Da Vinci fresco advance claimed

LOS ANGELES – University of California-San Diego researchers announced Monday that they had reached a new milestone in their decades-long search for a lost masterpiece by Leonardo da Vinci, saying they had found the type of material used by the Italian Renaissance master on a hidden wall in Florence’s Palazzo Vecchio.

The announcement was met with immediate skepticism by other experts.

The researchers said samples taken from the stone wall in the palazzo, now covered by another fresco, appeared to contain a black pigment used by da Vinci on his masterpiece “Mona Lisa” and other paintings.

Other samples from the wall contained a red lacquer-like substance and a beige material apparently applied with brushstrokes – both consistent with the presence of a fresco, the researchers said.

“The evidence does suggest we are searching in the right place,” said Maurizio Seracini, the researcher who has led the quest for the lost masterpiece for three decades. He said the findings were “very encouraging” but preliminary.

The search for da Vinci’s massive lost fresco “The Battle of Anghiari” stirred controversy last fall when Seracini’s team decided to drill holes through an existing Renaissance fresco by Giorgio Vasari, whose battle scenes decorate the ornate Hall of 500 in the Palazzo Vecchio, Florence’s seat of government.

Hundreds of leading art historians decried Seracini’s work, saying he was destroying a known masterpiece in a futile quest for a missing one. Seracini said Monday’s announcement was a vindication. But his critics are not convinced.