SECRETS OF A PAINTING: Leonardo Da Vinci's The Adoration of the Magi — A Scientific Investigation by Maurizio Seracini, Edited by Loel Guinness
In 1989, shortly before a scheduled restoration of Leonardo da Vinci’s Adoration of the Magi, Florence’s Superintendent for Artistic Heritage approached the engineer Maurizio Seracini with a request to undertake an analysis of the unfinished masterpiece. Using the diagnostic procedures that would make him internationally famous, Seracini was able to peer behind the painting and the thick layer of dark varnish that coated it to discover, to his amazement, the sketches of over fifty human faces, a dozen animals and the shape of a building—unsuspected images drawn by the hand of the master himself that had remained invisible to the naked eye for over 500 years.
Twelve years later, in the face of mounting international opposition to the restoration project, Seracini was asked to carry out a second, more thorough, study of the painting. Faced with a lack of funding, the study would not have been carried out had it not been for Loel Guinness. For the previous two years he had been supporting Seracini in a major undertaking to find Leonardo’s lost mural The Battle of Anghiari, and now agreed to support this study. This book tells the story of the events that led up to that encounter and presents the results of Seracini’s remarkable diagnostic study. Featuring an interview with Loel Guinness and a personal account of his engagement with the project, together with two sections by the late Carlo Pedretti, one of the greatest specialists on the work of Leonardo, as well as other contributions on the history and composition of the Adoration, this book is a testimony to what can be achieved by well-funded, innovative scientific techniques applied in concert with the methods of classical art history.
24 × 30 cm / 9.45 × 11.8 in
424 pages 300+ color and b/w illustrations with one fold-out spread
(3 kg; 6.6 lbs)
ISBN: 978-1-956165-06-7
Price: USD $150.00