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Also solved the mystery of the bridge behind the Mona Lisa:

“Behind the Mona Lisa is the Romito di Laterina bridge”

Vita gazette – Another mystery solved in the Mona Lisa picture full of secrets. Behind the shoulders of Monnalisa, there would not be Ponte Buriano but the Romito di Laterina bridge.

Over the years, there have been various hypotheses related to the landscape portrayed by Leonardo da Vinci behind the Mona Lisa, still today one of the most famous and admired pictorial works. Today, however, after more than five centuries, one of the mysteries related to the picture may have been solved concerning precisely this detail. “It is the Romito di Laterina bridge, in the province of Arezzo, that Leonardo da Vinci painted in the landscape behind it”. To say it is a research coordinated by the historian Silvano Vinceti, already the author of other discoveries related to the work in the past. This is the Etruscan-Roman Romito Bridge or Valle Bridge. Only one arch remains, but between 1501 and 1503, it was in use and very busy, as attested by a document on the state of the artefacts in the Medici family’s properties, found in the State archives of Florence.

Vincenti’s research was also conducted thanks to the collaboration of the cultural association La Rocca di Laterina. It would be based on new historical documents and comparisons between current photographs and what is depicted in the painting. The theses supported would completely undermine the theories that, in the past, have geolocated the landscape depicted behind the shoulders of the noblewoman, first with the medieval bridge of Bobbio, in the province of Piacenza and then with the Buriano bridge in Arezzo.

According to the information in the research, it is the Etruscan-Roman bridge Romito or Ponte di Valle. Only one arch currently remains, but between 1501 and 1503, it was in use and very busy. In the same years, the genius of Vinci was in Valdarno, first in the service of Cesare Borgia and then of the gonfalonier of the Republic of Florence Pier Soderini. Il Romito had four arches, rested on two cliffs, and was part of a byway or shortcut that made it possible to shorten the journey between Arezzo, Fiesole and Florence by several kilometres. On the other hand, the Bobbio Bridge has more than six arches, and the one in Buriano has six. The particular morphologies of the Arno in that stretch of territory and what Leonardo reported in the landscape to the left of the noblewoman. These correspondences emerged thanks to the images taken by a drone which allowed us to highlight the presence of two cliffs on the left and right side of the Romito and the sinuous course of the Arno, as depicted in the Mona Lisa painting. Furthermore, the virtual reconstruction of the bridge, created based on the width of the Arno in the section where the Romito bridge is located, highlights a substantial similarity with the bridge present in the portrait. The same can be said for the shape and size of the four arches. Analysing the images taken with the drone and the historical documents allowed us to identify the landscape painted in the lower left part of the Mona Lisa with a high probability level. That is the complex of crags or earth pyramids in the upper Valdarno area that inspired Leonardo. And in this regard, some drawings of flounces present in the Hammer Code (or Leicester Code), Leonardo’s famous manuscript dating from between 1506 and 1510, are of fundamental importance.

Therefore, after the hypotheses advanced in the past, this research, carried out also thanks to the collaboration of the La Rocca cultural association, would seem to have discovered without “a doubt” the “real” bridge present in the Mona Lisa. “It is the Etruscan-Roman Romito bridge or Valle bridge. Currently, only one arch remains, but between 1501 and 1503, it was in function and very busy, as attested by a document on the state of the artefacts in the Medici family properties, found in the State archives of Florence”, reported Vinceti. Among other things, according to the expert, in those years Leonardo “was in the Val d’Arno, first in the service of Cesare Borgia, known as Valentino, and then of the gonfalonier of the Republic of Florence Pier Soderini. The Romito bridge had four arches, rested on two cliffs, and was part of a byway that made it possible to shorten the journey between Arezzo, Fiesole and Florence by several kilometres. Instead, “the Bobbio bridge has more than six arches, and the one in Buriano too. And they are placed on level ground.”

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