Long lost Leonardo? Experts debunk theory that Florentine artist painted over masterpiece

A battle scene in a fresco by Giorgio Vasari which has similarities to the Battle of Anghiari by Leonardo Da Vinci

Credit: -/Chris Warde-Jones 

For fans of Dan Brown, it had all the requisite elements of one of his thrillers — cryptic clues hidden in a Renaissance masterpiece, international art sleuths and rumours of a long-lost Leonardo da Vinci painting.

For decades, scholars have speculated that Leonardo painted a vast battle scene on the walls of Florence’s town hall, only for it to be covered up by a later painting produced a few decades later by the Renaissance artist Giorgio Vasari.

There were intriguing clues — including a flag in the Vasari painting inscribed with the words “cerca trova”, or "seek and you will find."

Some scholars took that as a hidden message about the existence of the Leonardo work, thought to depict the battle of Anghiari, a clash in Tuscany in 1440 between the armies of Florence and Milan.

Now, however, the longstanding mystery appears to have been solved. A panel of art historians concluded on Wednesday that while Leonardo embarked on work to prepare the wall for the battle scene, he did not start painting it.

Records from 1503 to 1506 showed that he bought large quantities of supplies such as gypsum to make plaster for the fresco, but did not buy any paint for the project.

A view of the Sala dei 500 in which there is a fresco by Giorgio Vasari (right)

Credit: Chris Warde-Jones

The wall that he was preparing was probably demolished a few years later, perhaps when the huge salon known as the Hall of the Five Hundred was turned into a military barracks.

“The preparation work went badly and Leonardo stopped work,” Cecilia Frosinini, a director of restoration at a leading art preservation institute in Florence, the Opificio delle Pietre Dure, told a press conference in the Uffizi Galleries in Florence.

She and Roberto Bellucci, another art expert, were presenting a new 610-page book about the fabled “lost Leonardo,” the result of six years work.

Proponents of the theory that a Leonardo masterpiece lay hidden beneath the Vasari painting were allowed in 2012 to drill tiny holes and poke miniature endoscopic cameras inside.

The project was authorised by then mayor of Florence, Matteo Renzi, who went onto become prime minister.

Led by Maurizio Seracini, an art diagnostician at the University of California, San Diego, they found traces of black pigment which, they said, showed that a Leonardo painting could lay hidden behind a false wall.

According to the theory, Vasari could not bear to paint over a Leonardo work and so built the false wall to preserve it.

Detail from a battle scene in a fresco by Giorgio Vasari

Credit: -/-

But that thesis was knocked back by the experts speaking at the Uffizi, who said the material that was found was not paint.

“We found that in fact it was not paint but originated from the masonry and brickwork,” said Mauro Matteini, an expert in chemical analysis who has worked on Leonardo’s Last Supper.

Cinzia Maria Sicca Bursill-Hall, an art history scholar from Pisa University, said: “From the historic documents, we can finally conclude that Leonardo did not produce the fresco.”

But Prof Seracini, the chief proponent of the lost Leonardo theory, stood by his research and said the recent findings were not solid enough to disprove the existence of a hidden painting.

He said the panel of experts behind the new book had not contacted him to discuss his work.

“They had a sole objective – to demolish all that I have done, said and written on the subject,” he said.