Perhaps you are familiar with the Dan Brown book, The Da Vinci Code? Or, if you are fortunate, perhaps not?
Well, never mind, this week there is another Leonardo da Vinci mystery that has the added attraction of reality. An art conservationist, Maurizio Seracini, has laid claim to one of art history's most alluring legends, "The Lost Leonardo", more properly known as The Battle of Anghiari. The partly completed mural, which depicts four swordsmen on horseback in a mad battle with infantry soldiers trodden underfoot, is said to have been painted - and covered over by other artists - in the Palazzo Vecchio in Florence .
That is where Mr Seracini has, he claims, found it. His team of art historians have probed the cracks in a 16th century fresco and compared the chemical composition of flecks of paint to Leonardo masterpieces such as The Mona Lisa. The results appear to point to Anghiari.
It might be a leap of faith to declare victory on such slender evidence. There are also hints that this might be just a little too convenient. The fresco that ostensibly hides the Leonardo includes an Italian inscription that translates to: "seek and you shall find".
True or not, the investigation will be fascinating. Five centuries later, Leonardo's secrets are more riveting than pulp fiction any day.
