With the approach of World War I Blaker sent the painting to the Boston Museum of Fine Arts for safekeeping. Blaker's step-father, John Eyre, also believed in its attribution and claimed that the painting was a earlier version of Leonardo's "Mona Lisa" at the Louvre. In 1922, Eyre traveled throughout Italy consulting various scholars on the painting, who generally concluded that Leonardo painted the most significant parts of the work. Eyre reported these endorsements in a 1923 publication, which also expanded on the thesis of his 1915 book. Eyre's 1923 book contained "opinions from some of the foremost art experts in Italy after the turn of the century", including Lorenzo Cecconi, Arduino Colasanti, and Adolfo Venturi, and those experts generally "agreed the painting probably was done in Da Vinci's studio, by his students, if not by himself". According to journalist Dianne Hales, however the attributions based on connoisseurship evaluating sections of the painting such as face, hair, hands, and background failed to win a consensus as to authenticity at that time. In 1936, the work was shown in Leicester, where it was seen by Henry F. Pulitzer, who was immediately struck by it. After Blaker's death later in 1936, the painting was passed to his sister, Jane, who died in 1947, which left the painting's whereabouts unknown for a time.