Forget Mona Lisa’s smile. What about her bridge?
The Mona Lisa is one in all the world’s most famous paintings and has spawned many mysteries and theories, including the girl’s identity.
But one historian said he has settled one debate in regards to the painting that hangs within the Louvre: the situation of the bridge behind the beguiling woman.
Silvani Vinceti said the backdrop of the early Sixteenth-century painting by Leonardo Da Vinci depicts the Romito Bridge within the nearby Tuscan town of Laterina, reports CNN.
“The distinctive type of the Arno [River] along that stretch of territory corresponds to what Leonardo portrayed within the landscape to the left of the girl depicted within the famous painting,” Vinceti said Wednesday, during a press conference for the Foreign Press Association in Rome.
This takes the wind from the sails of the village of Ponte Buriano, which is a suburb of Arezzo in Tuscany.
They’ve confidently claimed the bridge within the painting is the Ponte Buriano and have made it the centerpiece of their local tourism campaign.
It’s even featured on the village’s welcome sign.
But Vinceti — who made virtual reconstructions of the bridge, studied drone footage of the river banks and used documents from Florence’s state archives — disagrees.
He noted that Da Vinci lived there with Cardinal Cesare Borgia between 1501 and 1503, the 12 months he began painting the Mona Lisa. The bridge in Laterina had 4 arches as depicted within the painting. Whereas Ponte Buriano has six arches.
Ponte Bobbio, a bridge in Piacenza, which can also be considered in the talk, has greater than six arches.
The Romito bridge is now in ruins, but Vinceti said the “Etruscan-Roman Romito bridge is unmistakably” the one.
Simona Neri, who’s the mayor of Laterina, population of three,400, is worked up by the invention and the potential for tourism of their village.
“We actually hope that this excellent news will intrigue and fascinate local and foreign tourists, with the knowledge that it would be an incredible opportunity to relaunch the tourism of our territory on which we are able to work so much ranging from naturalistic, cultural and monumental valuation,” Neri said on the press conference.
“We’d like to try to guard what’s left of the bridge, which can require funding,” said Neri adding that there are funds available for places linked to artists like Da Vinci and the opposite masters.
“There’ll be some rivalry; we’ll must put a poster up, too,” she added.