‘The Battle of Anghiari’ Leonardo da Vinci is seldom out of the
news. The story of 2011 was the Salvator Mundi, a serene and
ringletted image of Christ formerly considered the work of a
pupil or imitator, but now – after restoration, analysis and a
substantial helping of hype – attributed to the brush of the
master. No sooner had this excitement died down than the long-
running saga of Leonardo’s lost mural The Battle of Anghiari was
back in the headlines. At a press conference in Florence last
month, Maurizio Seracini, who has spent 35 years prospecting for
it, announced the findings of his latest and most ambitious
probe into the walls of the Palazzo Vecchio, where it was
painted in the early 16th century. Samples extracted from a
recess several inches behind the sumptuously frescoed east wall
of the Sala dei Cinquecento have revealed traces of a black
pigment ‘very similar’ to paint found in parts of the Mona Lisa,
which Leonardo was working on at the same time as the Anghiari
mural, and some flakes of what