One of the most well-known pieces of art in the entire world is Leonardo Da Vinci’s “Mona Lisa,” which is renowned for both its beauty and the secrecy surrounding the identity of the model and the setting depicted behind her.
The village of Ponte Buriano, a suburb of Arezzo in the Tuscany region of Italy, has long been the subject of controversy. However, they are so convinced that the bridge behind the Mona Lisa is the Ponte Buriano that they have made it a focal point of their local tourism campaign and even claimed ownership of the bridge on the village’s welcome sign.
The bridge behind the Mona Lisa is actually the Romito Bridge in the nearby Tuscan town of Laterina, according to historian Silvano Vinceti.
“The distinctive form of the Arno [River] along that stretch of territory corresponds to what Leonardo portrayed in the landscape to the left of the woman depicted in the famous painting,” Vinceti said at a media conference at the Foreign Press Association in Rome on Wednesday.
In order to demonstrate the similarities, Vinceti also created a virtual recreation of the bridge and drew on materials from the Florence state archives.
The “Mona Lisa” was painted in the early 16th century.
Vinceti discovered that Da Vinci resided with Cardinal Cesare Borgia close to Laterina between 1501 and 1503. As shown in the artwork, the bridge had four arches and was in use.
Conversely, the Ponte Bobbio in Piacenza, which some claim is depicted in the artwork, has more than six arches, according to Vinceti, while the Buriano Bridge has six.
The Romito bridge, which connected Florence, Arezzo, and Fiesole, is now in ruins. According to Vinceti, the “Etruscan-Roman Romito bridge is unmistakably” the one in the background after years of studying pictures, ruins, and drone footage of the riverbanks and its surroundings.
The mayor of Laterina, Simona Neri, who was present at the news briefing, is enthusiastic about the possibility of using the bridge to draw tourists to her 3,500-person town.
“We really hope that this wonderful news will intrigue and fascinate local and foreign tourists, with the knowledge that it will be a great opportunity to relaunch the tourism of our territory on which we can work a lot starting from naturalistic, cultural and monumental valuation,” she said.
“We need to try to protect what’s left of the bridge, which will require funding,” Neri said, noting that there are funds available for most areas tied to Da Vinci and other masters.
“There’ll be some rivalry; we’ll need to put a poster up, too,” she added.
Millions of people visit the Louvre in Paris each year to witness the 16th-century masterwork by Leonardo da Vinci. However, analysts contend that rather than any particular aesthetic merit, it owes its widespread fame to the fact that it was stolen from the gallery by Italian handyman Vincenzo Peruggia in 1911.
“If a different one of Leonardo’s works had been stolen, then that would have been the most famous work in the world — not the ‘Mona Lisa,’” Noah Charney, professor of art history and author of “The Thefts of the Mona Lisa,” said in 2013, which marked the 100-year anniversary of when the painting was recovered.
“There was nothing that really distinguished it per se, other than it was a very good work by a very famous artist — that’s until it was stolen,” he added. “The theft is what really skyrocketed its appeal and made it a household name.”
CNN
