Search and you shall find? ... Fight for the Flag from the Battle of Anghiari, known today through Leonardo's preparatory studies and copies made by other artists
We know that Leonardo made some headway painting his huge mural of the Battle of Anghiari in the new Council Hall of the Florentine republic. He recorded that a great storm interrupted his labours on June 6 1505 and that his cartoon was torn - "and the weather was as dark as night".
The storm was not a good omen. The part of the painting that he had commenced, the central knot of ferociously fighting horsemen, was not completed. By 1506 pressure from the French rulers in Milan meant that he was effectively lost to the city, much to the irritation of the Florentine authorities.
What he had painted, in an experimental oil medium, remained as one of the wonders of the palace until the 1560s, when Giorgio Vasari covered the walls of the reconstructed hall with acres of tiresome frescoes at the behest of the Medici Grand Duke.
In the early 1980s a portion of Vasari's mural was controversially removed from the west wall. When no sign of Leonardo's painting was apparent, the removed patch was replaced. Now pressure is building up to see what might remain behind the lining wall on the opposite side.
Maurizio Seracini, head of Editech, the private art diagnostic firm in Florence, has with the backing of Loel Guinness been persistently searching to detect whether Leonardo's unfinished masterpiece might have been preserved by Vasari as an act of historical piety. Using thermal and other techniques of analysis, he has detected a lining wall on the east flank of the hall, behind which is a tantalising gap.
Seracini has noticed a tiny motto "cerca trova" (search and you shall find) on a pennant high on Vasari's mural. Is this a vital clue?
Now Ray DuVarney of Emory University is weighing in with beams of low-energy neutrons that induce elements with high atomic gravity to emit bursts of gamma rays. The lead-based pigments common in the renaissance should show up - if they are there. Results are awaited...
If the unfinished mural does indeed appear, it will be one of the art discoveries of all time, rivalling Tutankhamen and the Chinese terracotta warriors. But what are the chances?
Even if Seracini is right about the walling-up, are Leonardo's fragile layers of oil-rich paint likely to have survived all the changes of temperature and humidity? Frescoes are durable precisely because they are painted on wet plaster with a resultant bonding of pigment and plaster surface. Leonardo painted on top of a surface of sealed plaster - a recipe for peeling. My guess is that Leonardo's painting is unlikely to have survived in legible form. I fervently hope I am wrong.
In any case, the investigation should be pressed to a conclusion. As always in Italy, and in Florence in particular, art world politics loom large. Seracini is a privateer but the hall and its contents are administered by state superintendents with an official state conservation agency. Seracini, however, needs to deliver for his sponsor. Egos are involved. Fame may await for some but the promoters of the scheme could end up with egg on their faces.
