“Police have visited the scene and have closely examined the fresco, as well as speaking to restorers,” Marco Agnoletti, a spokesman from Florence’s city council, which is based in the same building, the Palazzo Vecchio, told AFP.
The last reference to Da Vinci’s unfinished “Battle of Anghiari” was in the 16th century — but Florence’s top art authority believes it is hidden behind a fresco by Giorgio Vasari and has launched a controversial project to find it.
Da Vinci began his work in 1505 and Vasari painted his fresco in 1563.
San Diego University art historian Maurizio Seracini, who was mentioned in Dan Brown’s bestseller “The Da Vinci Code”, is leading the project.
National Geographic, which has reportedly paid $250,000 (187,000 euros) for exclusivity on any findings from the research, is also taking part.
Reseachers bored holes into the Vasari work in the hope that tiny cameras would confirm San Diego art historian Maurizio Seracini’s theory that the Renaissance artist’s bloody depiction of warfare is hidden underneath.
The technology used in the project was developed by a senior US nuclear physicist, Robert Smither, who came up with a special camera to generate high-resolution images of a cancer’s location in the human body.
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