La Tavola Doria of 2012: for example, the repentance in the preparatory drawing (which often, although not always, make us put aside the possibility that it is a copy), the zig-zag line that appears on the horse's temple and that recurs in several graphic works by Leonardo, the known existence of a painting depicting the Battle of Anghiari made while the artist was working in the Sala del Papa in Santa Maria Novella, the fact that several known copies of the Battle of Anghiari derive from the Tavola Doria, and the presence of elements that reproduce with great precision sketches and notes by Leonardo da Vinci. Details that in themselves do not exclude the hypothesis that the work may be a product of Leonardo's hand, but that they cannot even support it. In this sense, the most recent in-depth study (dating back to 2018) is that of the American art historian Louis Alexander Waldman, who rejected any hypothesis on Leonardo's autography (also with some irony: "the inexhaustible optimism of the so-called Leonardists, so often accompanied by a complete lack of self-critical spirit", he wrote, "is a disease for which modern science has not yet found cure"). To try to understand who the author of the Tavola Doria might be, Waldman turned his attention to a "twin" work: a painting, probably from the same period, which reproduces, in the same way, the central part of the Battle of Anghiari. This is another panel, dating back to about 1563, kept in Florence, in Palazzo Vecchio (in storage by the Uffizi, in whose collections its presence is remembered since 1635, the year in which an inventory dates back to which the painting is mentioned as a work of Leonardo).
A little larger than the Tavola Doria (and therefore this could be a preparatory study according to Waldman), the Battle of Anghiari of the deposits of the Uffizi, Waldman points out, "is unique among the existing copies because it makes the subtle gradation of tone in the area is not the model of Leonardo, corresponding to the profile of the knight on the white horse at the far right of the composition, also includes detailed information of the fragmentary profiles omitted by other previous copyists and that are only mentioned in the Tavola Doria.
It is a painting whose finish is so high that it is likely that its author worked directly on the original cardboard before its destruction (and especially before Vasari began to decorate the Salone del Cinquecento, i.e. from 1563). Waldman himself had proposed to attribute this copy of the Battle of Anghiari to Francesco Morandini known as Poppi (Poppi, 1544 - Florence, 1597), one of the leading artists of the second half of the sixteenth century in Tuscany.
The American scholar has noted in the two works that reproduce the battle (and therefore also in the Tavola Doria) some of the characteristics of Poppi's manner: "the pearly splendour of the modelled forms, the liquid brilliance of the brushstroke, and (irrefutable signs of the artist's hand) the stylization of Leonardo's naturalistic faces in cold Mannerist masks, which bear the signature of the young Casentino painter: painted with indifferent and detached expressions, at the same time giving the flesh fresh tones and rubies". And again: "in both plates [...] the same chchiseledaces recur, with blocked lines, similar to elegant and graceful masks, with an opaque and reddish complexion, according to the custom of the Casentino painter". Elements that, Waldman pointed out, can be found with precision in some works by Francesco Morandini: for example, in the canvas with the Lamentation over the Dead Christ preserved in his hometown (the face of St. John resembling that of Francesco Piccinino, the first knight on the left, as will be seen later), or in the work The House of the Sun preserved at the Museum of Casa Vasari in Arezzo (the way to paint the arms), or even in Tobias and Raphael in the Museum of Palazzo Pretorio in Prato (the characteristic elongated figures).
To be continued.