Arts diary: Rumblings in Granite City over consultation on plan that would push aside art centre

The anger is now aimed at Aberdeen City and Shire Economic Future's promise to consult locals on Sir Ian Wood's "transformational" 140 million project for the Union Terrace Gardens. They are not, it is noted, consulting on Peacock Visual Art's plan for a contemporary arts centre on the same spot.

Senior players at the Scottish Arts Council, which committed 4.5m in lottery funding to the Peacock project, are said to be particularly angered over claims the Peacock was an "exclusive" centre aimed at art nobs. Aberdeen might want to note what the Dundee Contemporary Arts centre has done for the heart of that city, they mutter.

Compare the two schemes at www.comparethesquare.com

The Da Vinci copy

A DODGY Leonardo is up for sale at Sotheby's in New York. It is not, it should be stressed, any relation to our own beloved Madonna of the Yarnwinder.

Portrait of a Woman Called "La Belle Ferronnire" goes up for auction on 28 January. Claims it was by Leonardo da Vinci once put it at the heart of a court case – but with a top price estimated at $500,000 (310,000), it's officially by a later "follower" of the master.

In the 1920s the painting was put on sale in the US as a Leonardo by Henry Hahn, an American serviceman who was given it in France as a wedding present. The celebrated art dealer Sir Joseph Duveen declared it a copy; the Hahns sued him for slander, and after an epic court battle he handed over $60,000 in damages.

Depicting a lady in three-quarters profile, the portrait is another version of one in the Louvre, now believed to be by either Leonardo or one of his pupils, showing Lucrezia Crivelli, a mistress of the Duke of Milan. But sophisticated dating techniques now confirm what Sir Joseph and much of the art world argued: the Hahn "Leonardo" is a copy, a good one, but painted 100-150 years after Leonardo lived.

Sotheby's hope the story will make it a good seller – citing the "Vernon Mona Lisa", another copy, which went for ten times its estimate a few years ago.

"There are lot of people who have been expressing interest," says Sotheby's specialist George Wachte. "It's a very striking-looking picture. People like it."

The Leonardo expert Martin Kemp has speculated the work might be by the 17th-century artist Laurent de la Hyre, who lived from 1606-56, and whose own works have fetched millions.

The Madonna of the Yarnwinder, owned by the Duke of Buccleuch, is now hanging in the National Gallery of Scotland, after its theft and subsequent recovery four years later. Its value is estimated at about 50 million.

Its attribution to Leonardo was controversial for years. In contrast to the Hahn painting, however, increasingly sophisticated scientific tests persuaded experts that its overall composition was by the master, as well as parts of the painting itself, particularly the Christ child.

Ayr won Tournament

THEY'RE back: East Ayrshire Council has taken delivery of a set of historic watercolours and mock-medieval shields from the Eglinton Tournament.

This newspaper higlighted how the watercolours of 1839, a high watermark of the Victorian Gothic revival, were in danger of going overseas.

Ayshire raised 85,100 to buy the watercolours by James Henry Nixon, while the shields were bought for 7,000. The works will go on display at Dean Castle, Kilmarnock next year, with a blockbuster exhibition celebrating a consummate folie de grandeur in the summer of 2011 at the Dick Institute.

Weave your tweets

YOU'VE heard of slow food. Well, here comes slow craft at the Dovecot Studios. Taking Time: Craft and the Slow Revolution, features 19 international contemporary makers and artists, from Judith van den Boom to Heidrun Schimmel. Their works "reflect on a slow revolution considering ideas around time and process, material and value, site and locality, relationships to community and the changing nature of production and consumption".

Wake up, you at the back. One commission, by Amy Houghton, is a website that uses data from Twitter, www.tweave.co.uk. Tags added to tweets on the subject of crafted items can be used to create a virtual woven textile. But will it keep out the cold?