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Subscribe to RSSFrom March 2012: Art experts find clues that suggest "The Battle of Anghiari," a long-lost masterpiece by Leonardo da Vinci, lies underneath a fresco in Florence.
The controversial effort to find out whether a long-lost Leonardo da Vinci masterpiece lies beneath a fresco in Florence has been suspended without resolving a mystery that some have compared to a "Da Vinci Code" riddle.
The mystery surrounds a painting known as "The Battle of Anghiari," or "Fight for the Standard," which was commissioned by city officials for a meeting hall in the Palazzo Vecchio to commemorate a Florentine military victory in 1440. Contemporary accounts indicate that Leonardo began the wall painting in 1505 — but left it unfinished, due to problems he encountered with the experimental technique he was using to apply the paint.
Decades later, the city hall was enlarged and restructured, and in 1563 the Italian artist Giorgio Vasari painted a mural on one of the new walls. In the course of all that remodeling, Leonardo's painting disappeared. Today, it's known only from Leonardo's preparatory sketches and from copies inspired by the original.
Fast-forward to 1975: Maurizio Seracini, an Italian-born engineering professor and expert in art analysis at the University of California at San Diego, was back in his native Florence, studying Vasari's fresco. He noticed that a soldier in the fresco was waving a flag that read "Cerca Trova" (Seek and Ye Shall Find). Did this hint at the location of the lost Leonardo painting?
Over the years that followed, Seracini marshaled the expertise, technology and financial support needed to create a virtual reconstruction of the hall's layout before the remodeling took place. It looked as if there was a gap between the part of the wall where the "Cerca Trova" legend was painted and the older wall beneath. Armed with that information — plus funding from the National Geographic Society and backing from Florence's mayor, Matteo Renzi — Seracini won permission from Italian officials to drill six tiny holes into Vasari's wall and push camera-equipped endoscopic probes into the gap behind it.
The initial results were promising: Seracini said the team found "traces of pigments that appear to be those known to have been used exclusively by Leonardo." This March, National Geographic aired a documentary about the investigation, titled "Finding the Lost da Vinci." Heartened by the findings, Seracini asked for permission to conduct more sophisticated tests. The story was shaping up as a real-life "Da Vinci Code" thriller in the art world. (In fact, Seracini is mentioned in the Dan Brown novel as an art diagnostician who unveils "the unsettling truth" about a different work by Leonardo.)
Italian officials, however, were becoming increasingly unsettled about tampering with the 450-year-old Vasari mural. Some experts questioned whether there was really enough justification to go forward. "Vasari would never have covered a work by an artist he admired so much in the hope that one day someone would search and find it," Discovery News quoted Tomaso Montanari, an art historian at the University Federico II in Naples, as saying. "You would expect such a hypothesis from Dan Brown, certainly not from art historians."
In the end, cultural officials ruled that the scientists could drill one more hole for endoscopic tests, but couldn't do any further drilling after that. That meant the more sophisticated (and more intrusive) tests could not be conducted. Last month, Italian news outlets reported that the National Geographic Society was suspending the project "until further notice."
Now Discovery News says that Florentine museum officials have given the go-ahead to fill in the six existing holes and take down the scaffolding that was used during the project. "This is how it ends," the Italian newspaper La Repubblica reported, "with strokes of stucco and paint, the search for Leonardo's mythical work."
More Leonardo da Vinci mysteries:
- Dig for Mona Lisa turns up a skeleton
- The anatomy that Leonardo couldn't copy
- Did Leonardo copy his famous 'Vitruvian Man'?
- Leonardo da Vinci ... fashion designer?
- Art experts hold mock 'Da Vinci trial
For more about the unsolved "Da Vinci Code" case, check out Rossella Lorenzi's report for Discovery News.
Alan Boyle is NBCNews.com's science editor. Connect with the Cosmic Log community by "liking" the log's Facebook page, following @b0yle on Twitter and adding the Cosmic Log page to your Google+ presence. To keep up with Cosmic Log as well as NBCNews.com's other stories about science and space, sign up for the Tech & Science newsletter, delivered to your email in-box every weekday. You can also check out "The Case for Pluto," my book about the controversial dwarf planet and the search for new worlds.
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...... Whether there or not there, we have basically non-invasive ways of determining this... the only current group invaded here are those who control the viewpoint..they are struggling with their apparent loss of the narrative.... Leonardo was a scientist first then a painter according to his own writings (specifically to Sforza).
There should be no debate here... 7 microscopic holes in a huge Vasari Mural vs a possibility of finding a Leonardo? please............ The hard non-evasive work of Seracinci has proven effective in all fields of art study...and has positively changed the purpose and process of art study. Treating the work as a patient and doing a full set of test before radically restoring a work... preservation before restoration is key here.... One question though......if you are drilling why not drill from behind?Take a core sample from behind to determine if there is a mural there!
Leonardo was a scientist before being an artist...he would be very happy with this exercise... all the best ben sweeney
Seek and ye shall find is the message in the painting itself. It's part of another saying, Seek and ye shall find, knock and the door shall be opened. In orthodox traditional Hebrew culture, you have to metaphorically ask the rabbi three times before he'll actually answer any question you might have. It's why at the end of AI, also a piece of art, he has to ask the question three times. You have a right, you have a left and you have a right left. It's about the freedom to walk in your own shoes and real liberty as opposed to sanctioned liberty.
Vasari? Who the heck is he? I say tear that sucker down and get to the good stuff in the back. I'd much rather see a new Leonardo than something from this piker Vasari.
I can't help but feel tantalized by a work called "Fight for the Standard", or by the fact it was left unfinished. Seek and Ye Shall Find... (Truth?, God?, Love?, The Standard?) Leonardo found genius when he looked into himself and at the world around him. I too am a Super-Genius (Wile E. Coyote style, heh).
Alan, Alan, Alan, what am I going to do with you man? First Christ's wife, then a new Da Vinci Code mystery. What's the deal man? Are you and Dan Brown collaborating on a new book. "THE DA VINCI CODE, part II" or something? How a lost mural by Leonardo reveals the secret of Christ's marriage, names names, dates, times, guest list and the names of their children. National Geographic steps in to investigate but the Vatican (again) shuts it down by putting pressure on the town officials???? Is that where this is going?
If so, I want a piece of the action. :-)
Oh, all they gotta do is spray some lemon juice on the mural and get some 3D glasses to find out the secrets Leo left behind for us. My bet, though, is to go to S Dakota and do some digging by the Mt Rushmore Monument- bet you'll find a gold nugget or two ;)
Sit dormientes canes mintiri
This kind of thing always poses an enigma. Do we possibly destroy and existing masterpiece to get to an earlier one?
Several years ago, people in Spain noticed a hole in the ceiling of a church that is covered with a beautiful Baroque fresco. Upon examination, they discovered a Medieval fresco behind the later one. This month in Hungary, 14th century frescos were discovered in Nitra Cathedral. Others had been painted over in the 18th century in the Baroque style, but the Baroque high altar was simply erected in front of a wall of existing earlier frescos.
Vasari covered it because this Leonardo stunk. Stunk because it was admittedly his failed experiment with new techniques in creating and applying paint. He abandoned it and I suspect would be happy to know that no one will set eyes on his serious error. That strikes me as a less dramatic but more truthful portrayal of what really happened.
Just don't hire that old lady to fix it.
Why can't they drill from the back???
You have to remember that Da Vinci loved symmetry.
I would fold the image on itself at the middle along the vertical and horizontal axis and then look for the hidden images that appear between the lines of the artwork.