Residents of a provincial town in the Italian Tuscany were seized by excitement. The historian Silvano Vinchetti, after a series of studies of what is actually the most famous painting in the world, came to the conclusion that the bridge in the village of Laterina in the province of Arezzo (only 3 thousand inhabitants now live here) is the one that Leonardo da Vinci painted in the countryside behind the mysterious Mona Lisa. This, to a certain extent, puts an end to many years of disputes in the artistic environment about the landscape behind the model, writes The Guardian.

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Leonardo painted the Mona Lisa in Florence in the early 16th century, and the identity of the woman depicted in the oil painting, believed to be Lisa del Giocondo, was as much speculated as the distant background..

Theories in the past have identified the bridge as Ponte Buriano, near Laterina, as well as Ponte Bobbio in Piacenza in northern Italy..

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Using historical documents and drone images, and comparing the paintings to photographs of the area, Vinzeti said it was "

The most revealing detail, he told reporters at the Foreign Press Association in Rome, is the number of arches: the bridge in Leonardo's painting had four arches, as did Romito.. Ponte Buriano, on the other hand, has six arches, while Ponte Bobbio has more than six..

Only one Romito arch, stretching across the Arno River, remained, as did the foundations of the bridge on the opposite side of the river bank..

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Medici family documents found in Florence's public archives showed that between 1501 and 1503 the city was a " He added that it was at that time that Leonardo was in the Val d'Arno area, first in the service of Cesare Borgia, a cardinal from the most famous noble family in Renaissance Italy, and then in Piero Soderina, a statesman of the Florentine Republic..

The bridge provided a shortcut that shortened the journey between Arezzo, Fiesole and Florence by a few hours.. Vinceti measured the width between the banks of the river and, using the remaining arch size, found that four equally sized arches fit perfectly across the lot.. "

Vinceti also found documents confirming that Leonardo often lived in Fiesole at that time with an uncle who was a priest.. Simone Neri, mayor of Laterina, said that Vinceti's theory caused a lot of unrest in the city.

" However, Vinceti's claims are sure to break the noses of residents of neighboring Buriano, where a Mona Lisa poster stands next to a sign for its bridge..

\; We will also need to hang a poster, Neri joked.. She said the bike path is being built along the section of the Arno that passes the remaining Ponte Romito, and that she hopes the announced Mona Lisa link will bring more tourists to the area..

Vincete has made several other claims about the Mona Lisa in the past, including that Leonardo used male and female models in a portrait that hangs behind bulletproof glass in the Louvre in Paris..