DNA Found on Leonardo Drawings
November 27 2020
Posted by Adam Busiakiewicz:
The brave world of art science marches ever onwards. Artnews.com has reported on findings made by Guadalupe Piñar a microbiologist at the University of Natural Resources and Life Sciences of Vienna. Piñar has been leading a study on harvesting genetic material from old master drawings including works by Leonardo.
The scientist is quoted as saying:
Until now, it had always been thought that fungi were dominant in microbial communities that colonized cultural heritage objects made on paper or with paper support... results showed a relatively high contamination with human DNA and a surprising dominance of bacteria over fungi.
A curious thought that contested attributions may be settled one day by DNA samples. But, I can't believe we're quite there yet!
