Cerca Trova, or The Return of Leonardo. A fresco by Leonardo da Vinci, which was considered lost forever by Vasari Giorgio painting cerca trova, was discovered in Florence

Some experts suspect that a Leonardo masterpiece may be hidden behind Vasari's fresco

A scandal is erupting in the art world in connection with the search for an unfinished fresco by Leonardo da Vinci, allegedly hiding behind one of the walls of the Palazzo Vecchio in Florence, on the design of which another later worked outstanding master– Giorgio Vasari.

Palazzo Vecchio

More than five centuries ago, in the Palazzo Vecchio (city government building), in honor of the restoration of the Florentine Republic, it was decided to decorate the Great Council Hall with frescoes.

The fresco was commissioned by Leonardo da Vinci from Gonfalonier Soderini after the overthrow of the Medici dynasty and the expulsion of Piero de' Medici. The Medici are an oligarchic family, whose representatives repeatedly became the rulers of Florence from the 13th to the 18th centuries. Among the representatives of the Medici family are four popes - Leo X, Pius IV, Clement VII, Leo XI, and two queens of France - Catherine de' Medici and Marie de' Medici.

Grand Council Hall of Palazzo Vecchio

The great Leonardo worked on the fresco in 1503 - 1506. In the fall of 1503, the brilliant fifty-year-old artist, scientist and thinker began work. Between 1503 and 1505 the master made cardboard, and in 1505 he began the painting itself, which he left unfinished by the time of his second departure (May 30, 1506) to Milan.

One wall was commissioned to be decorated by Leonardo, already a world-famous artist, and the other by Michelangelo. He is still young, but has already become famous thanks to the sculpture of David. Two artists, two rivals.

Leonardo chooses as the subject the battle of Anghiari, which took place on June 29, 1440 between the Florentine detachment and the Milanese troops under the command of the condottiere Niccolo Piccinino. Despite their numerical superiority, the Milanese were defeated by a small detachment of Florentines. Although only one man died in the 1440 battle between the Florentines and Milanese near the small town of Anghiari, this did not change Leonardo da Vinci’s attitude towards wars, which he called “the most brutal madness.”

According to the artist’s plan, the fresco was to become his largest work. In size (6.6 m x 17.4 m) it was three times larger than " 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 Senoria. For work on cardboard (cardboard in painting is a drawing with charcoal or pencil (or two pencils - white and black), made on paper or on a primed canvas, from which the picture is already painted with paints), 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.

Copies of the cardboard for this fresco have survived. One of best drawings Rubens' drawing is recognized, in which one can see one of the scenes of the fresco - the battle for the banner.

Drawing by Rubens

Human and horse bodies cling together in a single snake ball, the horses are furious, and there is bestial rage on the faces of the people. Where are the Milanese, where are the Florentines, where are our own, where are strangers - it is not clear. There are no people in the picture, there are only horses and animals. No, this is not a glorification of military valor, this is the embodied horror of war, which the artist himself hated.

In the center of Leonardo's composition (known from his sketches and copies of the central part, which was obviously completed by that time), there was an episode with the battle for the banner, where horsemen fiercely fight with swords, and fallen warriors lie under the feet of their horses. Judging by other sketches, the composition was supposed to consist of three parts, with the battle for the banner in the center. Since there is no clear evidence, surviving paintings by Leonardo and fragments of his notes suggest that the battle was depicted against the backdrop of a flat landscape with a mountain range on the horizon.

Copy of a cardboard by Michelangelo Buonarroti (1503-1506) of Aristotle da Sangallo. Holkham Hall, Norfolk, UK.

It was the only time that two great masters of that time worked on decorating the same hall. Everyone tried to shine strong point your talent. Leonardo entered into competition with the young Michelangelo, who was executing an order for the fresco “The Battle of Cascina” for another wall of the same hall. This fresco was supposed to show the Florentine soldiers at the moment when, while bathing, they were suddenly attacked by the enemy.

Pier Soderini, who held the position of gonfaloniere at that time, seeing Michelangelo's great talent, ordered him to paint another part of the same hall, which became the reason for his competition with Leonardo, which he entered into by taking on the painting of another wall on the theme of the Pisan War. To do this, Michelangelo received a room in the hospital of dyers at Sant'Onofrio and there he began to work on a huge cardboard, demanding, however, that no one should see it. He filled it with naked bodies bathing on a hot day in the Arno River, but at that moment a combat alarm was heard in the camp, announcing an enemy attack; and while the soldiers climbed out of the water to dress, the divine hand of Michelangelo showed how some armed themselves to help their comrades, others fastened their armor, many grabbed their weapons, and countless others, having mounted their horses, were already entering the battle. Among the other figures there was one old man who wore an ivy wreath on his head; he sat down to pull on his trousers, but they wouldn’t fit, because his legs were wet after swimming, and, hearing the noise of the battle and the shouts and the roar of drums, he hastily and with difficulty pulled on one trouser leg; and besides the fact that all the muscles and veins of his figure were visible, he twisted his mouth so that it was clear how he was suffering and how tense he was all the way to the tips of his toes. There were depictions of both drummers and people tangled in their clothes and running naked into battle; and one could see the most extraordinary positions there: some were standing, some fell on their knees or bent over, or were falling and seemed to be hanging in the air from the most difficult angle. There were also many figures, united in groups and sketched in different manners: one outlined in charcoal, another drawn with strokes, and another shaded and highlighted with white - he so wanted to show everything that he knew how to do in this art. That is why the artists were amazed and amazed, seeing what limit the art that Michelangelo showed them on this sheet had reached. And so, having looked at such divine figures, some who have seen them say that of all that he and others have done, they have never seen anything like this and that no other talent will ever be able to rise to such divinity in art.

When there was no supervision over the cardboard, it was torn into separate pieces.

Both cards 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.”

Despite the fact that the work to decorate the Palazzo Vecchio was never carried out (Michelangelo did not even begin painting), two geniuses made a revolution in the development 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.

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 in the process of work. According to Vasari, Leonardo wrote on the wall oil paints, and the painting began to become damp during the work process. An anonymous biographer of da Vinci 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 that either finished work or return the money paid. Da Vinci's work was interrupted by his invitation to Milan in 1506 by the French governor Charles d'Amboise. The fresco remained unfinished.

Sketch for the "Battle of Anghiari"

However, neither the frescoes nor the cardboards, which received universal recognition from their contemporaries, have survived to this day.

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" (Battaglia di Marciano).

Allegorical paintings on the ceiling and walls of the magnificent Salon of the Five Hundred, intended for holding meetings of the Bolshoi People's Council after the second expulsion of the Medici in 1494 from Florence, they tell about the actions of the Tuscan Duke Cosimo I.

Hall of Five Hundred

Fresco by Vasari

Fresco by Vasari

The work on decorating the hall was led by Vasari and his students. In 1563, Vasari received an order to work in the famous Hall of Five Hundred (Salone dei Cinquecento). They destroyed every reminder of the years of republican rule, including the masterpieces “The Battle of Anghiari” by Leonardo da Vinci and “The Battle of Cascina” created at that time by Michelangelo. Vasari's works were intended to demonstrate the power and glory of the Duke and his state.

Experts have differing opinions regarding the fate of Leonardo's creation.

“Cerca, trova” - “.........Try and you will find.” These words on the fresco in the Great Council Hall of the Palazzo Signoria in Florence may be the key to unraveling the fate of one of Leonardo da Vinci’s best creations, “The Battle of Anghiari,” which last time seen five centuries ago.

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.

Vasari, himself great artist, who wrote a book about the history of painting, a biographer of many artists, who treated Leonardo’s work with the greatest trepidation, could not help but try to preserve it.

The professor believes that Vasari's fresco contains a clue. The "message" is in the inscription on the depicted war flag. The inscription reads "Cerca Trova", which means "Seek and you will find." "Not in any historical sources there is no mention that the painting was destroyed, damaged or moved to another location,” the professor claims. The researcher discovered the inscription 30 years ago, but only now modern technologies will allow you to look under the layers of paint of Vasari's frescoes. Scientists are using a neutron emitter to find the linseed oil paint Da Vinci used.

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 fez on top of da Vinci's fresco, but simply built a new wall in front of it, thereby hiding the “Battle of Anghiari”. Carrying out the reconstruction of the Great Council Hall in the middle of the 16th century, the artist and architect Vasari, as it was still believed, painted over da Vinci's fresco with his own. At the same time, he raised the roof of the hall by 7 meters and designed the top row of walls for this purpose. However, research has shown that in one place between the walls there was a niche left, quite large enough to accommodate Da Vinci’s creation measuring 6 x 4 meters.

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 the main Italian 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.

Now a team of scientists led by Seracini are trying to drill small holes in several parts of the wall in order to use microcameras to find out what exactly is hidden behind it.

Despite the words of the mayor of Florence that the holes were made in places that had been damaged earlier, many art critics are outraged by such indelicate methods of handling Vasari’s work.

In their opinion, the likelihood that the artist left something significant behind the outer wall is extremely small, and Leonardo’s fresco, according to a number of documents, was located on the opposite wall.

One of the restoration experts, Cecilia Frocinone, left the project due to ethical concerns.

About 150 art historians from around the world have signed a petition calling for an end to drilling into the wall, which currently features Vasari's fresco "The Battle of Marciano."

By drilling a hole in the outer covering, researchers hope to reach a hidden inner wall that allegedly depicts Da Vinci's unfinished Battle of Anghiari fresco.

The Battle of Anghiari is supposedly three times the size of the Last Supper. According to the professor, Da Vinci's work marks the greatest achievement in the art world of the era early renaissance. If the painting is discovered, the Florentine authorities will be faced with the question of replacing Vasari's work with a work by a brilliant artist.

Materials used

History of creation

The fresco was commissioned by Leonardo da Vinci by Gonfalonier Soderini to celebrate the restoration of the Florentine Republic after the exile of Piero de' Medici.

At the same time as Leonardo, Soderini commissioned Michelangelo to paint the opposite wall of the hall.

For 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 Senoria. For the work on 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.

According to Vasari preparatory drawing was recognized as a thing:

outstanding and executed with great skill due to 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 horsemen fighting for the banner...

Sketch for the "Battle of Anghiari"

By the will of the Señoria, 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 cards 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.

Leonardo continued the experiments with paint compositions and primers that he began when creating The Last Supper. There are various assumptions about the reasons for the destruction of the fresco, which began already in the process of work. According to Vasari, Leonardo painted on the wall with oil paints, and the painting began to become damp during the process of work. An anonymous biographer of da Vinci 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 improve the situation, continued to work 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 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 showed the presence of a small (1 - 3 cm) air gap behind the wall with the “Battle of Marciano”. Seracini suggested that a new wall was built for Vasari's fresco, hiding the "Battle of Anghiari".
In 2002, the Florentine authorities banned Seracini from searching, fearing that Vasari's fresco would be damaged. 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 the main Italian 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.

Notes

Literature

• Vasari D. Lives of the most famous painters, sculptors and architects, Academia, vol.II, pp. 108 - 109.
• Zubov V.P. Leonardo da Vinci, -M. - L.: USSR Academy of Sciences, 1962

Links

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. 150 signatures have already 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 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.

Info:

"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 crazy 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 deadline 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, which is evidenced by a lot of documents, checks confirming payments made at the request of his employees and suppliers, as well as large number 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! Historical truth 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 interprets the battle with amazing ease, but at the same time with frantic passion.

His numerous cardboards, necessary to create such a complex composition, represent various groups people and horses mixed together. 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 made a copy of the central group much later. 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 defiant bold work Wouldn't it be better to resort to the "coloring" technique? Botticelli himself, foreseeing the sad fate of Leonardo's new work, tried to persuade him to use more simple 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 achieve success, 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 .

In the Florentine Palazzo Vecchio (Palace of Senoria), as a result of long-term research, traces of Leonardo da Vinci's fresco “The Battle of Anghiari”, which was considered completely lost, were found. Presumably it is located in the thickness of the wall of the Great Council Hall.

Leonardo da Vinci's fresco "The Battle of Anghiari" is known only from copies - it was believed that the painting began to crumble right in the process of creation, was not finished and was completely destroyed 50 years after its creation. Professor Maurizio Seracini has been fighting this theory for almost 40 years, who believes that, firstly, the “Battle of Anghiari” was not in such a bad state, and secondly, it was not shot down to make way for the work of Giorgio Vasari “ Battle of Marciano,” but hid it by erecting a new wall in front of it.

According to the original plan, the walls of the Great Council Hall in the Palace of the Lord in Florence were to be decorated by two great artists of the era - Leonardo and Michelangelo. Both greats presented sketches to the council, but Michelangelo did not even begin work on the wall, and Leonardo did not succeed. He intended to cover a huge area - 6.6 x 17.4 m - with paintings depicting horsemen locked in a ball, and in 1503–1506 he apparently began working on the wall with wax-based paints, but the pigments began to fade. Leonardo continued to work with oil, but the primer refused to accept paint and crumbled. It is believed that copies from the “Battle of Anghiari” (their authors were Raphael, then unknown artist, based on the work of which an engraving was made by Lorenzo Zacchia, and then Rubens) were created not from a fresco, but from cardboard - a life-size sketch.

Researcher Maurizio Seracini has been looking for this seemingly lost fresco since 1975 (they say it was this scientist-enthusiast who served Dan Brown as the prototype for one of characters detective "The Da Vinci Code"). The search is complicated by the fact that Vasari’s painting still adorns the wall to this day, which is also very valuable, and under no circumstances should it be damaged. However, the persistent professor, through ultrasound examination, discovered a gap in the thickness of the wall and has now obtained permission to take microsamples from it. They contained traces of black pigment of the same composition that was used to create La Gioconda. In addition, samples of red varnish and brown pigment were obtained, which scientists are now studying. According to Maurizio Seracini, Giorgio Vasari, who deeply revered the genius of Leonardo, could not allow the fresco to be destroyed and ordered a wall to be built in front of it, which he painted. In addition, the professor is sure that the fresco has been preserved quite well - and the chances of seeing it are not lost for us.