Battle of Anghiari

The Battle of Anghiari between the Milaneses and Florentins (winners) took place on June 29th, 1440 close to Anghiari in Toscane.

A battle as impressive as decisive

An impressive battle

The fame of Anghiari in Toscane comes mainly because of to have been, on Wednesday, June 29, 1440, the theater of a battle which saw the victory of the Florentins guided by Michelotto Attendolo and Giampaolo Orsini over the Milanais carried out by Niccolò Piccinino. Machiavel speaks about this battle on an ironic tone: “ And in a as long confrontation as it lasted from twenty to twenty-four hours, he died one man, not following his wounds or of any valorous feat of arms, but after a fall of horse where he was trampled ”.

A decisive battle

However, Piero Bargellini recalls that if the military assessment appeared modest, the political assessment of the battle of Anghiari was not it, because Florentins celebrated this battle like large and decisive victory. Indeed, Machiavel underlines, this time with more historical depth, than “… the victory was much more useful for the Toscane than harmful for the duke of Milan. Indeed, if Florentins had lost at the time of this day, Tuscany belonged to him, and while losing at the time of this same day, it did not lose anything of other that weapons and horses of its army which one can recover with relatively little money… ”.

De Vinci enters in scene

But, the battle would have been surely forgotten history, if the magistrates of Florence, to decorate the room with the Grand council of the Palazzo Vecchio with works pointing out the principal actions of the Republic, had not entrusted to Léonard de Vinci, in competition with Michel-Angel, the care to paint the “Battle of Anghiari”. After the realization of the drafts, the central part, i.e. the combat around the flag, was posed with the wall.

The controversy

How to explain the disappearance of a fresco of this importance? Two assumptions open to the historians art:

The thesis of the destruction

It is divided by the majority of the analysts: seriously damaged by a process of nonnatural drying (too much fast) inspired of a receipt of Pline Old the, painting, unfinished, was unobtrusive to make place with the decoration of Vasari ordered by the Médicis (Médicis, Masters of Florence, did not want to see this battle any more in which they did not have anything to see). The famous drawings of Léonard de Vinci which, as Cellini affirms it, were the “school of the world”, would be thus lost forever… But there remains testimony about it through those of Rubens, today with the Musée of Louvre to Paris, and of a work, gone back to around 1470 and allotted to the painter Biagio d' Antonio of the school of Paolo Uccello which one finds today with the National Gallery off Ireland with Dublin.

Several specialists in arts, as Daniel Arasse or Valerie Morignat, analyzed the singular destiny of the fresco disappeared from Léonard, but also that of the drawing allotted to Pierre Paul Rubens which was the subject of several expertises within the department of restoration of works of the Musée of Louvre

The thesis of the conservation

For others (much fewer), Vasari would have been victim of a Dilemme: to quickly carry out the order of the Médicis or to save costs which the masterpiece of a Master costs that he admired over all.

It would have solved this dilemma while making assemble a second brick wall in front of the fresco of Vinci (already painted on a brick wall) by leaving a space of a few centimetres between the two walls. Vasari would have even left indices in this direction. It used a similar technique to preserve other works. And to estimate that Vasari could be well the author of this mysterious “cerca, trova” writes on a green standard of its own fresco.

It is what Maurizio Seracini wants to show, 73 years, engineer of formation which uses with this intention state-of-the-art technologies (as well medical and military: echography, Radar, Scanner, etc…). Unfortunately the “timidity” of the Offices and the call to funds as rare as private do not make it possible in the searches of Seracini to succeed.

Alessandro Vezzosi, director of the museum of art Léonardo da Vinci of Florence which shares this opinion, declares in May 2005: “We can see in the writings of Vasari which he regarded really Léonard as very important… and which he already used of the similar techniques to protect from other masterpieces, indicated victims all of the selfishness of large”.

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