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Search for lost da Vinci art begins

Workers will use 21st century tools to find a 16th century fresco.

By ASSOCIATED PRESS
Published October 23, 2007

ROME - Analyzing 500-year-old bricks, engineers in California are searching for a lost Leonardo da Vinci fresco that some researchers believe is behind a wall in Florence's Palazzo Vecchio.

The hunt for the Battle of Anghiari, an unfinished mural by Leonardo, has captivated art historians for centuries and is now being tackled by experts wielding state-of-the art scientific tools.

Laser scanners, thermal imaging, radar and neutrons will be employed in the project that Culture Minister Francesco Rutelli said is expected to take about a year.

Art lovers want to get to the bottom of the mystery in the Salone del Cinquecento (Hall of the 1500s) in the Palazzo Vecchio, a fortress-like palace in the heart of Florence that now houses municipal offices.

Maurizio Seracini, an Italian engineer, said he and colleagues at the University of San Diego are studying bricks and stonework that were found in a storeroom in the Palazzo Vecchio and that were once part of the huge hall. The bricks were hauled to California, where their structure and composition are being analyzed, Seracini said by telephone.

Some researchers believe a cavity in one of the hall's walls might have preserved the mural, which Leonardo began in 1505 to commemorate the 15th century Florentine victory over Milan at Anghiari, a medieval Tuscan town. The work was unfinished when Leonardo left Florence in 1506.

A few years ago, using radar and X-ray scans, Seracini and his team found a cavity behind a Giorgio Vasari fresco from the 16th century that could indicate a space between two walls.

"We're going to see if Vasari, instead of destroying, saved" Leonardo's fresco, Rutelli said Monday.

And if there's no Leonardo masterpiece behind Vasari's wall?

Seracini predicted that art restoration would benefit in any case since the project would pioneer ways for restorers to understand countless paintings that have been covered by whitewash and plaster.

The project is "absolutely a novelty in application" to the art world, Seracini said, adding that many of the techniques to be used in the Leonardo hunt are already employed in medical and military fields.

[Last modified October 22, 2007, 23:25:26]