The Da Vinci Detective

As an engineering student at UCLA in the early 1970s, forensic scientist Maurizio Seracini, a native Florentine, took a course on Da Vinci taught by the subject's leading expert, Carlo Pedretti. Several years later, Seracini invented a machine that allows one to see beneath the surface of things and used it to aid the police in searching for buried bodies, weapons, etc. Da Vinci's fresco of the Battle of Anghiari was supposedly painted in the Palazzo Vecchio in the Hall of the 500 in 1505. The hall was later repainted by Giorgio Vasari (1511–74), and Da Vinci's fresco went missing. Seracini wondered if perhaps Vasari had painted over it and if he could find this lost masterpiece with his technology. After successfully uncovering Battle, he put the technology to work to determine the history of Da Vinci's The Adoration of the Magi, which had been missing at one point for 500 years. One need not know Da Vinci's work or understand modern technology to appreciate Seracini's achievements. Recommended for art historians and those CSI fans who can't get enough of the "details."—Julie Stump, Voorheesville P.L., NY