The search for a masterpiece has turned into a real detective story Leonardo da Vinci. Fresco by Leonardo Battle of Anghiari lost forever, taking with it 500 years of history? Or is there hope that it has been preserved and will be opened?
April 1503, Florence. The Medici family was expelled from the city, and Florence became a Republic. It was necessary to strengthen this young Republic, new symbols were needed, and the head of Florence, Pierre Soderini, invites two outstanding artists to glorify the Republic. Michelangelo is 28, 51 years old. On the walls of the Great Salon of the Five Hundred, the main Hall of the Communal Council in Florence's Palazzo Vecchio, two geniuses choose scenes glorifying the victorious battles of the troops of the Florentine Republic - the Battles of Anghiari and Cascina.
Two huge walls opposite each other, two geniuses, promising and mature, two different characters: wary and rough, elegant and mysterious. One artist is distinguished by tireless hard work and commitment, the other by inconstancy and frivolity. This grandiose order was supposed to be a great competition between two geniuses, but it didn’t work out... there was no winner or loser. Michelangelo prepared a sketch Battles of Kashin , and was recalled to Rome by the Pope. Leonardo conceived a huge field Battles of Anghiari , full of horsemen fighting for the Banner, but leaves work and returns to Milan in May 1506.
Here is what Leonardo wrote about the start of work in his notes: “Today, June 6, 1505, Friday at 13:00, I began painting in the palace. As soon as I touched it with the brush, the weather turned bad, the cardboard tore, the bowl cracked, and water spilled, it became dark like night, and until the evening there was a heavy downpour of water.” Is this a “successful” beginning, an omen of the unhappy fate of the great artist’s work?
Tavola Doria, Tokyo, sketch for the Battle of Anghiari worth 80 million euros
What happened between June 1505, when Leonardo began work on the fresco, and May 1506, when he left Florence? Where is it Battle of Anghiari , which the sculptor Benvenuto Cellini recognized as a “world school” of creativity? The last concrete fact of this detective is the existence of Leonardo's fresco on the wall in 1549. Florentine writer Anton Francesco Doni wrote in 1549 guide to Florence, where it states: “Climb the stairs to the Great Hall and note the a group of horses and riders that will seem like a miracle to you" Then the facts regarding Leonardo's fresco end Battle of Anghiari and the speculation begins.
For several decades from the beginning of the sixteenth century, the walls of the Great Hall were left unchanged. Meanwhile, the political situation in Florence changed radically. The Florentine Republic was defeated, and the Medici dynasty, Cosimo I, returned to power. His thoughts, naturally, turned to the Great Salon; it was necessary to transform it from a place of glorification of the Republic into the main hall, emphasizing the power and might of the Medici. 1555- , painter, architect and historian, receives an order from the ruler of Florence CosimoIMedici.
The order is grandiose, not only for decoration, but also for the reconstruction of the Great Hall of the Council of the Five Hundred. The ceiling is raised seven meters according to Vasari's design, and the hall takes on modern dimensions - length 54 meters, width - 23 meters, height - 18 meters. On the walls of the Salon Vasari solves the problem of what to do with an existing Leonardo fresco - destroy or preserve? This was not the first time such a dilemma arose before Vasari; he had already encountered works Giotto and Masaccio, and chose Save. Could he really have done differently with the work of Leonardo, whom he admired, and destroyed it?
The work of a genius undoubtedly admires Vasari, this is what he wrote in Lives of the most famous painters about Battle of Anghiari . “...painted a group of horsemen fighting for a banner, a thing that was considered outstanding and executed with great skill...in this image the people display the same rage, hatred and vindictiveness as the horses, of which two are intertwined with their front legs and fight with their teeth with no less more bitter than their horsemen fighting for the banner; at the same time, one of the soldiers, clinging to it with his hands and leaning on it with his whole body, lets his horse gallop and, turning around... grabs the flag pole, trying to force it out of the hands of the other four.
Two of them each protect it with one hand and, swinging high with the other holding the sword, try to cut the shaft, while an old soldier in a red hat, with a cry, holds the shaft with one hand, and with the other, with a high-raised curved saber, prepares a furious blow to immediately cut off both hands of those two who, gnashing their teeth, with a most ferocious look, are trying to defend their banner.” I won’t give you all the descriptions of Vasari, please take into account that the chapter about Leonardo in his book takes up 9 pages, of which 1 page is entirely devoted to the description Battles of Anghiari. Vasari makes it clear to us that he saw this fresco and thoroughly studied it up close, here is the gnashing of teeth, and the old soldier in a red cap, and ferocity, and bloodthirstiness, and “it is impossible to express in words how Leonardo painted the clothes of the soldiers.”
It is no coincidence that in Vasari’s first work for the Old Palace Defeat Pisa at San Vincenzo There are numerous similarities in poses, characters, swords, banners and horses. For comparison, we have received copies from Battles of Anghiari (their authors were, then an unknown artist, based on whose work the engraving was made by Lorenzo Zacchia, and then Rubens), but they could have been made not from a fresco, but from a cardboard - a life-size sketch of Leonardo. Cosimo de' Medici also admired Leonardo's work, to the point of in 1513 he pays to install wooden structures along the wall to protect the mural from Spanish soldiers. The motive for destroying Leonardo's work is, firstly, political, it is impossible to leave evidence of the victory of the Republic over the Signoria Medici in the main representative Hall, and secondly, the condition of the fresco. Vasari noted that “having decided to paint in oil on the wall, he (Leonardo) prepared such a rough mixture to prepare the wall that it began to flow as he continued to paint this hall, and he abandoned the work, seeing how it was deteriorating.”
37 years old Italian engineer Maurizio Seracini looking for Leonardo's fresco Battle of Anghiari . They say that it was this scientist-enthusiast who served Dan Brown as the prototype for one of the characters in the book The Da Vinci Code . Over the years there have been many opponents, but there have also been many supporters of the search, for example, Professor Carlo Pedretti, the world's leading expert on the works of Leonardo Da Vinci. They are both confident that Vasari preserved the masterpiece, and it is still in the Great Council Hall. There are reasons for optimism.
Vasari's hint on the flag "The seeker shall find"
Vasari could well have saved Leonardo's work, and he left us a rebus on his work The Battle of Marciano on the eastern wall of the Great Salon. Only one of the many images of the banners has an inscription, and a mysterious one at that - “He who seeks will find.” It is difficult to connect it with the battle or with the glorification of the Republic. The lettering is "wrong" and does not follow the wavy outline of the flag. The mistake for Vasari is unforgivable, as if he wanted to attract attention to this green flag at the very top of the Battle, where no spectator could see it from below. An analysis of the green paint of the banner and the white paint of the inscription was carried out in 1975. We came to the conclusion that both colors are the same age, the inscription on the banner is not a later addition, but was also made by the author Vasari. Another extraordinary discovery when examining the walls of the hall with a radar and a television camera with infrared radiation - under this flag with the inscription there is empty space, i.e. there is a double wall. The next stage of research, after numerous approvals, has passed from November 27 to December 2, 2011 at night, so as not to interrupt the normal work of the Museum of the Old Palace of Florence. It was impossible to get close to the space under study from the side under Vasari’s work, because it occupies the entire wall and ends with a cornice; the space behind is also closed by numerous buildings, rooms, etc. In addition, by approaching blindly from behind, you can damage Leonardo’s fresco if it is inside behind the wall erected by Vasari for his Battles of Marciano . It was decided to drill microscopic holes in the wall, selecting areas of damage to the Vasari fresco or recent paint applied by restorers, so as not to damage it. Then launch the probe into the hole between the two walls. Naturally, the surface that was supposed to be examined was very extensive, and it was allowed to make several holes and analyzes. There was an opportunity to miss and not get into Leonardo's fresco.
Composition Battles of Anghiari They represented Leonardo, but they helped with the dimensions drawing from the Oxford Museum. A drawing of an unusually large head of a screaming old man with small tattoos along the contour filled with coal. According to art historian Martin Kemp, this is not a copy, but piece of cardboard, which Leonardo used to work on the fresco. Before Vasari's wall was enlarged, the size of the surface for Leonardo's work was 20 meters by 10 meters, and from the size of the head drawing, the dimensions of the entire fresco were presumably determined. Scientists knew that by the time of Vasari only the central part remained of the fresco, so they looked for a fragment measuring 5 by 4 meters on a surface of 12 by 14 meters. We marked 14 places for microscopic holes where it could have been preserved. Battle of Anghiari . Of course, the places chosen were not optimal for discovering the hidden fresco, but those where the poor state of preservation of areas of Vasari’s fresco allowed this to be done. The very first hole and probe determines what is behind the brick wall with a Vasari fresco Battle of Marciano air circulates, that is, there is a cavity, and the inner surface of another wall is 3 centimeters from the wall with the Vasari fresco. One can imagine the enthusiasm of the researchers. But... we are in Italy, and immediately the controversy resulted in serious accusations from opponents of the research: 60 holes were drilled, Vasari’s work is in danger of disappearing. The prosecutor's office opens a case, research has been stopped. A total of 6 micro-holes were made, 6 samples were taken from the surface of the inner wall. After a month and a half, they were allowed to be studied in the laboratory.
Carlo Pedretti introduced the results. As you understand, in Leonardo’s time there was no industrial production of paints, as there is now. Therefore, each artist used his own paints, and their composition of Leonardo and Vasari paints is different . Firstly, traces of calcium carbonate were found, the composition of which covers the entire examined area of the surface of the internal wall, organic material used as a primer. Second important discovery: the presence of an area of red color, pigment and binding substance, typical of wall painting. So, not a fresco, but a painting on the wall, exactly what Leonardo wanted to do, and what influenced the destruction of the work. Next important analysis showed traces of black paint applied with a brush on this red surface. The composition of this black paint caused euphoria among the researchers because it contained an unusual chemical ratio of manganese and iron compared to the normal one used by all artists. 2010 Louvre publication, concerning the research of two works of Leonardo - Mona Lisa and John the Baptist , showed exactly the same composition of black paint in these works in relation to manganese and iron. Besides, Gioconda Leonardo writes in Florence at the same time he is working on Battle of Anghiari . Evidence obtained: on the interior wall behind the wall with the Vasari fresco Battle of Marciano there is a work by Leonardo. From historical documents it clearly follows that he wrote on this wall of the Great Council Hall in Florence. There is a painting, the colors match the composition of two works by Leonardo; according to documents, it was he who painted on this wall. We must pay tribute Giorgio Vasari, did not defeat envy, did not destroy Leonardo’s fresco, but found an unusual way to preserve it for posterity. Another question is in what condition Battle of Anghiari on an interior wall? Will we ever be able to see her? How to open it without destroying Vasari's work? There are no answers to these questions yet.
"Battle of Anghiari"
This is what Adolfo Venturi writes about this extraordinary work that Leonardo had to complete for the Council Chamber of the Palace of the Signoria:
“Leonardo resorted to depicting the raging elements in order to express the hatred that gripped the people mixed up in a fierce battle. The picture is a terrible heap of people merging together like the foam of a wave; in the center there is a group of horses, as if thrown out by a terrible explosion. People and horses are seized with convulsions, twisted, intertwined like snakes, mixed up, as if in a furious battle of the elements, in a mad fight...
This image of a hurricane is followed by other images - horses galloping, rearing up, jumping, biting the bit, a young warrior swiftly galloping on a war horse, as if rushing into flight, a rider lost in a cloud of dust raised by a whirlwind gust of wind ... "
...But let's look at the facts. The contract, signed on May 4, 1504 in the presence of Machiavelli, provided for the payment of an advance to Leonardo in the amount of 35 florins, which was subsequently supposed to be deducted from the fee. He received 15 gold florins monthly for running expenses, committing himself to completing the work no later than the end of February 1505. If by the specified date he at least starts drawing a picture on the wall, then the contract can be extended. And then he will be compensated for all expenses.
Never before had Leonardo received such a lucrative order. On October 18, he re-enrolled in the corporation of Florentine painters - proof of his intention to settle in Florence! Machiavelli won.
Leonardo demanded space for himself and his entire team. On October 24, he was given the keys to the Papal Hall of the Monastery of Santa Maria Novella and adjacent rooms. In addition to a new workshop and several living quarters, Leonardo also received a spacious room in which he could calmly prepare cardboards - a kind of additional workshop for private use.
A long preparatory period began, evidenced by a multitude of documents, receipts confirming payments made at the request of his employees and suppliers, as well as a large number of preliminary drawings. When the cardboards were completed, he, alas, could not begin the main work. The Papal Hall was in extremely poor condition, with the roof and windows in urgent need of repair. Rainwater flowed directly into the room. On December 16, the Signoria decided to repair the roof so that Leonardo could begin work. All this took a very long time. However, this time the delay was not due to Leonardo's fault. Only on February 28 were the materials necessary for the repair of windows and doors, as well as for the construction of large mobile scaffolds, with which it was possible to reach any part of the wall, received.
The stage was built, of course, according to the drawings of Leonardo himself. It was impossible to do without them, given the size of the planned fresco “The Battle of Anghiari”. We had to paint a wall surface of 18.80 x 8 meters.
The mason carrying out the repair work made a passage in the wall that separated the Papal Hall from the vast adjacent room that Leonardo personally occupied. Now he could move freely from one room to another.
To obtain the necessary information about the Battle of Anghiari, Leonardo turned to Machiavelli, who composed an entire epic especially for him. The result is a fascinating story about an extremely bloody battle, in the midst of which St. Peter himself appeared! The historical truth is very far from what Machiavelli came up with. In fact, only one person died at Anghiari, and another fell from a horse. In a word, the event was devoid of greatness. It did not at all correspond to the ideas about war that Leonardo was going to express in his fresco. His sketches in notebooks testify to this.
Leonardo began creating cardboards on which he depicted the appearance of a beast called man, seized by his most ferocious passion - the extermination of his own kind. He showed these atrocities with all mercilessness. But the human is expressed in the head of the horse, whose gaze conveys all the horror of death. In addition to his chosen angle of bodies piled one on top of the other, he focuses on typical details that give greater freedom and dynamism to his characters. The skillfully constructed composition makes a majestic impression. She delights, shocks, amazes. What about Leonardo's contemporaries? Were they able to discern in all this the terrible indictment of war put forward to them? What does it matter, in the end... The main thing is that Leonardo’s bold creation brought success to its creator. He always had a taste for risk - both in his works and in life. A virtuoso master of painting, he treats the battle with amazing ease, but at the same time with frantic passion.
His numerous cardboards, necessary to create such a complex composition, represent different groups of people and horses mixed with each other. In the center are two horsemen attacking two opponents; their twisted bodies were inextricably intertwined. Below lie the mutilated bodies of other people. They've already fallen, they're already dead. The convulsive grimaces of these naked bodies produce a shocking impression. Leonardo had the habit of first depicting his characters completely naked, and only at the very end of the work dressing them in appropriate clothes, believing that this was the only way to achieve the greatest verisimilitude. On another cardboard there is a river, on the bridge across which another battle takes place. When depicting a group of horsemen, Leonardo fully demonstrated his skill as an animal painter, acquired in Milan: the horses he painted rear up, gallop, lie on the ground, bite and fight like people. Years of work on “The Big Horse” bore fruit, giving the painter the ability to achieve extreme accuracy and realism in the image. People and horses convey all the ferocity of the world with their disfigured features. The image is cruel, but at the same time sublime.
Just as was the case with “St. Anne” in the Church of the Annunciation, these cardboards aroused great interest. This time Leonardo was offered to put the cardboards on public display, opening the doors of the Papal Hall for everyone to see his “Battle of Anghiari”. And again the Florentines, friends, rivals reached out... Thanks to the fact that the artists saw this famous “Battle”, we have some idea about it. Raphael, Andrea del Sarto, Sodoma (the pseudonym of the artist Giovanni Bazzi), Lorenzo di Credi - all reproduced what they saw. Even Rubens, much later, made a copy of the central group. Who didn’t copy the “Battle of Anghiari” before it disappeared, falling victim to Vasari’s jealous brush!
Even the distrustful and touchy Michelangelo secretly copied certain fragments... Subsequently, he often used them in his compositions with horses rearing up and galloping.
Although Leonardo receives few orders, the whole world knows him, and everyone has their own opinion about him. He is truly famous, even if his fame does not benefit him. But at that moment he needs money more than wide recognition. This means that the work must be completed as soon as possible, and this has always been a problem for Leonardo... The main difficulty in painting a fresco for him was the need to work “without rewriting,” and in such a large space!
Before transferring the image from the cardboard to the wall, Leonardo covered it with a new layer of plaster to make it perfectly flat and smooth. He decided to use a “revolutionary” painting technique, which he had previously tested on part of the wall and on small panels. The result satisfied him. He abandoned the fresco technique of painting, from applying paints to plaster that had not yet dried. Instead, he decided to resort to the encaustic technique, which was advocated by Pliny the Elder. Leonardo didn’t find anything newer! This technique is similar to applying tempera to dry plaster. Leonardo did not forget the sad fate that befell his “Last Supper” in Milan. He doesn't intend to take any more risks. He wants what he wrote on this wall to remain forever. However, when creating such a large-scale and defiantly bold work, wouldn’t it be better to resort to the technique of “painting”? Botticelli himself, foreseeing the sad fate of Leonardo's new work, tried to persuade him to use a simpler technique, but he remained adamant. With the incredible enthusiasm inherent in great inventors, he gets to work.
The preparatory work progressed successfully until that fateful day, which Leonardo called the day of the disaster and the date of which he accurately indicated in his notebooks: “On Friday, June 6, when thirteen o’clock rang in the bell tower, I began painting the hall in the palace. However, just as I was about to apply the first brush stroke, the weather suddenly turned bad, and the alarm bell sounded the signal for everyone to return to their homes. The cardboard tore, the previously brought jug of water broke, and the water spilled and soaked the cardboard. The weather was terrible, it poured like buckets, and the downpour continued until the evening; it was dark, as if night had already fallen. The cardboard came off...” Leonardo had to put it back in place, having first restored it to its original form. He persistently continued his work, experimenting with paints along the way, making up new mixtures, selecting new types of oil and wax, and composing new types of plaster. Since the first results terribly disappointed him, he had to, discarding the thought of fate taking up arms against him, try something else. He did not want to retreat, on the contrary, he passionately wanted to succeed, to overcome all obstacles...
Here is what Vasari says about this: “Leonardo, abandoning the technique of tempera, turned to oil, which he purified using a distillation apparatus. It was because he resorted to this painting technique that almost all of his frescoes came off the wall, including the “Battle of Lngiari” and “The Last Supper”. They collapsed and the reason for this was the plaster he used. And at the same time, he did not save materials at all, spending six hundred pounds of plaster and ninety liters of rosin, as well as eleven liters of linseed oil...” Today we can say with confidence that it was precisely following the recommendations read from Pliny the Elder that caused the destruction of both famous creations of Leonardo .
This text is an introductory fragment.Italian art critics have filed a petition in defense of Giorgio Vasari's fresco “The Battle of Marciano” in the Palazzo Vecchio in Florence, reports BBC News. Already, 150 signatures have been collected from art historians from around the world who believe that drilling into the fresco in order to discover another one underneath - the work of Leonardo da Vinci “The Battle of Anghiari” - will cause irreparable damage to the existing Vasari painting. Members of the protest group are calling on the Florentine authorities to involve Renaissance experts in resolving the dispute.
It is known that Leonardo worked at the Palazzo Vecchio in 1503-1506, commissioned by Gonfaloniere Soderini. The fresco was supposed to decorate one of the walls of the Great Council Hall (or the Hall of the Five Hundred). By the way, Michelangelo was supposed to paint the opposite wall, but, having created a sketch of the “Battle of Cascina,” he never started work. And Leonardo da Vinci, who decided to write “The Battle of Anghiari,” on the contrary, began to paint the wall, but abandoned the work. Researchers of Leonardo da Vinci's work suggest that he used a new technique of oil painting on plaster, which turned out to be fragile. And during the painting process it began to deteriorate. And although Vasari writes that the “Battle of Anghiari” could be seen here back in 1565, only sketches have survived to this day. In 1555-1572, the Medici family decided to reconstruct the hall. So, on the site of the fresco, the “Battle of Marciano” by Giorgio Vasari arose.
In 1975, an art critic from the University of California, Maurizio Seracini, suggested that Vasari did not record the fresco of his great predecessor, but built a new wall on which he painted his own. He came to this conclusion by studying the engravings of 1553, which, in his opinion, were made not from Leonardo’s cardboard, but from a real fresco. In addition, Seracini drew attention in Vasari’s work to a flag with the inscription: “He who seeks will find” and considered this a hint to the presence of a fresco by da Vinci. He also conducted acoustic studies, which confirmed the assumptions: an air gap of one to three centimeters was found behind the wall, quite capable of containing a Leonardo fresco. In 2002, the authorities of Florence forbade the restless scientist to conduct further searches, but in 2007, the Italian Minister of Culture Francesco Rutelli allowed the scientist to continue searching. For this purpose, a special fund, Anghiari, was created to finance the work of Seracini.
Radar studies carried out last year showed that there is a hollow space between the original wall and the Vasari wall. Now Seracini and his team have drilled several holes in various places in the fresco to place small video cameras and look inside. Despite statements by the mayor of Florence that holes were drilled in damaged areas of the fresco, which would later be restored, scientists raised a wave of protest. Thus, Cecilia Frosinone, an art restoration expert who worked with Seracini on this project, resigned “for ethical reasons.” She, together with art critic from Naples Tomaso Montari, filed a petition with the court and the mayor's office of Florence demanding that the work be stopped until consultations were held with other experts on Renaissance art.
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Anghiari is a small picturesque town in Tuscany, which is nestled on the side of a steep hill. In the distance you can see the city of Sansepolcro - the birthplace of the great genius Pietro della Francesca. Between the two settlements there is a wide plain, the valley of the young Tiber, and the path of the famous river begins nearby. It was in this valley between the two cities that the Battle of Anghiari took place on June 29, 1440. It became part of the Lombard Wars between the Italian League and Milan.
During the first half of the 15th century, wars did not stop in northern Italy. Milan increased its power; it tried to conquer small independent cities in Lombardy and Tuscany. He was opposed by the powerful Venice and Florence. To wage war, cities hired condottieri - military leaders with their armies. They were paid huge salaries.
In the 15th century, wars almost never stopped in northern Italy.
In 1440, after a series of conflicts, Milan found itself in an extremely unpleasant situation: the troops of Duke Visconti suffered several sensitive defeats. The famous condottiere Niccolo Piccini, who fought on the side of Milan, was ordered to leave Tuscany to the north - to Lombardy. At this moment, the glorious warrior learns that the League army is located very nearby - near Anghiari. Niccolo had numerical superiority and the factor of surprise; he decided to try his luck and attack. Moreover, in Borgo Sansepolcro another 2 thousand townspeople joined him in the hope of reaping the fruits of a future victory.
The League soldiers were completely unprepared for battle. They expected the enemy to retreat and hoped to win the war for Tuscany without so much as a swing of the sword. The army was commanded by another condottiere, Micheletto Attendolo. Under his command were 300 Venetian horsemen, 4,000 Florentine infantry and the same number of papal soldiers. By some miracle, Micheletto noticed clouds of dust in the distance, realized that it was the enemy, and very quickly managed to line up his fighters.
Micheletto Attendolo was very lucky - he noticed the approach of the enemy
As a result, the soldiers clashed right on the bridge over the Tiber. Machiavelli left a detailed description of the battle, although he did it several decades later: “Micheletto valiantly withstood the onslaught of the first enemy troops and even pushed them back, but Piccini, approaching with selected troops, attacked Micheletto so fiercely that he captured the bridge, and threw him back to the very rise to the city of Anghiari.” After this, the Florentines and papal soldiers “hardly” hit Piccini’s troops from both flanks and pushed him behind the bridge. “This fight lasted two hours, and the bridge was constantly changing hands,” writes Machiavelli.
But the equal battle was only for the bridge. In all other places the Milanese failed. The fact is that as soon as they crossed over to the enemy’s side, they were met by a large army, which, thanks to its favorable location on the plain, constantly put fresh fighters forward. It was very convenient to change positions. When the Florentines crossed the bridge, Niccolo could not promptly send help due to the large number of ditches and potholes on the road. The enemy left them in advance.
As a result of the battle, only one rider died, who accidentally fell from his horse
“And so it happened that every time Niccolo’s soldiers crossed the bridge, they were immediately driven back by fresh enemy forces. Finally, the Florentines firmly captured the bridge, and their troops were able to cross onto the wide road. The speed of their onslaught and the inconvenience of the terrain did not give Niccolo time to support his own with fresh reinforcements, so those who were in front got mixed up with those coming behind, confusion arose, and the entire army was forced to flee, and everyone was no longer thinking about anything but salvation. without thinking, he rushed towards Borgo...”, Machiavelli describes the situation.
Florentine soldiers took thousands of people prisoner, seized carts, banners, horses and weapons. In Machiavelli's description, the battle seems grandiose; fantasy depicts dozens of horsemen who died on the bridge for several hours. But the outcome of the battle was somewhat different. There was only one victim - the knight unsuccessfully fell from his horse and broke his spine. No one else died. This can be explained by the fact that warriors at that time wore very powerful armor and it was extremely difficult to wound each other.
At the same time, for Milan this defeat was not significant. Losses in weapons and horses could be easily restored, and prisoners could be ransomed. Meanwhile, if Florence had lost, it would likely have lost its control of Tuscany. Victoria's joy was such that 60 years later, the Florentine gonfaloniere Soderini ordered a fresco from Leonardo da Vinci on the theme of the Battle of Anghiari. The master painted one of the walls in the Hall of the Five Hundred in the Palazzo Vecchio. Another genius worked opposite him - Michelangelo.
The fresco was considered lost for a long time. Allegedly, Vasari left his painting instead. On the other hand, scientists drew attention to the small inscription on Vasari’s canvas “let the seeker find.” A cavity was discovered behind his fresco. Some scientists suggest that it was there that Leonardo's masterpiece was preserved. But no full-fledged studies have been carried out yet.
"Battle of Anghiari" (Italian: Battaglia di Anghiari, also sometimes translated as "Battle of Anghiari") is a lost fresco by Leonardo da Vinci. The artist worked on it in 1503-1506.
Copy of Rubens' work
Leonardo da Vinci. Battle of Anghiari. 1503-1506
Black chalk, ink, water paints on paper. 45.2 × 63.7 cm
Louvre, Paris
The fresco was intended to decorate one of the walls of the Great Council Hall (Salon of the Five Hundred) of the Palace of the Signoria in Florence.
Copies of the cardboard for this fresco have survived. One of the best drawings - by Rubens - is in the collection of the Louvre
The fresco was commissioned by Leonardo da Vinci by Gonfaloniere Soderini to celebrate the restoration of the Florentine Republic after the expulsion of Piero de' Medici.
At the same time as Leonardo, Soderini commissioned Michelangelo to paint the opposite wall of the hall.
For the battle scene, da Vinci chose the battle that took place on June 29, 1440, between the Florentines and Milanese troops under the command of the condottiere Niccolò Piccinino. Despite their numerical superiority, the Milanese were defeated by a small Florentine detachment.
According to the artist’s plan, the fresco was to become his largest work. In size (6.6 by 17.4 meters) it was three times larger than the Last Supper. Leonardo carefully prepared for the creation of the painting, studied the description of the battle and outlined his plan in a note presented to the Signoria. To work on the cardboard, which took place in the Papal Hall at the Church of Santa Maria Novella, Leonardo designed special scaffolding that folded and unfolded, raising and lowering the artist to the required height. The central part of the fresco was occupied by one of the key moments of the battle - the battle of a group of horsemen for the banner.
A copy possibly made from the original incomplete work. Wikimedia Commons
According to Vasari, the preparatory drawing was recognized as a thing:
outstanding and executed with great skill because of the most amazing observations applied by him in the depiction of this dump, for in this depiction the people show the same rage, hatred and vindictiveness as the horses, two of which are intertwined with their front legs and fight with their teeth with no less ferocity than their riders,
fighting for the banner...
By the will of the Signoria, two great masters of that time worked on decorating the hall. This was the only time Leonardo and Michelangelo met on the same project. Each one showed off the strong side of their talent. Unlike da Vinci, Michelangelo chose a more “down-to-earth” plot. His painting “The Battle of Cascina” was supposed to show the Florentine warriors at the moment when, while bathing, they were suddenly attacked by the enemy. Both cardboards were presented to the public for several months. Later, Benvenuto Cellini, who saw the cardboards when they were still intact, called the works of Leonardo and Michelangelo “a school for the whole world.”
According to many researchers, despite the fact that the work on decorating the Palazzo Vecchio was never completed (Michelangelo did not even begin painting), the two geniuses made a revolution in the development of Western European painting, which led to the development of new styles - classicism and baroque. One of the first copies (ink sketch) from the original da Vinci cardboard belongs to Raphael and is kept in Oxford, in the University Gallery. There is an unfinished copy in the Uffizi, possibly belonging to an amateur artist. According to Milanesi, it could have been used by Lorenzo Zacchia da Luca when creating an engraving in 1558 with the inscription: “ex tabella propria Leonard! Vincii manu picta opus sumptum a Laurentio Zaccia Lucensi ob eodemque nunc excussum, 1558.” It is assumed that it was from Zaccia's engraving that Rubens made his drawing around 1605
Sketch for the "Battle of Anghiari"
Leonardo continued the experiments he began when creating The Last Supper with paint compositions and primers. There are various assumptions about the reasons for the destruction of the fresco, which began already during the work process. According to Vasari, Leonardo painted on the wall with oil paints, and the painting began to become damp during the process of work. Da Vinci's anonymous biographer says that he used Pliny's mixture recipe (encaustic wax painting) but misinterpreted it. The same anonymous author claims that the wall was dried unevenly: at the top it was damp, while at the bottom it was dry under the influence of coal braziers. Leonardo turned to wax paints, but some of the pigments soon simply evaporated. Leonardo, trying to correct the situation, continued working with oil paints. Paolo Giovio says that the plaster did not accept the nut oil-based composition. Due to technical difficulties, work on the fresco itself progressed slowly. Problems of a material nature arose: the Council demanded either that the finished work be provided or that the money paid be returned. Da Vinci's work was interrupted by his invitation to Milan in 1506 by the French governor Charles d'Amboise. The fresco remained unfinished.
In 1555-1572, the Medici family decided to reconstruct the hall. Vasari and his assistants carried out the restructuring. As a result, Leonardo's work was lost - its place was taken by Vasari's fresco "The Battle of Marciano".
Search for the fresco
In 1975, Italian art critic Maurizio Seracini suggested that Leonardo's fresco was not in such poor condition as previously thought. He saw proof in an engraving, made, according to his assumption, not from cardboard, but from the fresco itself, and dated 1553. All the details of the painting are clearly visible in the engraving, therefore the “Battle of Anghiari” was in excellent condition fifty years after its creation. Seracini was sure that Vasari, who admired the “Battle of Anghiari,” would never have destroyed Leonardo’s work, but hid it under his fresco. Seracini drew attention to the image of a small green pennant with a mysterious inscription: “Cerca trova” (“The seeker finds”) and considered this a hint from Vasari that there was a fresco by Leonardo behind the wall. Acoustic studies have shown the presence of a narrow (1 - 3 cm) air gap behind the wall with the “Battle of Marciano”, large enough to accommodate Leonardo’s fresco. Seracini suggested that Vasari did not create his fresco on top of da Vinci's fresco, but simply built a new wall in front of it, thereby hiding the “Battle of Anghiari”.
In 2002, the Florentine authorities banned Seracini from searching, fearing that Vasari's fresco would be damaged. However, in August 2006, research was allowed to continue. A special fund has been created to finance the Anghiari project. For testing purposes, it was decided to build a scaled-down model of two walls located at a short distance from each other. To create a copy, specialists from Italy's main reconstruction institute, Opificio delle Pietre Dure, had to use materials used in the construction of the eastern wall of the Salon of the Five Hundred, behind which, as Seracini assumed, Leonardo's fresco was hidden. The walls were supposed to be painted with paints that were used by Leonardo and Vasari. However, there is no data on new discoveries to date.
On March 12, 2012, Maurizio Seracini, who heads the team searching for the fresco, announced that researchers had found possible traces of Leonardo da Vinci's fresco "The Battle of Anghiari" in Florence's Palazzo Vecchio. According to Seracini, a study carried out at the end of 2011 confirmed that behind the wall with the Vasari fresco there is a cavity, behind which another surface is hidden. Using probes that were passed through 6 holes in the wall with Vasari's work, scientists were able to take samples from the hidden wall - black and beige paint, as well as red varnish, were found there.
In the process of chemical analysis of the samples, scientists determined that the black pigment corresponded to the pigment that was used to create the Mona Lisa. Be that as it may, a number of historians who spoke at Seracini's press conference believe that at the moment the results of the study do not look convincing enough.
