Maurizio Seracini – The Quest for the Lost Leonardo

Cerca trova.   Translated means “seek, find.”  Words almost hidden in the fresco “Battle of Marciano” painted by Italian artist Giorgio Vasari in 1563 found in Florence at Palazzo Vecchio in the Hall of the Five Hundred.   Perhaps a clue left behind by Vasari?  For one inexhaustible Florentine, this created the mission and pursuit and has become renowned for his quest to find Leonardo’s “lost” masterpiece “The Battle of Anghiari”. 

 

Maurizio Seracini, born and raised in Florence, came to San Diego in 1969 as an undergraduate and studied bioengineering at UCSD.  To balance the course load of science and technological studies, he decided to take art studies and commuted twice a week to Los Angeles to study with Professor Carlo Pedretti at UCLA who is renowned for his expertise in the life and works of Leonardo Da Vinci.

 

In 1973, Maurizio graduated with a Bachelor of Science in bioengineering and remained in San Diego until December 1974, before being called back to Italy to serve compulsory military service.

After completing his duty, he enrolled at the University of Padua and received his doctorate in electronic engineering in 1978.  He continued on to medical school for four years before returning to Florence.

 

 Shortly thereafter, Maurizio got involved with the search for “The Battle of Anghiari” while searching for a job in bioengineering.  However at the time, there was no bioengineering in Italy and consequently, any bioengineering jobs. 

 

Call it fate.  While determining his next step, Maurizio unexpectedly bumped into Professor Pedretti who was in Florence at the time writing a book about “The Battle of Anghiari”.  This was the impetus as Maurizio started to apply all he knew in the field of engineering and engineering applied to medicine to works of art. 

 

A couple of years later, he founded Editech a private company based in Florence which was the first company of its kind to provide diagnostic services to art and architecture.  Traveling extensively throughout Italy and Europe, Maurizio has studied more than 2,500 works of art and historic structures.  Notable masters include works by Leonardo Da Vinci, Sandro Botticelli, Raphael and Caravaggio.  

 

It would take Maurizio thirty years to find his way back to San Diego.  In 2005, he was offered an invitation by the Department of Bioengineering at UCSD to give a lecture to talk about his experience on going from bioengineering to engineering applied to cultural heritage since he himself graduated in bioengineering. Wanting to give back what he had received from the institute as a student, he accepted.

 

 A year later, the Alumni Association of UCSD requested Maurizio to return and give the same lecture however to the general public.  During this time, Maurizio expressed his idea of starting a research center and create an innovative degree in engineering for culture heritage which would be the first of its kind in the world.

 

In 2007, he founded and is Director of UCSD Center of Interdisciplinary Science for Art, Architecture and Archaeology a.k.a. CISA3.  The ideology behind CISA3 is to create and develop well rounded human beings that are able to face the problems of the world through interdisciplinary thinking and broader based courses.  It is a place where engineering blends with arts and humanities.

 

Two years later in 2009, he became and is currently an adjunct professor of structural engineering at the Jacobs School of Engineering.  His goal was not about becoming a professor, but instead creating a bridge connecting Florence and San Diego with a flow and exchange of students, ideas and culture.

 

Implementing advanced multispectral imaging, e.g., infrared, ultraviolet, x-ray, etc., to study art and create a diagnosis Maurizio explains, “We can determine how a painting was created and the transformation that could have occurred even introduced by the artists themselves.  Once you see the changes you can gain an overall understanding of why a painting is a masterpiece.

 

“When you see a painting with your naked eye, you see a surface of centuries of aging and therefore changed in terms of color, what could have been added on top, the transformation that could have been done by later artists and on and on.  Most of the time, what you are looking at is far from what was the original reality of the masterpiece.  This way you can see what the master really wanted you to see and understand.”

 

To learn more about the person and fascinating mind behind CISA3, you too can cerca trova but you won’t have to go to the great lengths that Maurizio has, you can simply click on http://cisa3.calit2.net/cisa3/index.php.