Researchers have made an astonishing new discovery from the approximately 500-year-old notebook of a famous artist.
The British Library has announced in a recent blog post that, for the first time, a once erased hand-drawn figure has been revealed on a page of one of Leonardo da Vinci’s personal notebooks.
While the image appears as only faint lines visible to the naked eye, in-house experts used a non-invasive technique called multispectral imaging to uncover the ink drawing. During the process, multiple photos were taken of the area at different light spectrums and then combined into a high-resolution image that revealed the hidden details.
Testing was undertaken, in part, because researchers had suspected that the discoloration, which measures about 2.3 inches by just over an inch, masked a da Vinci sketch. It is unknown why attempts were made to erase the figure.
The British Library houses the notebook, called Codex Arundel 263, which is a collection of da Vinci’s recorded thoughts dating mostly to the early 1500s.
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