New lead in hunt for lost Leonardo

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John Hooper in Rome
Wednesday June 8, 2005
The Guardian

Hopes of finding a long-lost work by Leonardo da Vinci have been fired by the discovery of a tiny cavity in a wall in the Palazzo Vecchio in Florence.

Maurizio Seracini, a world-renowned expert in the use of advanced technology to investigate artworks, said he had found a hollow space behind Giorgio Vasari's fresco, the Battle of Marciano. He said he believed the gap had been "created by Vasari himself to protect Leonardo's masterpiece".

Leonardo is known to have begun a vast work, the Battle of Anghiari, on the same wall in 1505. A Florentine writer who saw it described it 44 years later as "miraculous".

A British organisation, the Kalpa group, said yesterday it was ready to fund the final phase of Mr Seracini's investigation, provided he could obtain the necessary permission from Florence city council. Karl Sabbagh, a consultant to the group, said: "His findings so far have been tantalisingly positive."

http://www.guardian.co.uk/italy/story/0,12576,1501619,00.html