NEWS STORY: Claim: Leonardo da Vinci’s Workshop Discovered in Florence

c. 2005 Religion News Service ROME _ A cartographer from the Italian Institute of Military Geography claims to have discovered Leonardo da Vinci’s workshop and home at the start of the 16th century, but art historians appear skeptical. Roberto Manescalchi, 51, told a news conference Tuesday (Jan. 25) that he made the discovery a year […]

c. 2005 Religion News Service

ROME _ A cartographer from the Italian Institute of Military Geography claims to have discovered Leonardo da Vinci’s workshop and home at the start of the 16th century, but art historians appear skeptical.

Roberto Manescalchi, 51, told a news conference Tuesday (Jan. 25) that he made the discovery a year ago when he crossed the 18th century wall dividing the Florence institute from a convent, the Monastery of the Most Holy Annunciation.


On his side of the wall was a fresco of three birds, and on the other side the remains of another fresco with a background of buildings and arches.

“I immediately knew what I was seeing,” said Manescalchi.

It will take more than that to convince art historians.

Even before Tuesday’s news conference, word of the claimed discovery had gotten out, and experts were skeptical.

One of the world’s leading experts on da Vinci, Martin Kemp, an art history professor at the University of Oxford in England, told the Associated Press that he had examined high-quality photos of the frescoes and concluded they were done in a style that predated da Vinci by several decades. Leonardo is believed to have occupied the rooms from 1500 to 1503.

Another art history professor, James Beck of Columbia University in New York, told the Associated Press: “I don’t think it’s a very convincing story yet, and there is no real evidence. It’s really in an early stage of research.”

Manescalchi, however, said his discovery is more than mere speculation. He said the two frescoes he saw made up one painting of the Annunciation _ the announcement by the angel Gabriel to the Virgin May that she will conceive a son _ and were the work of Leonardo or his students.

The fresco was painted at the bottom of a disused 15th century staircase leading to what may have been Leonardo’s quarters.

Manescalchi said he and fellow researchers matched the birds in the fresco with bird studies in two collections of Leonardo’s drawings, the Codex Atlanticus and Codex of Birds in Flight.


A photograph of the kneeling angel in the Annunciation by Leonardo, which hangs in the Uffizi Gallery in Florence, exactly fit a blank space in the ruined fresco.

More evidence of Leonardo’s possible presence came from a drawing of the monastery by the 15th century Florentine architect Brunelleschi, an early 16th century map of the city, Giorgio Vasari’s 16th century “Lives of the Artists” and letters written by Pietro da Novellara to Isabella D’Este, Leonardo’s patron.

Manescalchi believes that Leonardo used five rooms between the second and third cloisters of the monastery as a workshop and living quarters from 1500 to 1501, possibly while painting a panel of the Annunciation for the main altar of the Church of the Most Holy Annunciation.

The convent and church are situated in the center of Florence, several blocks from the Cathedral of Santa Maria del Fiore.

If authenticated, the discovery would be important because only two Leonardo frescoes are known to survive, a painting of willow trees in the Sforza Castle and “The Last Supper,” both in Milan and dating to around 1498.

MO/PH END RNS

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