60 Minutes: The Lost Leonardo Da Vinci
In the art world, there is perhaps no mystery more enduring than the fate of a lost masterpiece by Leonardo da Vinci, the greatest mind of the Renaissance. It was an immense unfinished mural known as "The Battle of Anghiari." For centuries, it has been assumed the work was destroyed, painted over or simply faded away long ago.
Now, after three decades of battling skepticism and bureaucratic resistance, an art detective named Maurizio Seracini believes he's close to solving the Leonardo mystery by suggesting the mural hasn't been lost at all, but is right where it’s always been - for 500 hundred years.
"We are searching for the number one work of art by Leonardo. It was considered the masterpiece of the Renaissance," Seracini tells correspondent Morley Safer.
We know roughly what "The Battle of Anghiari" looked like from fragments of Leonardo's sketches and copies made by his admirers before the mural disappeared. It celebrated a victory by Florence over Milan - a furious tangle of men and horses frozen in the fever of war. The painting was in its time, at the beginning of the 16th century, something to behold.
"We have diaries, for example, of people seeing and being in admiration of the horses of Leonardo," Seracini says. ...
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Now, after three decades of battling skepticism and bureaucratic resistance, an art detective named Maurizio Seracini believes he's close to solving the Leonardo mystery by suggesting the mural hasn't been lost at all, but is right where it’s always been - for 500 hundred years.
"We are searching for the number one work of art by Leonardo. It was considered the masterpiece of the Renaissance," Seracini tells correspondent Morley Safer.
We know roughly what "The Battle of Anghiari" looked like from fragments of Leonardo's sketches and copies made by his admirers before the mural disappeared. It celebrated a victory by Florence over Milan - a furious tangle of men and horses frozen in the fever of war. The painting was in its time, at the beginning of the 16th century, something to behold.
"We have diaries, for example, of people seeing and being in admiration of the horses of Leonardo," Seracini says. ...