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SECRET SCOUTS AND THE LOST LEONARDO
When best friends Tom, Lisa, Sophie and Jack stumble upon a mysterious sketch that has all the hallmarks of an Old Master, they decide to investigate. Soon they discover an original 15th century codex full of Leonardo da Vinci’s sketches, writings and calculations.
From a family of modest means, Jack and Tom see the codex as a fast track to wealth and fame. Sophie and her sister Lisa, however, have other plans. They decode the codex and discover an incredible secret: Leonardo da Vinci’s invention of time travel.
Their discovery tests their friendship and presents them with an impossible choice: reveal their secret to the world – and become millionaires – or put da Vinci’s extraordinary ideas to the test, risking their lives for a walk on the wild side.
Their journey brings them closer to the great Leonardo da Vinci than anyone ever before. But their quest comes with risks – including death, or worse, being lost in time.
Things you should know
The disappearance of da Vinci
Leonardo da Vinci is the most famous artist of all time. We know almost everything about him. We know, for example, all about his paintings and where he lived and worked during his lifetime – everything except one thing: what happened to the 24 year-old artist between June 1476 and January 1478, or where he was. Yet most of Leonardo da Vinci’s groundbreaking ideas and theories – many way ahead of their time – happened after he returned from this mysterious disappearance. He designed a bridge so advanced that it could only be built in the 21st century, for example. But he also envisioned a scuba diving suit long before its time and designed a helicopter 450 years before the first helicopter took to the air.
The invisible angel
Researchers today use x-rays to look for old coats of paint hidden underneath the top layer of paintings. They do this because lead shows up on x-rays, and artists once added lead to their paints to preserve their long-term quality. Which is why the x-ray images of Leonardo da Vinci’s famous painting The Annunciation have presented art historians with a real mystery. For some unexplained reason Leonardo painted the angel in this masterpiece with lead-free paint. The result is that the angel, unlike everything else in the painting, does not show up on the x-ray. The angel is completely invisible.
THE LOST LEONARDO
Approximately 500 years ago Leonardo da Vinci was commissioned to create the largest artwork of his life in the Palazzo Vecchio, Florence’s town hall. It was said to be the most beautiful wall mural ever painted, but today another artist’s mural stands in its place. Legend has it that this mysterious Da Vinci masterpiece is hidden behind it. This could be true, because in March 2012 professor Maurizio Seracini and a team of experts found traces of The Lost Leonardo hidden behind a double wall in the very same spot Da Vinci’s artwork should have been. This discovery is the first piece of evidence that this mysterious artwork actually exists. Further investigation, however, has been prohibited by Italian authorities.
THE FORBIDDEN ISLAND
The plague was a horrible sickness that once caused the death of millions of people. In Italy, their solution for preventing the plague from spreading from person to person was to banish the sick – or anyone that looked sick – to a small abandoned island off the coast of Venice called Poveglia. More than 160,000 victims of the plague eventually died on the island. Hundreds of years later, between 1922 and 1968, when the island housed an insane asylum, a psychopathic doctor tortured and butchered to death many of his patients. Although the bell is gone, people claim to hear it from time to time. Legend has it that the spirits of the dead continue to roam the island. It has been forbidden to step foot on Poveglia since 1968.
