The controversy over more than a century over the authorship of the bust of Flora exhibited at the Soil Museum in Berlin has settled with the final conclusion that it was not the work of Leonardo Da Vinci.
“It’s a plan, it’s a hoax,” the director general of the Royal Museums of Berlin said in his defense when he was criticized for having bought a fake. Wilhelm Bode did not move an inch: the sculpture he acquired in 1909 was a still unknown production by the great Renaissance master Leonardo da Vinci.
After a hundred years and countless controversies, a group of scientists led by a researcher from the CNRS (French National Research Center) has just proven once and for all that the German scientist was wrong.
The so-called Flora wax bust has recently undergone radiocarbon dating (14th century), which gives an exact dating and an irrefutable result: it was made in the 19th century, almost 300 years after Da Vinci’s death, the CNRS reports in a statement.
Since the sculpture was primarily made of spermaceti, a species extracted from whales, the researchers had to develop a new calibration method to accurately date the artwork.
Their results, which are published in Scientific Reports, show how carbon-14 dating can be applied to unusual materials.