The art history researcher Carla Glori claims to have identified in the real landscape of Bobbio, in the province of Piacenza, thirteen reference points present in Leonardo da Vinci’s Mona Lisa, the famous painting kept in the Louvre in Paris: among these she identified the ‘fascinating lake to the right of the Mona Lisa, about which there are many hypotheses. “My hypothesis is characterized by concreteness – Glori declares to Adnkronos – since the ‘point of view’ of the research is set near a window of the Malaspina Dal Verme castle, from which the area of the Piancasale salt-iodine spring – which I identify with the watery clearing painted to the left of the lady (to the right of the viewer) – is visible to the naked eye, as can be seen from the panoramic photo of the landscape”.
Time has made that legendary place called “Piano e Casa del sale” unrecognizable, where today only a salt well remains in memory of the activity of the monks of San Colombano (beneficiaries of the ancient salt pans since 622). “The water source – explains the researcher – was used for the production of salt and for therapeutic purposes already at the time of the Romans and the Lombards, but at Leonardo’s time also the salt-bromine-iodine-radioactive thermal waters of Sant ‘Ambrogio in Piancasale, used for healing, had become the object of superstition (in Bobbio the waters of San Martino, Rio Foino and the Carlone waterfall have a sulphurous component which was then believed to be diabolical)”.
At the beginning of the last century, the Piancasale thermal establishment stood in that area, opened by the Marquis Obizzo Landi Malaspina (1896-1903), then put back into operation by the lawyer Pietro Renati (1907), until its closure in 1928, the year in which the abundant flow of water ran out, due to the construction of hydroelectric plants in Val Trebbia that were never completed. “The photo of the first historic spas in the Piancasale area arouses a surreal effect – Dr. Glori explains to Adnkronos – because the transformation of the landscape makes it difficult to believe that that area coincides with the expanse of water that has always been believed to be a lake or a visionary creation of ‘artist”. The city at the time is described as very rich in water and the countryside was barren and wild, very different from the current one, which is greener and more attractive, but without the mysterious aura of the past.
And yet there are still many traces that allow us to identify that place: the historical and archive memories, the indication on the regional technical map n° 197011 of the iodine-salt spring coinciding with that area, and, to confirm its location, the 3D reconstruction by the Piacenza architect Angelo Bellocchi, as well as photographs and satellite footage from Google Earth.
The researcher adds: “We don’t know if the watery clearing was as extensive at the time as it appears in the painting, but that area is just above a vast bend of the Trebbia river, at that time very rich in water and subject to massive flooding, in which the thermal waters poured out: that mass of water must have been a source of inspiration for the artistic imagination of Leonardo, whose studies focused on the centrality of the waters”.
The thesis that places the landscape of the Mona Lisa in Bobbio is also based on the historical reconstruction that identifies the model as Bianca Sforza (the Moro’s eldest daughter who died mysteriously), and which proves the links of her husband Galeazzo Sanseverino and the Sforzas with the castle that was the stronghold by Dal Verme. Furthermore, Sanseverino was Leonardo’s patron during his first stay in Milan (1482-1499).
In the system of 13 “coordinates” described by the researcher, the geological peculiarities of Bobbio also take on importance. Glori specifies: “On this topic, inaccurate and misleading comments have been spread online, ignoring the fact that the Bobbio tectonic window is mentioned in my books and articles from 2010 onwards, as well as the studies on the typical Bobbio ophiolites and on the very singular Pietra Parcellara symbol of the city; the gullies, present on the rocky bank of the Gobbo bridge, attest compatibility with the dark rocky mass on which the painted bridge rests. Furthermore, in 2022 an international team of paleontologists, (including Andrea Baucon and Gerolamo Lo Russo who study from that territory for decades), found the same ichnofossils described in the Leicester Codex near Bobbio, going so far as to define that area as ‘Leonardo’s paleontological laboratory'”.
One of the thirteen landscape elements that has been part of the research since 2011 is the Gobbo bridge, referred to as the Mona Lisa bridge. There are many technical projects that
allow us to date the rapid multiplication of its arcs over time; among these, the hitherto unpublished project by the Bobbio architect Antonio Maria Losio (1741-1808) is published, as proof that no works had begun for the extension of the Bobbio bridge until the beginning of the 19th century, which therefore, it had kept the same original number of four small arches plus the large arch unchanged. “The comparison, necessarily approximate, between Leonardo’s ruined bridge and the technical scheme of the Gobbo del Losio bridge demonstrates similarities – observes Glori – taking into account that from 1472 to 1509 its four smaller arches were structurally damaged and the large arch remained collapsed.” According to the historical reconstruction carried out, Leonardo painted the Bobbio bridge in its state of devastation around 1496, the date of the wedding portrait of the young Bianca Sforza (the girl in the first hidden portrait, discovered in 2015 with LAM technology by Pascal Cotte under the ‘enigmatic icon of the Louvre).