I am having trouble working out why I am so suspicious of this story. Perhaps I will pin it down as I assemble the parts. We start with a character.

Maurizio Seracini graduated from the University of California at San Diego in 1973 with a degree in bioengineering..

“After he completed his postgraduate work in electronic engineering at Padua University in 1976, he set up his Florence-based company Editech (electronics, diagnostics and technology), in 1977. At first, the company was purely a medical diagnostic facility but Seracini soon began to apply his techniques to works of art in order to ascertain their age, history and authenticity. Within a few years, he had acquired a long list of clients and sold off the medical division.

He is a media dream – handsome, sophisticated, well-tailored, providing “provable scientific data” with visual images in the world of extremely expensive paintings. His background is just as cute – his father ran a gelati parlour and was the Vice-President of the Gelato Artigianale; he was a member of the Italian national volleyball team who played the game at his US college.

By 1979, he had collided with Loel Patrick Guinness, the grandson of Group Capt. Thomas Loel Evelyn Bulkeley Guinness and his third wife.

” Loel’s third wife was the socialite Gloria Rubio y Alatorre. Her daughter, Freiien (Baroness) Dolores von Fürstenberg-Herdringen, married Patrick Benjamin Guinness, son of Loel and his first wife Joan Yarde-Buller (and thus a half-brother to the present Aga Khan IV). They had issue, one son, Loel Patrick, and two daughters, Maria Alexandra (married Foulques, Count de Quatrebarbes) and Victoria Christina (who married Philip Niarchos, son of late Greek billionaire Stavros Niarchos)”

This convoluted tale means that his parents were step-brother and sister. (Gloria, by the way, allegedly told Noel Coward that “I could never sleep with Loel. He farts too much.”)

The history of the Guinnae clan seems to be complicated, but the money ferments ultimately down to one combination: beer with a froth of jewellery, banking and the law. A 1962 Time Magazine article contains a delicious description of Loel no 1’s lifestyle:

‘The Florida property is divided by U.S. Highway A1A, faces the lake on one side and the beach on the other; the two halves are connected by a specially built tunnel under the highway that Mrs. Guinness has had decorated with furniture and screens painted by a young French artist she is interested in. They also keep three planes—an Avro Commander for short hauls around Europe, a small jet, a helicopter for Loel Guinness’ hops between the Lake Worth house and the Palm Beach golf course.”

There seems to be a weird parallel history of foundations in the family. Granpa Loel had a foundation that supported Jacques Cousteau; scion Loel began a foundation called the Loel Guinness Research Foundation, that begat something called The Kalpa Group.

The Research Foundation functioned like a cross between a mini- Nat Geo and a New Zealand extreme sports documentary company. Named after a Buddhist unit of time, the Kalpa Group concentrated on the Bon people of Northern Tibet, and Maurizio Seracini. I can’t find any evidence about this transition, though I am left to suspect the influence of religion.

This is all by way of background to the main game.

I can imagine how Maurizio Seracini’s medical to art trick made money – there is a lot of forensic work needed on a large number of works of art. But his personal interest concentrated on Leonardo Da Vinci, and one picture in particular.

In 1503, Leonardo was commissioned to create a large mural in the Florentine Hall of the 500, to celebrate the nascent republic which had grown from the turmoil of Savonarola. Michelangelo was to work on another wall.

The Battle of Anghiari was copied in this painting, from 1549 -

It created an artistic sensation, and helped tgo pull the Renaissance forward towards the Baroque. Giorgio Vasari, historian and painter, described the picture:

““It would be impossible to express the inventiveness of Leonardo’s design for the soldiers’ uniforms, which he sketched in all their variety, or the crests of the helmets and other ornaments, not to mention the incredible skill he demonstrated in the shape and features of the horses, which Leonardo, better than any other master, created with their boldness, muscles and graceful beauty.”

By the 1560’s, the Borghias had recovered power, and the Hall had become an embarrassment. They ordered the Hall renovated, and a new mural put over the republican picture. But the artist was none other than Giorgio Vasari.

Faced with this dilemma elsewhere, he had built a false wall. You don’t have to be Einstein to figure he had done the same here.

In the 1970’s Seracini was part of a team financed by Armand Hammer, who used existing ultrasound equipment to search for a hollow space behind Vasari’s mural. But they were chased away, for whatever parochial reason, and the results were “inconclusive”.

Twenty five years later..

“In a scene reminiscent of a Brown novel, a stranger walked into his office in 2000. “He said ‘good evening,’” Seracini recalls, “‘my name is Loel Guinness. I’m here to propose that you restart the Anghiari project and bring it to completion.’”…

… “Maurizio was looking for funding to carry out three-dimensional architectural diagnostics in the Hall of Five Hundred, using a range of non-invasive scientific techniques to probe the walls and floors,” says Loel Guinness. “The Kalpa Group is interested in unusual ways of thinking, ways that synthesize knowledge from very different fields. Maurizio’s work is one of those projects.”

By historical research and thermographic imaging, Seracini was able to ascertain that the renovations altered the physical proportions of the room – including a brick wall on the Da Vinci side. But they could go no further since the owners were fractious and the exploration license expired.

Seracini and his financiers moved to another significant Leonardo piece – the Adoration of the Magi in the Uffizi. It was started by Leonardo when he was 28, but he abandoned it soon after. The basic shape was ultimately copied for another altar-piece to replace it, but the original still exists, partially completed. The detail of the Madonna, for instance, is clearly a work in progress –

Asked to assess the picture, Seracini ultimately proclaimed that Leonardo had not laid any paint on it at all – that the brushwork had been done much later. He took 2400 pictures in different spectra to reveal the layers of drawings by which Leonardo approximated his way to the picture.

Here, for instance, is a late version of a section next to a predecessor -

It is pretty nifty work. Did Leonardo really do any painting? Depends on some scientific information about the paint. Does it matter? Probably not, since the drawing and composition seems to belong to Da Vinci anyway. Other historians simply think that the surface was the undercoat on which Leonardo intended to paint the work he had by then visualised sufficiently to start.

Fresh from this well-reported triumph, Seracini was

” asked to address a physics conference on “solid state imaging systems,” in Taormina, Sicily. Seracini’s genius is that he is constantly searching for new technologies and is undaunted by the challenge of fusing art and science. Although it was a long shot, he finished his lecture by posing his dilemma. Did they know of any new non-invasive method that could penetrate the walls and detect paint on the second wall behind the Vasari?

Professor Raymond DuVarney, chair of the physics department at Emory University, mused on the question overnight and woke up to a Eureka moment. “The next day I had this idea,” DuVarney says, “to use neutron activation and a gamma camera.” Neutron activation could penetrate the wall with gamma rays and then capture the returning rays with a gamma camera. “The intensity of the gamma ray will be proportional to the kind of pigment that is in various colors,” DuVarney explains. It is therefore hoped that as the camera scans the walls reading the returning gamma rays it will be able to trace out a black and white image of what is on the inner wall.

“This new approach is an example of the type of research that thinks outside the box,” says Kalpa’s Guinness. “It may get nowhere, but on the other hand, many developments in the past seemed ‘sci-fi’ until they were successful.”

Seracini went public with the plan in June 2005, and started a bureaucratic storm.

“The claim made headlines in Italy — the possibility that an unseen da Vinci exists had the mesmerizing attraction of uncovering an unknown poem of Dante’s or a hidden statue by Michelangelo. While finding an intact “Battle” is still a long shot, a controversy quickly arose that has all the fury of the June 6, 1505, storm: Who should be tasked with revealing the fresco and possibly reaping the fame and financial benefits?

Seracini’s contract with the city of Florence to study the council room expired in 2002. City officials have declined to grant him more time. “Just as we were getting close, suddenly the city saw the possibilities and it is thinking about money,” the engineer said. Documentaries, rights to print reproductions and fees from investigators to do further studies are all part of the potential booty, he said.

City officials say Seracini is after a cornucopia of benefits for himself. Simone Siliani, Florence’s culture adviser, said officials were upset that Seracini held the news conference in June and recruited donors to continue his research without telling them. “Our duty is not to make movies or scoops,” Siliani said. “Our duty is to study and let the people know about the history of the city.”

Their objection is not completely stupid – and is the subject of my disquiet about the story. A documentary was indeed planned, and came to pass even though the search was suspended. In 2005-6, Darlow Smithson Productions made a documentary about the Leonardo research, which was broadcast on the British Channel Four. Here is now the Kalpa Group website describes the project:

“During the course of 2005/6, the Kalpa Group allowed Darlow Smithson Productions, a leading U.K. production company, exclusive access to the research work of Dr. Maurizio Seracini, head of Editech, a Florence company, as he investigated two key works by Leonardo da Vinci, the Adoration of the Magi and the Battle of Anghiari. This work has been supported by the Kalpa Group over the last six years, as part of a wider programme of encouraging and facilitating pioneering art historical research projects which might otherwise go unfunded..

…. In addition, the documentary told the story so far of Kalpa’s attempt to find evidence for the continued existence of the Battle of Anghiari, the mural painted by Leonardo on one wall of the hall of Five Hundred in the Palazzo Vecchio in Florence.”

Channel Four described The Da Vinci Detective like this:

Given unprecedented access, Seracini trained his forensic equipment onto the brown and aged masterpiece. Using infra-red reflectography and X-ray analysis, his tools enabled him to see underneath layers of paint. Within hours of examining the painting Seracini discovered hidden secrets that would rock the art world. It was revelation so potentially controversial, Seracini felt he had to be careful “to even think too loud”.

It is not too surprising that the average arts custodian would become distressed at this deluge of egotism pouring towards them from both a Guinness heir and a medical imaging expert with a thirst for publicity.

Now city officials have agreed to allow another stage of research, in which a team will use the new approach to find out if the cavity contains the chemicals from which Leonardo’s pigments were made.

“While the new research will be supervised by the Opificio delle Pietre Dure, one of Italy’s top restoration institutes, Seracini will be on the team”, said Alessandra Garzanti, a city spokeswoman.

“He brought this forward until now, it would be stupid to leave him out,” she said.

Once the work starts, researchers would need a year and a half to give a definitive answer on whether Leonardo’s masterpiece is there, Seracini said.”

In the next stage, a small hole will be drilled in the painting and a camera inserted, to make sure the complete painting is still on the wall.

Then the fun begins – how on earth are they going to get it out?

There is one oddity about Vasari’s painting, which could be interpreted as a clue. In one small part, soldiers carry a banner – the detail at the head of the article. They are the only words in the picture, and they say “Seek and you shall find”.

He couldn’t have visualised the technology we bring to bear. If he really was hinting at the painting beneath, he was encouraging the destruction of his own work.

Loel Guinness, by the way, remains remarkably absent from the news, aside from a fight about the preservation of Cousteau’s research vessel Calypso, which he owned while the image rights belonged to the aquanaut’s family. Loel sold it for a euro.

This entry was posted on Wednesday, January 17th, 2007 at 12:32 am and is filed under history, visual media. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.