Leonardo workshop discovered

Usual puffery in most of the writeups, attempting to make connections with the Mona Lisa and such; still, this appears to be significant enough on its own terms:

The studio and lodgings, filling five rooms on two floors and still showing traces of wall paintings bearing what one expert called "astonishing associations" with his work, have come to light in what was once part of the friary of the Santissima Annunziata in Florence and was later taken over by Italy's Military Geographical Institute.

A team of restorers found the rooms behind a hidden door leading into the complex where Leonardo stayed in 1500.

I rather doubt the paintings will add much to what we know of Leonardo, though you can be sure Florence will shortly have a major new tourist attraction.

Along with the master at least one of his pupils, such as Gian Antonio Boltraffio or Gian Giacomo Caprotti da Oreno, known as "il Salai", may have shared his lodgings, Mr Manescalchi said.

He said that he had also found "beyond a shadow of a doubt" that Andrea del Sarto, one of the leading Florentine painters of the generation after Leonardo's, had later stayed in the same lodgings himself.

How many others, in fact, may have stayed there, before and after? I would bet the rooms were only closed off some time after the space was taken over by the military, so no earlier than the 1870s. From the Telegraph.

ADDENDUM: The Times of London gives a bit more info:

His workshop was discovered during restoration of part of the monastery occupied for the past 100 years by the Institute of Military Geography. Cristina Acidini, head of conservation and restoration in Florence, said it was an "emotional moment" when the worskhop was found. . .

The discovery was announced at a press conference coinciding with the opening of a Leonardo exhibition at the Palazzo Panciatichi in Florence and another on the Atlantic Codex and Leonardo’s inventions at the Palazzo Corsini in Rome.

Posted by David on January 13, 2005 10:20 AM