This valuable collection of twenty-two essays written in Italian is based on the papers delivered at a multidisciplinary conference held in Florence and Vinci from 14–17 December 2017. The overriding concern of the conference and volume, as the editors explain in their introductory essay, was that Leonardo's fame should not endanger the preservation of cultural heritage. Their plea harks back to attempts at locating Leonardo's Battle of Anghiari under the wall paintings executed by Vasari in the Sala Grande of the Palazzo Vecchio in Florence, the most recent of which was undertaken in 2011 by Maurizio Seracini, who used invasive techniques.

The volume is an attempt to offer a new approach to the study of Leonardo's battle scene, one which revolves around the intriguing (and open) question as to whether he ever painted it on the wall. The book comprises six well-structured parts. Part 1 introduces key issues raised by the different methodologies and uses of primary sources underpinning the main theoretical attempts at locating and reconstructing the Battle of Anghiari, more specifically its central motif, the Fight for the Standard. The scholarly studies by Wilde (1944) and Rubinstein (1995) are addressed individually and, while attention is also given to the important contributions by Isermeyer (1964), Newton-Spencer (1982), and Hatfield (2007), the roles played by Pedretti in promoting the search for Leonardo's painting and by Seracini in embarking on that search are also critically discussed.

New archaeological and historical research is considered in parts 2 and 3, including an investigation of the possible dimensions and overall configuration of the Sala Grande at the time of Leonardo's commission. The site occupied by the Palazzo Vecchio and the various building phases and transformations of the Sala Grande are thoroughly studied in part 2. We learn of the Sala's foundations overlying the material structures of a Roman amphitheater, of medieval adaptations of the space, of the construction of the Sala above the Dogana, and of the additions undertaken by Cronaca, Monciatto, and Antonio da Sangallo. The authors take pains to intellectually uncover the multiple and partially superimposed structures. There is also a compelling argument by Maria Teresa Bartoli about Luca Pacioli's role in additions to the building. Part 3 discusses the political change of power from Savonarola to Soderini, and the related changes in the function of the Palazzo, the Sala, and its adjoining rooms. It culminates in Vasari's architectural interventions and new decorative cycle. In Nicoletta Marcelli's essay, novel literary sources for Leonardo's Battle of Anghiari are suggested together with a reassessment of the role played by Soderini in the project. Giorgio Caselli, in studying Vasari's project, attentively analyzes the morphological evolution of the structure of the Sala's walls.

Some aspects of the visual and written reception of the Battle of Anghiari are discussed in part 4, in essays ranging from source(s) for its various copies to the early whereabouts of Leonardo's and Michelangelo's cartoons. Roberta Barsanti considers whether the earliest copies were based on the cartoon rather than the mural. In part 5, the investigative focus shifts to scientific studies of pictorial materials and techniques. Mauro Matteini interestingly addresses Leonardo's Last Supper and preparation of a stucco-barriera in the context of what the artist might have executed when preparing the wall to paint the Battle of Anghiari. Massimo Coli explains that the use of non-invasive scientific methods for the examination of the materials of the east wall of the Sala Grande have revealed the presence of two types of masonry, and that Vasari's wall adhered firmly to the earlier one with no visible signs of gapping. Roberto Bellucci and Cecilia Frosinini, reinterpreting references to the documented materials acquired for Leonardo, attempt to reconstruct the technical phases of his work. They contend that the major problem in his pictorial execution actually occurred at the outset of the preparation of the wall, suggesting that no painting was ever realized.

Concluding the volume is a substantial apparatus, the highlight of which is the documentary appendix in which Veronica Vestri assembles the documentation preserved in the Archivio di Stato di Firenze on the execution and decoration of the Sala Grande from 1483 to 1590. On the whole, the volume is a praiseworthy attempt at broadening our fields of inquiry and shedding new light on various aspects of Leonardo's project. That said, our intellectual approaches to his Battle of Anghiari should not be conditioned by a suggested supremacy of the role of the cartoon over the painting, but by our appreciation of the limitations inherent in any historical reconstruction.