The Battle of Anghiari (Leonardo)

The Battle of Anghiari (1505) is a painting by Leonardo da Vinci in the Salone dei Cinquecento (Hall of the Five Hundred) in the Palazzo Vecchio, Florence.

Its central scene would have depicted four men riding raging war horses engaged in a struggle for possession of a standard at the Battle of Anghiari in 1440.

In March 2012, a team led by Maurizio Seracini announced that they had found evidence that the painting still exists on a hidden inner wall behind a cavity, underneath a section of Giorgio Vasari's fresco in the chamber.

[4] In 1504 Leonardo da Vinci was given the commission by gonfaloniere Piero Soderini, a contract signed by Niccolò Machiavelli, to decorate the Palazzo Vecchio's Salone dei Cinquecento (Hall of the Five Hundred).

Since he had a bad experience with fresco painting (The Last Supper; refectory of Santa Maria delle Grazie, Milan), he wanted to apply oil colours on the wall.

[citation needed] During the mid-16th century (1555–1572), the hall was enlarged and restructured by Vasari and his helpers on the instructions of Cosimo I, in order that the Duke could hold court in this important chamber of the palace.

[5] In the upper part of Vasari's fresco, 12 meters above the ground, a Florentine soldier waves a green flag with the words "Cerca trova" ('He who seeks, finds').

[3][6] Alfonso Musci and Alessandro Savorelli published an article in the journal of the Italian Institute of Renaissance Studies at Palazzo Strozzi in December 2012, disputing Seracini's interpretation of the motto on the green flag in Vasari's mural.

In the article they attempted to investigate the writing “CERCA TROVA” in the context of the real events that occurred during the Battle of Scannagallo (1554) and made known through the works of Bernardo Segni [it], Antonio Ramirez de Montalvo [it], Domenico Moreni [it].

These works contain detailed descriptions of anti-Medicean heraldic insignia present in Marciano della Chiana, including eight green flags embroidered with the verse of Dante: "Libertà va cercando, ch'è sì cara [it], ch'è sì cara come sa chi per lei vita rifiuta" (Purgatorio, vv.

Following the theme of luck and damnation of the oldest Florentine 'stemma' (Libertas) in the cycle of paintings conceived by Cosimo I and Vincenzo Borghini in the Salone dei Cinquecento, Musci and Savorelli suggest that the motto "CERCA TROVA" was an allusion to the verse of Dante and to the fate of the Republicans ("searching freedom and finding death"), and thereby dispute Seracini's interpretation of the green flag as a hint left by Vasari.

In October 2020, a group of art historians concluded that the painting had never been executed on the basis that Leonardo failed to invent a technique for it, which would have included a layer of gesso and oil.