ART
Mystery behind Mona Lisa bridge “solved”
May 4, 2023 - Using historical documents and drone images, art historian Silvano Vinceti claims to have identified the stone bridge depicted behind Leonardo da Vinci’s Mona Lisa, ending a 500-year mystery.
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Vinceti, one of the greatest scholars of Leonardo da Vinci (1452-1519), believes that the overpass depicted in the 16th century painting is an Etruscan-Roman bridge called Romito bridge, which used to span the Arno River near Laterina, a village in the Province of Arezzo in the Italian region Tuscany.
The most telling detail, Vinceti says, is in the number of arches: Using the size of the remaining arch, Vinceti has established that four arches of the same size fitted perfectly across a stretch of the Arno River. The bridge in Leonardo’s painting had four arches, The Guardian reports.
Documents found in Florence’s state archives show the bridge was “very busy bridge” in 1501-03, when Leonardo was in Val d’Arno.
Vinceti also claims that a geological formation 15km from Laterina is depicted to the left of the Gioconda.