The Battle of Anghiari

welcome good afternoon hello hi I'm Joel Achenbach with the Washington Post it's great to be back here at the Aspen Institute for this amazing event thank you Aspen Institute Thank You Jamie Walter Peter everyone who made this possible I'm here with Gary Radke eminent professor from Syracuse University author of textbooks on art history and Marco jianci of the Florence Fine Arts Academy Canton Academy of Fine Arts in Florence and we're here today to talk about the the painting the Battle of Anghiari who here has heard of either the painting of the Battle of Anghiari or the Battle of Anghiari itself oh so we you're all graduate students very educated I notice how I had not heard heard of that the painting here's here's the buzzkill right out of the gates it has been lost okay it was unfinished it was damaged abandoned and lost otherwise a masterpiece so let's start what Gary and Marco what we have here you see on the screen is a very good image of by by opinion by Peter Paul Rubens based on the Leonardo tell us what we're looking at and why was this such a big deal painting who Ashley in order to paint this where was this in his life when he painted his version of this sure the Battle of Anghiari was going to be an enormous fresco in the City Hall of Florence what we have today are just little sketches and then this relatively large drawing that shows us what is the center of what that composition might have been we frequently call this particular image I'm pointing down here but you're looking over there the battle for the standard because there was in the midst of this battle a great heroic moment when the Florentine forces were able to conquer and capture the standards the flags of the opponents the Milanese now so Florence in Milan that was like Ohio State Michigan it was a really big thing a big deal I mean Florence and Milan had been sometimes very often rivals from 1450 on they had become there was a greater peace between the two cities that I think it's fascinating that they the city government asked Leonardo just coming back from Milan after the sports the government has collapsed we'd like you to do a battle scene where the Florentines beat the Milanese there's no the thing is that this battle was won against the Visconti right so that's the important thing that was the enemies of the sports after royal but anyhow what should I say this is like a ghost painting a ghost pain because of nobody knows if the painting is still there we know that the Leonardo beginneth is work we know that he also abandon it the work most probably for technical problems that he was having because they would typically use you know a way of painting that was now the bomb fresco it was actually a way that you know replicated that they all painting on panel and they didn't work so here's the thing about this painting its lost but it may still exist we can we're gonna get into that so let me just ask both of you do you think this painting is behind the Vasari painting let's first of all let's give you an image right here of this is a reconstruction or if you can see this pretty pixelated it's pretty pixelated of the scale of the painting all the different figures involved if you go back to look at the at the Rubens which was painted a century later this is just a detail this is the wrong date okay not because the date is a 1503 on Rubens in fact at 1603 no 15:03 was right so so tell us what this image shows here it would have shown all the different parts of the battle leonardo writes in his notes about what his battle really like he describes in fact the smells the sounds of battle the smoke the dirt the screams it was almost I think he was imagining it as actually being immersed in that battle where there were horsemen there were men with pickaxes who were going after one another it was an extremely violent and extremely in the end successful battle for the Florence so today he would be a multi-millionaire a Hollywood movie maker in bright with the big-budget movies with all the violence and all that so let's look at these details what are we looking at here well what we're lucky is that in Budapest and many other collections as well there are some spectacular drawings of details that show us what looks like the rather caricatured face in the Rubens copy at the center of the of the of the the image how Leonardo would have had the Warriors actually screaming at one another there's something that we've been talking about about this inner energy about the psychology that is expressed through the body that is at once explained by we can hear him shouting we can hear the opponent on the right doing the same and yet a different tone so what's happening with this the gentleman on the left here is he's in the middle of battle he's angry and what's happening he's the one that's in the drawing that's beneath it at the very centre who's got his sword up and is probably trying to certainly mortally wound in the opponent who's coming by him on horseback that's the Florentine and that's the Tolentino right the head of the Milanese so let's let's let's look so this is the scene of the painting what are we looking at here well this is the room where we know the painting was begun it's the Great Council Hall it has been enlarged Vasari in the second half of the 16th century raised the roof and then changed the the imagery but both Leonardo and this young man 23 young young years younger Michelangelo were asked to do battle paintings in this room both of them started neither of them finished so so you could go in this mess today I would like to I would like to to make a notation that see Linga has been the scene of a famous Dan Brown when they break through when they break through and somebody get killed so in other words I'm introducing now a very interesting topic the way the Italian Renaissance is represented or misrepresented represented probably so that's very true though I want to say that Dan Brown has got a special award from the city of Florence just in that room because he has advertised the city so much so good with these two books with the da Vinci Code first and then inferno so he has made a great service of the city of Florence athough many of the Florentines after having read the book they they shook their head their head what is this I mean this is fiction and as a matter of fact it's fiction also about The Da Vinci Code you read it and if you know enough about Leonardo you'll find it's at least strange so in this room is a Vasari painting right that is painted where we we think the leonardo was tell us I mean is it possible the Leonardo as many people have alleged but this is a huge controversy is it possible Leonardo is behind the Vasari painting perhaps let's look at the next slide is that right so we can get a sense this is a reconstruction of what the room may have looked like or at least part of the room before Leonardo went working on it and we know that there is a description of the room we've got it right here in which we can place where the painting was located if you look at the at the east wall you'll see that in the center there was a load of the senior II they were that head officials of the government on the left-hand side as we look at the gonfaloniere de compañía and on the right hand side the Doty Chabot nominee or otherwise known as the twelve good men and we have a little description here written in the early sixteenth century that tells us that Leonardo's painting was in that position and that's where one of these bizarre paintings is I'm gonna read it in English and because I'm the American I'm doing that and then mark was gonna read it in Tuscan so you can at this time Leonardo da Vinci a very great and Florentine master of painting began to paint the hall of the of the Council on that wall over where the twelve good men are and that hallway from the palace to the hall was caused to be paved with nearly brown round bricks and nine flags taken from Lord Bartolomeo Dalvi on Oh a few days ago were hung in that said Hall now that means now that you know what that means you can hear wait a second I need my eyeglasses okay this is actually a memoir written by sheer attorney there's a chair a tiny straight that goes from the Duomo to the railroad station in Florence and it was written apparently in the summer of 1504 all right and it says in 16th century Florentine in in questo tempo Leonardo da Vinci maestro grandis Samoyed Fiorentino de pictura come in chief injera la sala del consiglio in qualifier so Prado vest on Oh IDO the Shiva nominee si si imaginary land ito del Palazzo anzala coma Tony quasi Tandy epic Oh since allahditta nove van Garrett Altai al signora Bartolomeo del V ah no piu journée about when when Leonardo began to work on his painting we know that in the later sixteenth century well first of all we know the something got started there and Leonardo was painting in a very unusual medium leonardo was always inventing whether it had tar whether it had pitch whether it had wax it had something in it that wasn't drying correctly so Leonardo had this bright idea let's light some fires on the lower part of the wall and warm up the wall and then he burned the whole place the painting actually melted down the wall and that's why we when you asked the question does it still exist well if it does still exist behind another wall that was built in front of it for the Vasari painting it cannot be in very good condition it cannot be a painting that's going to look like we think a painting should I would like to add a little thing me Leonardo himself writes a note in Madrid the - if I remember right where he describes the terrible weather conditions at the time when he put it for the first time is a paintbrush on a wall a big storm happened I mean that the water jar broke the cartoon tore into pieces and you know doll of day all of the I believe that the bells that called a the council started to to ring so something terrible I mean a terrible omen happened and this is a memory of Leonardo that he wrote about this painting when he studied at the so wasn't born under a good sigh yes I said there was fire it was rain fire rate as a dumb question I mean did Leonardo understand that we we 500 years later what his paintings to have survived does he understand that he was like a great painter and that he should paint in a way so that this stuff would last and not melt that he should maybe try to finish some of these things I mean did he have eyes that he was living in the Renaissance did he know well I do I mean when you think of how many thousands of pages of notes and notebooks survived I think we've got a good sense that he did want and need to have his legacy treasured and and continued he just wanted to make everything perfect right and so had he succeeded this painting would have been like a glorious oil painting on the wall it would have had something that most fresco artists had never most until that may be the 17th century had never been able to affect and that his atmosphere light color rather than it being a a generally flat tonality is a typical fresco had been should we look at what's on the wall now sure ok so this is the Vasari right right go ahead and this is where Marco and I are going to part some company because I'm going to play the role of the good American that's all of us and he's gonna play the role of the good Florentine the flooring add more Florentine than Italia ok remember there is we have those differences what's fascinating is over the last couple of decades scholars and scientists have begun to think about well where could this could this painting survive and this is a big battle scene that was painted in front of the Leonardo and scientific tests and scanning and various tests have shown that there is a brick wall a thin brick wall that Azari erected in front of the wall on which Leonardo must have painted so clearly if something does survive there's proud there there may well be something behind it there in fact recent tests have shown they're puttin probes and cameras and there is a gap there's actually a gap between the original wall and this wall and this large painting is then painted over it and what people have found fascinating but that Marco will provide a response to is there's this wonderful green flag that I've circled there that we got a detail of and it says on that flag chaired Kotova which an Italian can be loosely translated as seek and ye shall find now Marco has a different interpretation okay here we go this is gonna be fun because you see two muscle the Florentines this sounds like a treasure hunt sheer cat robe it sounds strange to me so two scholars philologist not art historians so in other words the serious people people that read the text that they don't have a bias because they want to find so they have a studied they concept out they then the name of it so two scholars is a mushi and the sub-array and if you want to know it actually you can find a note also in wikipedia at least the de Italian version of it I don't know about the American English but anyhow here it says that these two scholars they wanted to reconstruct the theme of the fortune of fortune and damnatio the Natsu is condemned other of the oldest Florentine insignia Libertas Liberty so in other words of course Cosimo was after all a tyrant and we had painted a pillar of the Florentine Republic and Michelangelo stood on the side of the Republic and stuccos emo let's not forget it at all later on things became differently you know regulated but the point is that the Cosimo II wanted to you know I wanted to deface all of the ideas of Liberty which is a Republican concept so according to the scholars they this chair cut raava it's something that was written in the battle in the real battle was written on eight green it specified the green flags that the king of friends had given to the for you sheet if you're in TV I mean to the Florentine rebels oh those who were against Cosimo and so the conclusion is chair cut raava actually it was in written chair cut roba it was written something longer and much more important one of dante's rhyme you know Dante Alighieri for us is the top of everything sometimes they ask me who's the most important artist that you ever had I always say done Leonardo Nicola done Dante is above all even in the mind of a Leonardo and Michelangelo let me let me finish this because this is interesting so on the flags on a green flags was written liberty' Vassar condo casa caracol McKee per la vita refute seeking for liberty which is so dear to those who refuse it though i mean beta momenta because might rosacea whose so dear to those who refuse it losing the lives so this was day in senior on the ground on the green flags so that's that's the memory but wait a second wait a second so why is it chair cut rava then Chilcott robe according to the scholars is a way of mocking before you [ __ ] saying that chair cut rava you seek and you will find us so so that's here in other words in other words the conclusion could be this is again an hypothesis but it's a you know it's based on on on writings did they polish that this was not written by Vasari to say that they should look there it's written because it's part of you know of the battle scene and it's a way of mocking those who were against Cosimo how do you market but Marco and cares if it's really clear-cut Rover whether it's from Dante or whether it's from this there is likely to be some kind of painting behind this painting so why will you as a Florentine not think it's a great idea for with advanced technology no no no no all this bizarre out of the way no no and see whether we can or not I mean you can just peel up the Vasari paint it doesn't work no no you cannot do that listen I want to tell you something about this thing personally I'm not against I remember that Cristina she Dini dear friend of mine they supreme then 10th until not long ago she wasn't very much against it they all be featured la Pietra do ray which is the maximum institution for restoration in florence italy and one of the most important around the world i'm sure that all of the scholars refer to the opp totally pietra dura which since the flood of 1960 is an authority in rhetoric they sent one of their main to work on the scaffoldings together with Fettuccine so they has not been unwilling but listen up there was a political issue there was a political issue that I can represent if you want sure political well not Rossini would drill some holes of the painting years ago only in places where there were already losses in the paint and it was relatively safe to do it Sara Cheney they are 1975 following carlopa deities you know intuition parentheses I would like to pay a tribute here to the Dorian of The Da Vinci Scholars Carlo pedretti was almost 90 years old now and releasing the incheon is ready to open his own the his own pedretti foundation in Vinci and has been you know my mentor of course I am very grateful to Carlo for everything by the way Carlo had this intuition seracini was young at that time he has pursued this idea till he has been able to find fans National Geographic and has been able to find de political backup when this happened I would say has to do in Italy we don't fear speaking about politics we are very much outspoken so I will tell you there's a name around many things revolve the name is Matteo Renzi the matteo renzi he's a guy 25 years older than I am actually one is much younger than you are Renzi as you said he was older oh there are no young no he's 41 42 actually his father is my age and one day Matteo that I know really well Monday he wrote Santino my father did something wrong but you know at his age so I sent him a message just saying no what are you saying here by the way Matteo Renzi who's a very strong a character escalated the Italian politics in a few years so so does the mayor think and do you think Marco and Gary do you think that the Leonardo the lost Leonardo is behind that painting or son not sure no you think it's there I think there's good reason to think that there is something behind there and there are reports even after the painting was ruinous that there were people were being encouraged to go to the palazzo vecchio and look and see what remains of the land if there was another thing there so I do believe and I think I also be I believe maybe if you if you would be able to retry which I believe is gonna be difficult because how do you remove the va's everything I mean too many Italian so that would be a crime but to other people Ari is one of those those artists who painted by the acre and these paintings the Vasari partisans are in revolt they're upset I so but before we go on here also painting in the hall well and there's a whole session about this tomorrow not exactly side by side but there was a competition between Leonardo and Michelangelo and who knew that they that they had they were both painting in the same room huge battle scenes I mean you know you know it's like in comic books is like the Hulk vs Thor you know I mean it's a big deal to have these two did so what happened there well what happened there was that Leonardo initially got the Commission then Michelangelo the year later is brought in to do some more walls and we don't know whether they were gonna be next to each other or opposite one another that's a great unknowns but what's so fascinating to us is that the two of them had such different approaches that Leonardo's was going to be this great cinematic and full of energy and at least the parts that remain of the Michelangelo idea are largely typically Michelangelo based on the human figure on nudes on figures that are in complicated poses so we would have had the two alternatives really the Michelangelo on one side and the Leonard on the other see but the Michelangelo never became a painting not even the beginning of it it just remained a cartoon just a quarter just occurred not so they are not da da Vinci he began maybe did something but I what I believe I'm not against you know trying exploring and not against that in theory then if you want we can come to other to another part of the debate the political part but because that's the most important thing of all in my opinion by the way if you if you'd be able to find something behind it they would have probably a stain I don't know something like that you we don't know I don't we all love the Last Supper Marco we're willing to look at a painting that has three flakes of color here and four flakes of of color there maybe because I think that the beauty of the of the of the Last Supper like the beauty of the Battle of Anghiari composition is that Leonardo is be able to do what we've been talking about both the macro and the micro that his overall compositions are always so strong and so well thought out that even if we were missing the details or if he's decided I'm just not going to get to those leaves there is something to see before we go on to the military right stuff which is next just head to head Leonardo Michelangelo someone here last night was saying and I don't want to say who it was okay was Walter was said that Leonardo was much better pain or do you agree than Michelangelo that true let mark they were different I learned these from the American when the Americans do not want to say something to say it's different as they learn it from Americans well I think your question is really an interesting one because we like to sort of say yes is this better than that and in terms of what we now think of as painting that painting is richly colored that it's tonal that it is atmospheric that it has a great sense of depth Leonardo clearly superior to Michelangelo Michelangelo is a fresco artist for the most part he's a sculptor who wants his paintings to look sculptural but would we ask is Michelangelo a better sculptor than Leonardo I'm gonna have a session about that and I'll tell you know they're both really great yeah they're both pretty talented fellows okay so let's talk for a second I'm gonna there's a quote mark though that it's in Walters book the he quotes you saying man is a machine a bird is a machine the whole universe is a machine Leonardo was fascinated with machines and among the things that he liked to do was design military contraptions that like this giant crossbow well what was that about cuz there's a you know vegetable is that a vegetarian a you know a peace-loving guy and he's got running on you know you want to know something when we read Leonardo's notebooks we find a statement that maybe is very good very clear and we use it all the time to characterize the person but if you read all of the manuscripts most probably we will find another sentence which says just the opposite so this must be clear you know Leonardo da Vinci manuscripts they can poop they can be pulled one side or another side that's the way it has always been with Leonardo and then it becomes mysterious because it's unclear because that kind of things but you know Leonardo I obscene on a screen they-they-they letter they-they-they the application letter that he sends to the to the Duke of Milan and there's a list of military you know things a weaponry you know whatever Elsa fortress is bridges right that he can do or destroy and everything else but you know most probably I don't think that Leonardo at the age of 30 when he wrote that letter he knew much about the war but never never seen the war so it is was made probably to impress the dog and everything that it rose like those are fantastic you know autoscale machines they are to impress the dog and also you know almost for fun I mean machines like those could never be used but many of them ours are based in vault Oreos and other absolutely absolutely hire machines for me little earlier author who did similar things in there's another slide here that shows this terrifying slide with chopped up bodies right what's so spectacular about the Leonardo ideas is that they are elegantly efficient that if you're going to go after somebody and more why not slice them neatly the first time rather than having to go back and forth if you're going to have cannon and you're going to try to bring an end these incessant wars I mean Italy from the Middle Ages on which was battles between cities to them the great invasions in Michelangelo and later Nardo's time to certainly during the rest of the sixteenth century just as endlessly at war and I think we might one of the ways we might look at these machines is to think of Leonardo as saying okay how we're gonna have to deal with this as a reality but maybe this is the atom bomb maybe this is are some of the kinds of machines that could bring victory to one side and keep and bring some of this conflict but to me is also very Gary he has he has already mentioned the name of this humanist Roberto Val Tulio born in Rimini and he published in 1472 there a military which is that was a lot in 1472 then in 1483 that is just before probably at the time of those paintings this was published very successfully in Bulgari in the vulgar language so that everybody could read so it's true if you look at those anvil to do he Illustrated and described the machines in use among the Romans so it was an antiquarian Romans way back when Roman Cermak Romans did the ancient Romans so this was a sort of antiquarian dream it was it was something in the key of the humanist mind of course and I see those machines like you know fantasy dreams beautiful illustrations but not really yeah disagree video on that I do I do think that there is some sense that he's trying to make as I've said war more efficient that there would be some of these things yet they're outrageous they're their attractions but many of the things he's got figure out how better to have a wall that cannot be seized because it pushes ya siege people forward or or he various machines that are going to use this new cannon technology in even more spectacular way and he's figuring out how am I cast them but even more how might I put them in multiples together that doesn't in the end answer your question how does this seemingly elegant and relatively pacifistic and perhaps vegetarian person deal with this other than I think that this was where you made your money and if there was a lot more money in the arms business certainly than in the painting good I say just a little note Leonardo himself right that those cars chariots they they were often more dangerous to those who use them and Plus as you can see he invented the flying saucer so we we have to take questions now in but in so please stand out so I can see you the lights are kind of bright there's a question right here in front we have a microphone yes ma'am I'm Selena Friends of Florence I wanted to just clarify a few things you went over fairly quickly about the research that was done on the wall in the son of the chief Achanta well first of all I want to thank we have a donor here actually Bob Crane who donated towards research we did actual archival research to see how that wall was built by Masotti and what it was made of and if there was a possibility of having a vacuum of space behind it and what came out from the archives and it was about a year's worth of research if not more that the bricks were actually made counted and made in a width that allowed a fairly large space behind that would protect the wall of monado so that was actually something that was written it was documented he came out and then about all the political this isn't a question it was just a clarification really but all the political essence of what happened afterwards was completely clear because of NC was the mayor of Florence the opposition to him was in Rome and National Geographic just got really tired and said we're not going to fund this anymore and so it closed down but that there were they did find some traces of lead paint when they were doing all of the probing mm-hmm so there was there is a chance that there's something there even if they took down the wall would they ever find anything who knows okay thanks no it's it's actually very true I believe that something may be fine maybe found behind the wall I'm pretty much sure but you know you know very well that the political situation in Florence Renzi in his ascent I remember when he was presidented in the provincial county he wanted to make a new facade you wanted to give a new facade to the Church of San Lorenzo for example and you know a couple of days later he had to to give up because it was assaulted you know by everybody so so and when it was that was the time of the battalion Gary was very much pride because first of all is a is a generous guy he believes very much in innovations is is that way but he has his own enemies and many of his enemies were in the Supreme condenser which is the other protagonists in Florence superintendents a which after the first who knows if there will be others government rain see the servant Enza has been eliminated does not exist anymore maybe also as a consequence of this the director of your fitzy gallery is now a German you know the superintendent sir that was a caster does not exist anymore or it's it's something completely derivative then it was but you know I have here I I have here a letter when I know that in 2011 Renzi wrote a letter to the minister or Nagi this was the minister at the time of the governor Modi saying I will do this when there will be a new government he said that but the most important thing of all this is something that you must learn because this is Italy happen is that 35 scholars some of their names are tremendously important I'll put above all Salvatore effectives and then you have my friends a performer friends Calley OTP Nelly mm not to say but there was also kita Christensen of the Metropolitan or not we still there but anyhow they wrote a letter say net these the search should be interrupted right away and some including set this end montaner II I called them suburban Savonarola's Savonarola people I mean they are people that you can't even plant a nail in the wall it's a crime they would say this is this violates our Constitution they call the Constitution so this violates the country soldier so 35 scholars wrote this letter and Alessandra moto Amalfi know the president of like what you have here the Historical Society you know she sent a letter to the magistrates asking to investigate if there was a crime in that search so everything had to be interrupted so when I tell you that behind the wall there's more politics than they are not serious situation we have a person right here can you put up the slide of the of a battle scene please I'd like you to help decode the image ah ok so you want this slide really hard let's just go look at battle no that one no the Vasari ok yep yep I'm sorry coming up there we got one alright it's clear that you spend a lot of time on that green flag way in the back right they clearly the enemy must be on the left side of the picture every soldier is facing their arms in this direction and when you look at the bottom that three apparently soldiers are really being massacred this really cannot be the enemy what are they traders are the soldiers that we're ready to desert please explain the mayhem that's going down at the bottom I don't know just the enemy they usually you will have in the Front's of these paintings the the trampled enemy and indeed and that maybe who's represented here it is a wonderful embarrassing fact of being a renaissance art historian that when you get to VA's re you stop looking and it shouldn't be there are now many younger scholars who are looking much more seriously are trying to understand whether this but we were told as students and I'm afraid I may have told many of my students oh that's just bizarre II let's keep on we always say that we always Martin has a question yeah Martin Kemp let's just think about one or two other things in this in a kind of sober way and think what the probabilities are the first is if we accept that the search is going place in the right wall which we don't know which is by no means definitely don't let's assume it is and we've discovered this brick lining wall now Vasari had to do an enormous amount of straightening up what was a rather jerry-built room and you can look at the plans and see how he squared off one end of it which was originally diagonal so there's a lot of rebuilding going on there which necessitated getting the room in a really good tidy state to receive all the Medici and frescoes now if there's a lining rule there of brick and there's a space behind it which the investigations suggest you would then expect to see a fine plaster in tonico which line are Lupe we know who used Volterra plaster on that wall which was a mixture of normal plaster with with marble so a very highly finished surface you need to have that plaster surface there what we've seen so far is rubble there is nothing which suggests there is a smooth surface on which to paint you need an intern Ecco Volterra plaster you need white LED priming which he was going to do for his oil painting so there's not none of that has been discovered in that gap at the moment it's a messy gap and it's full of rubble and the factor pigment comes up is almost irrelevant because the idea that the council Hall had no other paintings on the wall heraldic motifs Florentine stripes or something shields and so on is a nonsense they wouldn't have left the wall and plastered and unpainted so that that to me suggests that the data we've got so far isn't encouraging in that respect and the other thing which is discouraging we know what frescoes look like when people have painted our secco fresco as you know is painted in wet plaster if you paint on top of it you paint our Seco dry and that comes off and you've got the pisanello frescoes in Mantua and there was a whole lot of our Seco painting that he's noted for the armor silver and so on he painted all the flesh tones in buon fresco true fresco a lot of it was painted not in fresco that was covered over and there is nothing left of the AR Seco painting it's all in little scraps on the floor and I think even if this was the right wall what we would find technically with this our second ting in oil paint on a wall with no damp damp course with atmosphere changing all the time in Florence high temperatures high humidity a lot of the time the idea that an oil painting is going to survive on this plaster already deteriorated under these circumstances I think is close to zero thank you another question we have three more minutes way in the bath we have some questions they check our trove inscription by the way looks if it's painted on top of the cracks yep in a way in the back yes ma'am yes Paula crown I work with a fabricator and also high-tech scanning company called facta Marte and they have done replication of King Tut's tomb and they have scanned the The Last Supper as well the front and back they've come to the point where this is non-invasive scanning and in fact at King Tut's tomb they found such detail that they think they found the tomb of Nefertiti so I'm not quite sure I'm understanding why there's so much concern about damaging the surface when they can do all sorts of scientific tests so the question is is there a technological you know quick way to go in and fight and solve this mystery without damaging the sari or upsetting the whole political establishment I'm not technically able to answer that but if the will were there yes the scanning can do these remarkable things we have a question over here on the left hi I'm Bob Crane actually a comment on that maurizio seracini got invite you all to google because there's a lot of information on this actually started off wanting to use gamma radiation and unfortunately to be able to see what was behind there that Palazzo Vecchio would have been radiated to the point that nobody can go in for 10,000 years the other point is on taking off of a sari the either super tenza or the Fito several years before took off a hindquarter of one of those horses on the opposite wall to see if there was a painting behind it so that can be done you know after the flood and Napoleon took frescoes off walls so that's that's easily done well there is the the I mean it became was very popular and necessary right after the Florence flood of 66 to take frescoes off walls and they were some of them were rolled up with with through glue and others were removed there now is a sense that that those frescoes are damaged when that's done insofar as there are hairline cracks that the works never quite look the same but is it possible in a sense to do have carve the VA's re painting off of its background get it in there yes and put it on another support getting that brick wall that's a would probably be possible in terms of a rican reconstruction it will have to await the that people who really want to either have it happen or not question in the back i just wanted to go back to a possible answer to your earlier question about who's in the front i've heard one military historian argue that it's Filippo Strozzi the younger who was the leader of the furoshiki and also Vasari sort of distortion of the battle is evident in the depiction of the Turks who are shown sort of half naked when in fact they were very very sophisticated that was the time of Suleiman the Magnificent okay thank you question real quick we're about to wrap up here well I'll tell you what let's call it quits there this was really fascinating thank you for being here you're welcome here Roger Thank You Mauricio [Applause]

Channel: The Aspen Institute

Views: 4,640

Keywords: Leonardo

Id: YChomN0PJhI

Length: 50min 11sec (3011 seconds)

Published: Mon Aug 14 2017