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The Salone dei Cinquecento in the Palazzo Vecchio in Florence: There is probably no fresco by Leonardo da Vinci here
Photo: Santiago Urquijo / Getty Images
A centuries-old hunt for a painting by Leonardo da Vinci was declared over by a group of art historians on Wednesday: They came to the conclusion that the Renaissance genius never painted the legendary "Battle of Anghiari".
"Leonardo never painted that battle on that wall, that's a conclusion," Francesca Fiorani, an art historian from the University of Virginia, told a conference at the Uffizi in Florence.
For a long time it was assumed that Leonardo painted a fresco in the Palazzo Vecchio in 1505.
A hall had been created there for the city council of 500 citizens, the Salone dei Cinquecento.
The walls should be adorned with murals of famous battles by Michelangelo and Leonardo da Vinci, both of which are said to have done appropriate preparatory work.
Corresponding drawings can be found in collections in Venice, Budapest, London and Windsor, but no overall concept.
More than fifty years of research
Leonardo's work, which was supposed to celebrate the victory of the Florentine Republic against the Milanese in the 15th century, was never found.
The first investigations took place in 1967, and there were repeated attempts.
The Italian researcher Maurizio Seracini recently announced a breakthrough in 2012: he had drilled holes in another fresco by Giorgio Vasari in the Palazzo and claimed that behind it he had found a wall with traces of black pigment, similar to the one found on Leonardo's "Mona Lisa" has been.
This thesis has now been refuted.
Art historian Fiorani presented a new scholarly publication on the controversy surrounding the Battle of Anghiari, to which she contributed along with several other international experts.
According to Fiorani, Leonardo had only gotten around to making preparatory drawings for the large-format mural that he had commissioned at the beginning of the 16th century.
There are records of materials made available to the painter in connection with the work, but "those materials were not materials to paint the battle but to prepare the wall (for painting)," she said.
"The preparation of the wall didn't go well and that was the end of it all."
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