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A stunning fresco in the garden of Pompeii's Casa dei Ceii (House of the Ceii) has been painstakingly laser-cleaned and touched up with new paint by expert restorers. The artwork — of hunting scenes — was painted in the so-called 'Third' or 'Ornate' Pompeii style, which was popular around 20–10 BC and featured vibrant colours. Poor maintenance since the house was dug up in 1913–14 saw the hunting fresco and others deteriorate, particularly at the bottom, which is more vulnerable to humidity. The main section of the fresco depicts a lion pursuing a bull, a leopard pouncing on sheep and...

The 1930s fresco mural by Ann Rice O’Hanlon was painted as part of the federal Public Works of Art Project. It shows Lexington’s history from its settlement in a series of scenes. In one, black men and women are planting tobacco, and in another, a Native American man holds a tomahawk. Various efforts to remove the mural have been made since at least 2006. In 2015, in response to a meeting with a group of black students, Capilouto ordered the mural to be shrouded. Then after meeting for a year, a UK task force said the mural should be uncovered,...

If you believe, as Maurizio Seracini does, that Leonardo da Vinci’s greatest painting is hidden inside a wall in Florence’s city hall, then there are two essential techniques for finding it. As usual, Leonardo anticipated both of them. First, concentrate on scientific gadgetry. After spotting what seemed to be a clue to Leonardo’s painting left by another 16th-century artist, Dr. Seracini led an international team of scientists in mapping every millimeter of the wall and surrounding room with lasers, radar, ultraviolet light and infrared cameras. Once they identified the likely hiding place, they developed devices to detect the painting by...

The hunt for the "Battle of Anghiari," ...which Leonardo began in 1505 to commemorate the 15th-century Florentine victory over Milan at Anghiari, a medieval Tuscan town... unfinished when Leonardo left Florence in 1506... was given new impetus about 30 years ago, when Seracini noticed a cryptic message on a fresco in the hall by Giorgio Vasari, a 16th-century artist famed for chronicling Renaissance artists' labors. "Cerca, trova" -- "seek and you shall find" -- said the words on a tiny green flag in the "Battle of Marciano in the Chiana Valley." ...A few years ago, using radar and X-ray scans,...

A real-life Da Vinci mystery, complete with tantalizing clues and sharp art sleuths, may soon be solved, as researchers resume the search for a lost Leonardo masterpiece believed to be hidden within a wall in a Florence palace. Culture Minister Francesco Rutelli and officials in the Tuscan city announced this week they had given approval for renewed exploration in the Palazzo Vecchio, the seat of power for various Florence rulers, including the Medici family in the 16th century. There, some researchers believe, a cavity in a wall may have preserved Leonardo's unfinished painted mural of the "Battle of Anghiari" for...

Forget the Da Vinci Code. Dr Seracini thinks he's cracked art's biggest mystery Step by patient step, one man is drawing ever closer to the real Da Vinci mystery: tracking down the master’s greatest painting, lost for four and a half centuries. And it is hidden, he believes, in a room at the heart of political power since the Middle Ages in Florence. For art historians, finding Leonardo’s lost Battle of Anghiari is in the same league as finding the Titanic or the still lost tomb of the Ancient Egyptian architect Imhotep — as big as you can get. The...

Maybe Vasari fresco refers to presence of greater art behind it ROME -- "Cerca trova" ("Seek and you shall find") is the tantalizing 5-century-old message painted on a fresco in the council hall of Florence's Palazzo Vecchio. Researchers now believe these cryptic words could be a clue to the location of a long-lost Leonardo da Vinci painting and are pressing local authorities to allow them to search for the masterpiece of Renaissance art. Maurizio Seracini, an Italian art researcher, first noticed the message during a survey of the hall 30 years ago, but his team lacked the technology then to...

Cecilia Giménez, the Spanish woman who really messed up when she tried to restore a 19th-century fresco of Jesus, now wants a piece of the action from the 2,000 or so euros ($2,600) her church has collected from tourists coming to see the ruined artwork. Spain's El Correo reports, according to Gawker's translation, that the 80+-year-old Giménez has hired lawyers to make her case. A court battle is expected. Ars Technica says the church has also lawyered up. As Eyder wrote last month, by the time Giménez was done with her attempt at restoration, the image was being likened to...

<p>Three separate photographs of “Ecce Homo” by painter Elias Garcia Martinez show extensive damage caused by an elderly woman who decided the masterpiece needed a little refurbishment.</p> <p>But in a time of austerity, rather than calling in a professional to complete the job, the unnamed woman attempted to restore the mural herself – at a devastating cost.</p>

Elias Garcia Martinez's Ecce Homo (left) and the "restoration" An elderly parishioner has stunned Spanish cultural officials with an alarming and unauthorised attempt to restore a prized Jesus Christ fresco. Ecce Homo (Behold the Man) by Elias Garcia Martinez has held pride of place in the Sanctuary of Mercy Church near Zaragoza for more than 100 years.The woman took her brush to it after years of deterioration due to moisture.Cultural officials said she had the best intentions and hoped it could be properly restored.DonationThe woman, in her 80s, was reportedly upset at the way the fresco had deteriorated and took...

The aftermath of the Abruzzo earthquake has witnessed the miraculous survival of people beneath collapsed buildings - and even of a small black dog which scampered out of the ruins of a house on Easter Sunday after nearly a week under the debris. But residents of Rocca di Cambio, a village high in the Gran Sasso mountains of Abruzzo 25 kilometres from L’Aquila, are celebrating the emergence of a more longstanding survivor: a long-lost 11th Century fresco depicting the Virgin Mary and infant Jesus. “This is wonderful news at a time of so much destruction and sorrow,” Antonio Pace, the...

Villagers claim church fresco is lost Michelangelo Parishioner's confession leads to discovery of monogram behind altar John Hooper in Rome Thursday February 23, 2006 The Guardian (UK) The fresco, attributed to Michelangelo, was discovered behind an altar in a village church in Chianti, Italy. Photography: Marco Bucco/EPA No one else knows what the pensioner told the priest about what he got up to when he was a naughty altar boy. But his confession holds out the tantalising possibility that there could be a lost Michelangelo on the wall of a village church in Chianti. For centuries the inhabitants of Marcialla...

Cimabue’s Assisi fresco reconstructed The painting was believed irreparable after the 1997 Umbrian earthquake. A remarkable new computer programme has helped conservators piece it back together Posted 23 November 2005 By Edek Osser and Emma Beatty The restored St Francis Basilica ASSISI. A fresco by Cimabue, believed destroyed in the 1997 earthquake, has been partially reconstructed from thousands of fragments. It is to be reinstalled in the Basilica of St Francis next March. The restoration is the last in an extraordinary eight-year conservation project co-ordinated by the regional government of Umbria and the State-run Istituto Centrale del Restauro in Rome,...

AFGHANISTAN: ANCIENT FRESCOES DISCOVERED Tokyo, 21 July (AKI) - A Japanese research team has uncovered an ancient Buddhist fresco in the valley of Bamiyan, the site where the Taliban regime destroyed two gigantic statues of Buddha in March 2001. The fresco was found in a cave that was overlooked in the Taliban's destructive campaign against 'pagan symbols'. The cave is situated in the western part of the Bamiyan Valley, according to officials at Japan's National Institute for Research for Cultural Heritage. Even though some of the murals are covered in dust, initial exploration indicates that they cover both sides of...

Unprecedented Ice Age Cave Art Discovered in U.K. John Pickrell in England for National Geographic News August 18, 2004 Vivid frescoes of stampeding bulls, horses, and other animals drawn by Stone Age artisans grace the walls of many European caves. The most spectacular examples are found in Altimera in Spain and Lascaux and Chauvet in France. For many years the total lack of cave art in Britain dating to the same period perplexed researchers. Britain was inhabited, after all. And throughout the Ice Age, it was linked to mainland Europe by a land bridge. Last year researchers discovered a handful...

Italy Thwarts Basilica Attack Plot Tue Aug 20, 2:43 PM ET A Moroccan man is shown walking in the San Patronio Basilica in Bologna, northern Italy, in this picture taken from a home video seized Monday by Italian authorities and made available Tuesday, Aug. 20, 2002, during a press conference. Four Moroccans and an Italian, left, whose names were not made public, were arrested Monday under the suspiscion of terrorism after they filmed themselves near the central altar and the frescoes in the basilica. (AP Photo/Gianfilippo Oggioni, HO) By FRANCES D'EMILIO, Associated Press Writer ROME (AP) - Italian police arrested...

After eight months of restoration, the scaffolding finally came down March 18 on one of the world's great art treasures, the Scrovegni Chapel in Padua, Italy. The 700-year-old chapel contains frescoes depicting more than 100 scenes from the Bible painted by the early Renaissance painter Giotto between 1303 and 1305, and they are considered his masterpiece. The frescoes are seen as one of the major turning points in the history of European painting. For centuries, painting had followed a slavish, almost formulaic pattern that became highly stylized and was descended from the Byzantine tradition. Figures were flattened and perspective was...