The Search for Leonardo da Vinci's "Battle of Anghiari"

In May 2007 Italian Minister of Cultural Heritage Francesco Rutelli approved a resumption of efforts to locate a long-lost masterpiece mural by Leonardo da Vinci. The Battle of Anghiari disappeared nearly 500 years ago when the Hall of the 500 in the Palazzo Vecchio was remodeled by Giorgio Vasari, starting in 1563. But was "Anghiari" destroyed? Did Vasari protect it behind his own new mural? And if the da Vinci masterpiece remained in place, did it crumble - or has it survived to this day?

Those questions have echoed through the centuries, but with no way to resolve the enigma until modern technology became available to see "beyond the visible." The Italian government appointed CISA3 director Maurizio Seracini to lead the scientific search for Anghiari. Historians have long suspected that Vasari's great respect for da Vinci's work prompted him to paint his fresco on a brick wall built in front of the original masterpiece, in order to preserve Leonardo's masterpiece.

Seracini has been involved in the search for Anghiari since 1975, when as a recent UCSD bioengineering alumnus, he joined the "Leonardo Project" (initially funded by the Armand Hammer Foundation, Kress Foundation and Smithsonian Institute) to determine whether the Leonardo mural survived. At that time, new imaging technologies provided tantalizing new clues, but those technologies fell short of being able to let researchers "see" clearly beyond the current wall on which the Vasari fresco was painted. The project was halted in 1977, and Seracini didn't resume a full-scale search for Anghiari until the year 2000, when international philanthropist and Kalpa Group president Loel Guinness agreed to fund the search. Adapting the latest refinements in multispectral imaging to the task, Seracini - then-president of his own art forensics firm, Editech, in Florence - undertook a methodical analysis of the Hall of the 500, reconstructing changes to the structure, and eventually discovering that there is a thin layer of air behind the brick wall on which the Vasari fresco was painted. This could indicate that the brick wall was built on top of the original wall, raising hopes that Vasari did so to hide or protect the da Vinci masterpiece (as he had done to save other masterpieces by other artists). In 2003, the search was suspended by local authorities, but Guinness' Kalpa Group remained the project's Crown Sponsor and supporter of efforts by Seracini to seek government approval for a resumption of the search. Guinness also made possible an epic television documentary about the Anghiari project that first aired on Britain's Channel 4 in 2006 -- triggering a wave of revived interest from international media. That interest, as well as new technological developments that coulld finally let Seracini "see" inside the Palazzo Vecchio, eventually led to a decision by officials to rescind their earlier moratorium -- and a simultaneous decision to put Seracini in charge of the scientific portion of the Anghiari project. With new-found technical capabilities at the University of California, San Diego and its California Institute for Telecommunications and Information Technology (Calit2), which he joined in 2006, Maurizio Seracini mapped out an ambitious plan to solve the Anghiari puzzle. The Italian government set a deadline of early 2009 for results of the current project. The deadline is tight, because CISA3 - in conjunction with engineers at Calit2 and partner institutions - must still finalize the technology that will allow Seracini to look deep inside the walls and detect hoped-for remnants of Leonardo's masterpiece, all this without damaging the existing Vasari mural.

To do this, CISA3 is testing a series of portable but powerful devices that would probably require modifications before they can be deployed on the Anghiari project. Eventually, Italy's top renovation institute, the Opificio delle Pietre Dure, will be responsible for constructing a small mock wall, made of bricks, stones and other materials from the Palazzo Vecchio that are believed to be contemporaneous to the materials used in the construction of the east wall where Seracini believes the mural is located. Scientists from the Opificio will paint the mock walls using the same materials and methodologies that Leonardo da Vinci is believed to have used on the Battle of Anghiari (and Vasari on his mural). If those tests prove successful, CISA3 will deploy the new technology to Florence.

Even as work gets underway, the Committee of the Leonardo project and the University of California are seeking the financial support needed to complete the search. In addition to the critical support of the project's Crown Sponsor, Loel Guinness' Kalpa Group, support for the Anghiari project has come from philanthropic individual donors via Friends of CISA3, set up in 2007 to raise funds for this and other CISA3 projects. The National Geographic Society is also providing funding for the Anghiari project, and has committed to covering the project extensively in NGS media, including National Geographic magazine and National Geographic Channel. (The Society also named Seracini a National Geographic Fellow.) In Italy, Friends of Florence has provided funding, and the government announced that one of Italy's oldest art publishers, Giunti Editore, will also sponsor the project.