Valeria Tranquilli does not trust art historians. They examine paintings, frescoes and sculptures, evaluate materials, describe and comment on volumes and colours, analyze styles. But they rarely try to understand the artwork's other messages, those that aren't purely aesthetic. “If they see two people communicating with hand signs, they recognize that they are deaf and mute – she says – but if they tried to interpret the sign language they would also know what they are saying to each other”. Valeria Tranquilli, with a passion for Leonardo and for the events of her time, never stopped at the first superficial evidence. Looking at a painting, when she detects some apparent inconsistency, she tries to understand its true meaning. This is because immense artists such as Leonardo da Vinci could not have accidentally or by mistake painted a gesture, an anomaly, a foot with six toes or a knife in the hand of a person who is not there…
With this spirit, persevering and also combative, he composed a puzzle that answers a question more than five hundred years old: who killed Galeazzo Maria Sforza on the morning of Boxing Day in 1476? The thriller is a bit dated and in reality the suspicions about Ludovico il Moro have always been whispered about, but Valeria Tranquilli, by consulting the original documents and scrutinizing even the smallest details of the paintings of the time, is sure she has identified the evidence of the crime. which followed the one against the Moro's nephew, Gian Galeazzo. To "describe" the facts are the brushes of seven painters, including the illustrious ones of Leonardo da Vinci and Perugino.
The essay is presented in the form of a dialogue and bundles up a large number of observations and related interpretations, with a dry and incisive prose, sometimes perhaps imperfect (sine literae, he says about himself, as Leonardo himself said) but which demonstrates how the 'author is in the ranks of the most attentive and competent experts of the genius of Vinci, even if unacknowledged. Nothing to do with Dan Brown's captivating, sensationalist and bogus hypotheses. To support every certainty and to motivate every assumption there are details that otherwise would not be explained. They are details that everyone can see, but which escape most, or that some prefer not to comment. The excellent photographs that accompany the historical mystery allow the reader to follow the author's interpretations and are equivalent to a modern scientific police report. The book that "sees" inside Leonardo's paintings also wants to help African children who risk blindness due to poor living conditions. In fact, the proceeds from sales will go to CBM Italia Onlus.
Valeria Clelia Tranquilli Seven Brushes for Justice, Edizioni Colibrì, November 2013, 78 pages, 15 euros.
It can be requested directly from the publisher (via Coti Zelati 49, Paderno Dugnano, 20037) or from CBM (Via Melchiorre Gioia 72, Milan).
