A Lost da Vinci? Inner Secrets Reveal Bust’s True Origins
Flora, the wax bust depicting the Roman goddess of flowers and spring, was originally purchased by the German curator Wilhelm von Bode in 1909 who claimed it was an original Da Vinci artwork. However, new research published in the journal
Scientific Reports in April 2021 shows that the bust was actually created by the British artist Richard Cockle Lucas in the early 19th century.
A team of French chemists uncovered the gaffe when they radiocarbon dated the famous sculpture and discovered that Flora was not made in the 1500s, but was actually created in the 1800s. Flora is currently held in the collections of the Bode Museum in central Berlin and, according to a report in the