New York-based artist Ron Piccirillo revealed that he found a series of hidden images in Mona Lisa.
According to Piccirillo, if you turn the Leonardo da Vinci masterpiece sideways, you will see an outline of a lion, an ape, and a buffalo around the head of Mona Lisa. There is also a crocodile and snake coming out of her body.
The artist, who said he also discovered hidden images in paintings by Raphael and in the Sistine Chapel, associates the images of he discovered in Mona Lisa to jealousy being the theme of the art work.
In explaining his discovery, Piccirillo said:
“This is really about viewing perspective. Imagine standing in front of an oval line drawing. It is obviously an oval, but if you view it from the left or right, at a large enough angle, the oval turns into a circle. This is the key to understanding how Leonardo and many other Renaissance artists hid subjects in their artwork. If you know to look for them, they are there. I don’t know why this has been missed for so long and I can’t tell you what it means – that’s one for the art historians. Da Vinci could have been using horses heads as some kind of religious code, but as to why they are hidden I have no idea. It’s not every day you spot something that has gone unnoticed for 500 years.”
Last year Italy’s National Committee for Cultural Heritage said that magnification of high-resolution images of the Mona Lisa’s eyes has revealed letters and numbers.
We can only wonder what artists will discover next in Mona Lisa. We might end up having a whole set of zoo animals surround this famous painting of a seated woman whose facial expression has been frequently described as enigmatic.
