evidence: A professor in Italy claims to have discovered Leonardo da Vinci’s earliest work, a self-portrait of the artist as the Archangel Gabriel. The purported Leonardo da Vinci tile on view in Rome. Courtesy of Press Office Handout/EPA. Italian professor Ernesto Solari held a press conference in Rome on Wednesday to make a dramatic reveal: an eight-inch by eight-inch tile featuring a figure styled as the Archangel Gabriel. Solari claims this tile is the earliest known work by Leonardo da Vinci and that the figure is Leonardo himself at age 18.