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Leonardo da Vinci was a painter, inventor and anatomist, to call just some of his abilities — and now, you possibly can add modern chemist to the polymath’s many items. It seems the grasp artist was extra experimental along with his famend “Mona Lisa” than beforehand thought — and was doubtless the creator of a way seen in works created a century later, a brand new research suggests.
By utilizing X-ray diffraction and infrared spectroscopy, a staff of scientists in France and Britain has detected a uncommon mineral compound inside the iconic piece. The discovering supplies recent perception into how the work from the early 1500s was painted, in keeping with the study recently published within the Journal of the American Chemical Society.
Together with lead white pigment and oil, the compound — generally known as plumbonacrite — was discovered within the base layer of the paint. A study published in 2019 had recognized the mineral in a number of 17th-century works by Rembrandt, however researchers had not come throughout it in works from the Italian Renaissance till the brand new evaluation.
Plumbonacrite varieties when lead oxides mix with oil. Mixing these two substances on a palette is a way that later artists like Rembrandt used to assist the paint dry, in keeping with the research. Detecting the uncommon compound within the “Mona Lisa” advised that Leonardo might have been the unique precursor of this method, mentioned Gilles Wallez, an creator of the most recent research and a professor at Sorbonne College in Paris who additionally was a coauthor on the 2019 report.
“The whole lot which comes from Leonardo may be very attention-grabbing, as a result of he was an artist, after all, however he was additionally a chemist, a physicist — he had a number of concepts, and he was an experimenter … trying to enhance the data of his time,” Wallez mentioned.
“Every time you uncover one thing on his processes, you found that he was clearly forward of his time,” he mentioned.
The “Mona Lisa,” like many different work from the sixteenth century, was created on a wooden panel that required a thick base layer, Wallez mentioned. The researchers consider that Leonardo had made his combination of lead oxide powder with linseed oil to supply the thick coat of paint wanted for the primary layer, whereas unknowingly creating the uncommon compound.
These days, researchers aren’t allowed to take samples from the masterpiece, which resides on the Louvre in Paris and is protected behind glass, Wallez mentioned. Utilizing a 2007 microsample that had been taken from an space of the art work simply behind the body, nonetheless, scientists had been capable of analyze the paint through the use of a high-tech machine known as a synchrotron. The particle accelerator allowed the staff to review the speck’s composition on a molecular stage.
“These samples have a really excessive cultural worth,” Wallez mentioned. “You may’t afford to take large samples on a portray, so a synchrotron is one of the best ways to investigate them.”
The bottom layer of Leonardo’s mural “The Final Supper” was additionally discovered to have the identical chemical make-up because the “Mona Lisa” although the mural was painted on a wall, in keeping with the research. The scientists had a a lot wider scope of samples from “The Final Supper” to have a look at, 17 in complete, which got here from the paint flaking off the wall over time, Wallez mentioned.
The “Mona Lisa” and “The Final Supper” are two out of fewer than 20 known paintings Leonardo made in his lifetime. Researchers hope they will uncover extra concerning the artist and his works with time.
“We’ve lengthy identified that Leonardo was an inveterate experimenter,” mentioned William Wallace, a distinguished professor and chair of artwork historical past and structure at Washington University in St. Louis.
“Due to this fact, it’s not all shocking that we see him experimenting in different media, particularly given his devoted seek for the most effective painterly strategies (typically untraditional) to create his ‘dwelling’ artworks,” mentioned Wallace, an knowledgeable in Renaissance artwork and structure who was not concerned within the research.