Free Republic

Leonardo da Vinci, in a Renaissance version of Mad Magazine, may have painted his famous Mona Lisa in a number of ways, including nude. Now, a painting has surfaced that looks much like the original, sparking debate over just how far the master took his iconic painting. The newly revealed painting, hidden for almost a century within the wood wall of a private library, shows a portrait of a half-naked woman with clear links to the famous (and clothed) Mona Lisa. The work, which documents suggest was at least based on never-seen similar work by da Vinci, is now on...

FLORENCE, Italy, Jan. 14 - Researchers at a military geography institute here say they have discovered - hiding practically in plain sight in their building - what might have been a workshop for Leonardo da Vinci. They have also homed in on fading frescoes that they think might have been painted by Leonardo or by a workshop student 500 years ago, although that hypothesis has not been put to the test by art historians or by scientific analysis. Italian museum officials are hoping that the discovery of the frescoes and five small rooms where Leonardo might have lived and worked,...

Researchers have discovered the hidden laboratory used by Leonardo da Vinci for studies of flight and other pioneering scientific work in previously sealed rooms at a monastery next to the Basilica of the Santissima Annunziata, in the heart of Florence. The workshop rooms, located between the Institute for Military Geography and the Basilica, contain frescos painted by Leonardo that have "impressive resemblances" to other examples of his experimental work. The frescos include a triptych of birds circling above a subsequently erased representation of the Virgin Mary that "constitutes a clear citation of the studies by the maestro on the flight...

Restorers find artist’s workshop in old Florence friary, writes Bruce Johnston The workshop where Leonardo da Vinci first met and may have begun painting the woman he immortalised as the Mona Lisa has been discovered in a military college. The studio and lodgings, filling five rooms on two floors and still showing traces of wall paintings bearing what one expert called "astonishing associations" with his work, have come to light in what was once part of the friary of the Santissima Annunziata in Florence and was later taken over by Italy's Military Geographical Institute. A team of restorers found the...