Wind power in the Mona Lisa landscape divides environmentalists
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A lake landscape dotted with hills, jagged and vertical reliefs. To the left, a road winds through the hills and disappears behind the cliffs bordering the water. To the right, an arched bridge crosses a river which originates from the lake. On the horizon the mountains, the stream and the vegetation are indistinct and merge into the gray and blue colour. It is the landscape that forms the backdrop to the most famous painting in the world, the Mona Lisa by Leonardo da Vinci. A panorama that is also an enigma. A mystery that has actually continued to divide scientists and art historians for seven centuries. Not fixed yet. And today against that backdrop a new controversy is raging. The cause is the project of a wind farm which, according to Italia Nostra, if built would rub the places of the Mona Lisa.
Who knows if Leonardo’s ingenious and creative mind would have ever imagined that on that landscape someone would have planned to install seven 189-metre-high wind turbines with rotors 136 wide (the same as the dome of St. Peter’s), grafted onto 112 hubs. a 60-story skyscraper. The plant called “Badia del vento” could be built on Monte Loggio, in the municipality of Badia Tedalda, on the border between Tuscany and Emilia Romagna in the Alta Valmarecchia. Precisely those places that, according to some historians, Leonardo would have depicted behind the Mona Lisa. Glimpses that have become famous also thanks to the Balconies by Piero della Francesca, another great figure of the Renaissance. The Italia Nostra association, historically opposed to this type of plant, raised the doubts about the wind farm project, which released the images and made public the authorization request filed with the Tuscany Region. Not surprisingly, the symbolic image chosen for the campaign is a Mona Lisa obscured by turbines.
The case
The Monterosso Calabro wind farm will not be built
A position that of Italia Nostra has already been motivated in the past with the request to the government to precisely identify the suitable surfaces” and “to prohibit the indiscriminate proliferation of devastating wind farms”. Theirs is therefore a categorical “no” to the plant considered an eco-monster “The measures even exceed the provisions of the Cultural Heritage and Landscape Code which protect the Apennine areas”, he explains in the document Antonella Carolinational president of Italia Nostra.
Those tall blades, they say, would have a serious visual impact: they would be seen both in Romagna in the municipalities of Casteldelci and the ancient village of Gattara, Pennabilli and Sant’Agata Feltria in the province of Rimini. But also in the province of Forlì and Cesena as well as Badia Tedalda, in the province of Arezzo. Churches, castles, towers, palaces would have the turbines as a backdrop, Italia Nostra explains, underlining that “natural areas such as the Alpe della Luna Reserve, Monte Fumaiolo, the bank of the Mola, the Petrella Guidi village, Monte Carpegna would also be scarred , the Torrente Messa and the park and reserve of Sasso Simone and Simoncello”.
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But if parks dedicated to energy produced by the wind are not new to unleashing duels, the air of controversy is blowing over the wind farm that could be built in Tuscany even among environmentalists themselves. “Given that we are not keen on arguing with other associations, and much less evoking zero-impact scenarios, obviously unfeasible, in our opinion two reflections arise from the Italia Nostra press release”, thus Fausto Ferruzzawho in addition to being the president of Legambiente Tuscany he is also the association’s national landscape manager.
Legambiente: “The controversy over Leonardo is out of time”
“The first is the timeless dimension. As if we weren’t in the most serious climate and energy crisis in human history. This sensation, actually annoying, returns every time we hear well-wishful arguments. Much more is needed: saving, making more efficient, using to hydroelectric, maybe even nuclear. Everything, except renewables. When instead the scientific and technical community point us to renewables and their distributed model as the main way to face the crisis in the most effective, safe and cleanest way”, says Ferruzza bluntly, inviting Italia Nostra to read the data on wind power in Italy with respect to the objectives set for 2030 by the European Energy and Climate Plan. “A largely insufficient commitment”, explains the responsible for the Landscape of Legambiente who invites us to “a more philological and cultural reflection”.
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“Crying about the destruction of the Mona Lisa landscape seems to us, to say the least, foolhardy. Not only and not so much because recent studies have placed that background in the Piacenza countryside and not in Valmarecchia, but above all because they improperly disturb the genius of Leonardo; that is : the quintessence of human intelligence placed at the service of progress. The beauty that springs from Leonardo’s works is never an end in itself, but is always connected to an upright will to improve the condition of our species”.
Italia Nostra: “Energy speculation to the detriment of the landscape”
For Italia Nostra, on the other hand, wind farms, not just the one in Tuscany, are “energy speculation” and say they are ready to do battle. According to them, Badia del vento, in addition to the visual impact, would cause damage to the local fauna and the territory: the felling of the trees and the raising of the towers for the assembly of the blades. Not to mention the widening of the roads and paths, the installation of pitches and the excavation of the land. And then, they dispute, that the hydrogeological risk has not been taken into account: the soil is friable. “too unstable”, they say for such an installation.
The document
Renewable landscapes, 12 proposals for a just energy transition
“The plants for the production of renewable energy should be allocated suitable surfaces and according to a national regulatory plan – thunders Italia Nostra which recalls according to the European Landscape Convention and the Italian Constitution, the landscape and cultural heritage are everyone’s heritage”.
Mona Lisa and the enigma of places
But what does Mona Lisa have to do with all this? Many scholars are convinced that the background behind the Mona Lisa is a large “area” view of imaginary, but not invented, places. Composition of lands left in Leonardo’s mind, his life painted on the painting to which he remained tied to the end. Memories of places but also of those sensations experienced, the art historians explain, while he traveled in that part of Italy which touches Tuscany, Emilia Romagna and the Marches. Landscapes that he had seen and seen again. Thus on one side there would be the calcareous cliffs of the Alta Valmarecchia, Tuscany which is already almost Romagna. On the other side, below, a Romanesque-style arched bridge reminiscent of Ponte Buriano on the Arno in the province of Arezzo and then the hills of Montefeltro, land of the ancient Duchy of Urbino with the Marecchia river, Sasso Simone and the Fumaiolo massif.
If you look at the left side, that stream that flows into the gorge, for some scholars it could be the Gola di Prantantico with its reliefs that almost look like gullies. A backdrop behind Lisa Gherardini that recalls a set of “photographs”. Still to be deciphered since the enigma of those places has not been resolved. And this is why we study the details that were as important to Leonardo as the subject of the painting. Thus historians more recently have recognized on scientific grounds not the Arezzo landscapes, but the pre-Alpine ones near Lecco. But it’s not certain.
At the Louvre Museum, where the most famous painting in the world eclipses the fame of other masterpieces (about 80% of museum visitors, according to Louvre data, come for the Mona Lisa) Mona Lisa continues to fascinate, with the his indecipherable smile and that mysterious landscape. Among the millions of her fans all over the world, however, no one would like to imagine that seven wind turbines will one day stand behind that global icon and in its Italian places of the Renaissance.
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