Main » 2012»December»3 » Italy tracks down copy of Da Vinci's lost masterpiece
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Italy tracks down copy of Da Vinci's lost masterpiece
Italy's specialist art theft police have tracked down and brought home a 400-year-old copy of a lost Leonardo da Vinci masterpiece - an incomplete fresco painting of the Battle of Anghiari.
It once decorated a wall of the Palazzo Vecchio in Florence, the Tuscan city's monumental town hall.
The copy is temporarily on show until the New Year at the Quirinal Palace in Rome, the official residence of the president of Italy.
The painting shows a group of men-at-arms and knights on horseback engaged in close combat, fighting for possession of a flag.
The historic battle between Florence and its allies against a numerically superior force from Milan took place in 1440, and the Florentines won.
'Flawed work'
Art historians believe that Leonardo, experimenting with various fresco painting techniques, started painting the battle scene in 1503, using sketches he had been preparing for years.
But he never completed the project. The paint began to drip after he applied colour to the walls.
Trying to save what he could, he applied large charcoal braziers close to the painting. But the colours intermingled and only part of the fresco was completed.
Within a few years, after the fresco had deteriorated, the Hall of the Five Hundred was restructured and Giorgio Vasari was commissioned by the local ruler to paint a different battle scene to replace Leonardo's flawed work.
Vasari, later a biographer of Leonardo, actually saw the cartoon, or preliminary drawing on paper of the battle scene, which he described in glowing terms. "It would be impossible to express the inventiveness of Leonardo's design for the soldiers' uniforms, or the crests of the helmets, not to mention the incredible skill he demonstrated in the shape and features of the horses, which Leonardo, better than any other master, created with their boldness, muscles and graceful beauty," he wrote.
What is about this article ? Do you enjoy art? Who painted this picture? Where is the picture now? What is shown on this picture? What masterpieces of Leonardo da Vinci do you know? Can you give the name of your favourite artist?
I like this article, because I enjoy art. I think Leonardo da Vinci is an artist of genius.He is one of the most famous artists in the world! His the most popular creature is "the "Mona Lisa"
temporarily-временно possession-владение allies-союзники a numerically superior-численно превосходящий charcoal-древесный уголь to intermingle-смешиваться to restructure-реорганизовывать preliminary-предварительный crests-гребни a helmet-шлем boldness-смелость
