The controversy of more than a century about the author of the bust of Flora exhibited in the Bode Museum in Berlin was resolved with the final conclusion that it was not the work of Leonardo Da Vinci.
“It’s a scheme, it’s a hoax,” said the director general of the Royal Museums in Berlin in his defense when he was criticized for buying a fake. Wilhelm Bode did not move an inch: the sculpture he purchased in 1909 was a still unknown production of the great Renaissance master Leonardo da Vinci.
After a hundred years and many controversies, a group of scientists led by a researcher from the CNRS (French national research center) has just proved once and for all that the German scientist was wrong.
The so-called Flora wax bust has recently undergone radiocarbon dating (14th century), which offers a precise date and an indisputable result: it was made in the 19th century, almost 300 years after his death. Da Vinci, CNRS reports in a statement.
Because the sculpture was made primarily of spermaceti, a kind of wax extracted from whales, the researchers had to develop a new method of calibration to accurately give the work of art.
Their results, which are published in scientific reports, show how carbon-14 dating can be applied to unusual materials.