Leonardo da Vinci manuscript fragment unearthed in France

08.12.2010 [20:26]
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Baku, December 8 (AZERTAC). A long-lost fragment of manuscript by Renaissance genius Leonardo da Vinci has been uncovered in a public library in western France after lying forgotten in storage for nearly one and a half centuries, The Guardian writes.

The text, written from right to left in Leonardo`s characteristic mirror-writing, was among 5,000 documents donated to the city of Nantes in 1872 by wealthy collector Pierre-Antoine Labouchère, and then left to languish in local archives.

It was only when a local journalist came across a reference to the document`s location in a biography of the Italian master that the manuscript was tracked down.

“He was most probably writing in 15th-century Italian, and possibly in other languages, so it now has to be deciphered,” said Agnes Marcetteau, head of the Nantes library where the manuscript was found.

For the time being, however, the contents of the Leonardo script - a few lines on a yellowed scrap of paper - remain a mystery and experts have yet to decipher the artist`s brown scrawl, she said.

This is the second rare item uncovered in Labouchère`s collection, after the discovery in 2008 of an unseen score by composer Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart.

Leonardo da Vinci manuscript fragment unearthed in France

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