It may be the most well-known painting of all time, but there are still mysteries lurking behind the famous Mona Lisa smile. A long-standing historical dispute centers on the identity of the bridge in the background of Leonardo da Vinci’s famous portrait.
If scholars come to an agreement on the matter, they would be able to determine exactly where the painting was made.
Now Italian art historian Silvano Vinceti has advanced a new theory, according to the Guardian. He claimed to be quite certain that the structure is the Romito di Laterina bridge not far from the city of Arezzo in Tuscany, which he studied using a drone.
The Etruscan-Roman era structure on the Arno River is now just a ruin, with only one of its arches remaining. Archival documents once belonging to the Medici family, however, showed that at the beginning of the 16th century it was a busy shortcut between the two banks. Other historical documents had also shown that da Vinci had spent some periods with his uncle in the nearby town of Fiesole.
“We know he roamed this part of Tuscany in the early 1500s, there’s no doubt about that,” Vinceti told a news conference in Rome.
Vinceti made a digital reconstruction of the bridge and, by measuring the width of the river and the length of each arch, also determined that it must have originally had four arches, just like the bridge in the masterpiece of the Renaissance.
It seems that Vinceti considers himself a detective when it comes to solving the mysteries of art history, at least according to his Biography Twitter. He has already made several earlier claims about Leonardo’s painting, including that it was modeled after the artist’s male apprentice and lover Salai, and that the sitter contains tiny hidden symbols in his eyes which indicate the polymath’s interest in mysticism.
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