Is there a hidden Lenardo Da Vinci mural?
“Cerca trova”: This Italian phrase meaning “seek and ye shall find” was painted on a flag in a fresco painting by the Renaissance painter Giorgio Vasari for a room in Florence’s Palazzo Vecchio. However, there are hundreds of Renaissance paintings across the city, so what makes this one so special?
In 2012, researchers established that it might be covering an earlier hidden fresco made by Leonardo Da Vinci. However, that is yet to be confirmed. The hunt for this missing painting was led by a team of scientists, scholars, and archaeologists of the National Geographic Society in partnership with the University of California and the Opificio delle Pietre Dure—the academy of sculptors and stoneworkers in Florence.
The mysterious painting, yet to be found, is the Battle of Anghiari, which later inspired a sketch by a great admirer of Da Vinci, the Flemish Peter Paul Rubens. This is one of the only visual clues we have of what the earlier painting by the Italian counterpart may have looked like.
The primary theory is that in 1555, the palace room was renovated, and Da Vinci was forced to leave behind the half-finished painting, which was covered up and lost forever; others wonder whether it ever existed. These myths were somewhat dispersed when new technologies were used to finally uncover the mystery.
The research group deployed a four-millimetre-wide probe to gently dig into the drilled holes in the Vasari fresco and excavate some paint to examine. The probe picked up Black, red and beige paints, which were said to be consistent with Da Vinci’s paints used for The Mona Lisa and St John the Baptist. However, it is yet to be confirmed whether that painting lies beneath the surface. After all, what do the ethics say about damaging a newer masterpiece to have a chance at discovering an older one?
Nonetheless, the possibility that there could be a hidden Da Vinci painting has made artists, scholars and even Italian diplomats crave an answer. This was evident in the announcement made by Matteo Renzi, the Florentine mayor at the time, saying, ‘We need the courage to push on and resolve this mystery”. He urged the Italian government to approve the removal of parts of Vasari’s later fresco in order to get one step closer to solving the puzzle.
However, in response, Cristina Acidini, the superintendent for the Florentine Museum Complex, disagreed with his plan when she ruled out drilling more holes. On the other side of the debate, more than 100 experts signed a petition calling on authorities to stop work that they said would harm Vasari’s painting. Renzi agreed and since then the project hasn’t continued, but the mystery remains even more intriguing.
