The problem with frescos is that once you tear down the wall, the painting is gone: this was once believed to be the fate of one of Leonardo da Vinci's frescos called the Battle of Anghiari. However, a recent discovery suggests that the wall where the fresco was painted on was preserved, hidden behind another wall.

The fresco once decorated the Hall of the Five Hundred of the Palazzo Vecchio, the town hall of Florence, Italy. Leonardo DA Vinci and Michelangelo Buonarroti both painted frescos in the Hall, but both paintings were left unfinished.

For half a century the paintings remained there until it was decided that the Hall was to be enlarged. The paintings were believed to be lost in the restructuring. Thirty years ago however, an Italian engineer noticed the words "Cerca, trova" ("Seek and you shall find") on a fresco by Giorgio Vasari in the Palazzo Vecchio. Vasari was the artist who was commissioned to redecorate the Hall of the Five Hundred way back when in the 1560s.

The discovery led the engineer, Maurizio Seracini, to believe that Leonardo da Vinci's work may not have been destroyed after all but preserved, hidden behind Vasari's own wall where he painted his fresco. They have discovered, using X-ray scans, that there is a cavity behind Vasari's wall, large enough to indicate that the space may be there only so it won't touch the second wall beyond it.

Using modern technology - lasers, 3D imaging, chemical analysis and thermal imaging - scientists and engineers hopes to discover if DA Vinci's wall, and in effect his fresco, still survives without destroying Vasari's. If DA Vinci's fresco proves to have been lost after all, and doesn't lie behind Vasari's, at least the scientific efforts in finding out would help improve techniques in finding other lost frescos. In fact, the techniques and methods they used are already being applied in medical and military fields.