It’s a small but mighty detail that might answer some long-standing questions about Leonardo da Vinci’s “Mona Lisa” (circa 1503-1517): Just above Lisa del Giocondo’s left shoulder is a small four arch bridge which is quite easy for the untrained eye. miss, but has been the subject of debate for centuries. An Italian art historian and researcher named Silvano Vinceti, working in partnership with the cultural association Le Rocca, now believes he has identified the bridge in question based on on-site analysis coupled with records indicating Leonardo’s presence in the area at the time he began painting.
In a press conference this week, Vinceti said he discovered that the bridge in question is the Ponte Romito in Laterina, a small village in the province of Arezzo, Italy. Earlier theories identified the Bridge of Painting as the 11 Arch Bridge Gobbo Bridge in the northern village of Bobbio, or the seven-arched Ponte Buriano, which is quite close to Ponte Romito. However, Vincenti disputes the other theories by referring to the fact that Leonardo’s rendering of the bridge has only four arches in view. The historian has yet to respond Hyperallergicrequest for comment.
Today, only one arch remains on what was once the Romito di Laterina bridge. Using drone footage and photographs, Vinceti measured the dimensions of the arch and determined that exactly four arches would fit between the two banks of this particular stretch of the Arno River. Vinceti also analyzed Medici family documents in the Florence State Archives indicating that the bridge, used as a shortcut between the cities of Arezzo, Fiesole and Florence, was “very busy” and “working” between 1501 and 1503. Additional documents report that Leonardo resided in the town of Fiesole on occasion with an uncle who was a priest.
Leonardo is said to have been in and around the Val d’Arno (the Arno Valley) region in the early 1500s while in the service of cardinal and mercenary leader Cesare Borgia, who commissioned him to work as architect and military engineer. Leonardo’s time under Borgia was brief, expiring in 1503 and prompting him to find work under the Florentine statesman Piero Soderini.
Evidence aside, not everyone is convinced that Leonardo da Vinci’s bridge is a cameo from one of the aforementioned historic landmarks. Francesca Fiorani, an author and professor of art history at the University of Virginia whose research focuses on translations of da Vinci’s natural world into her work, says Vinceti failed to consider “how Leonardo observed nature and painted it”.
“Leonardo was a keen observer of nature, but he did not ‘copy’ nature in his works,” Fiorani said. Hyperallergic. “In fact, no matter how much scholars have tried to pinpoint the actual and precise place that Leonardo painted in his works, to identify a specific mountain range with the mountains of the “Madonna and Child with Sainte Anne” (c. 1501 to 1519) or a specific rock formation with the rocks of the “Vierge aux Rochers” (c. 1483 to 1486; 1495 to 1508), or a distinctive bend in the Arno in the countryside, or a individual bridge, such proposals have never been convincing.”
“The bridge in the landscape behind the Mona Lisa is no exception,” Fiorani said. “It is inspired by the many rivers that have crossed the Arno in the Tuscan countryside, but it does not represent any of them specifically.”
