News Main
Animals
Archaeology
Dinosaurs
Earth
History
Human Animal
Space
Tech

Mirrors Reveal Codes in Da Vinci Art, Book Says

Rossella Lorenzi, Discovery News

Conti says another biblical image is hidden in Leonardo's painting of John the Baptist, on display at the Louvre Museum.

Again, John the Baptist's finger points to where one must place the mirror.

The result, at first glance, is a woman being bonked by a tree. Conti believes it represents the Tree of Life in Adam and Eve's Garden of Eden.

"All these hidden biblical images are related to a secret message left by the artist. They represent the allegories of the Genesis and New Testament and open the doors to a new way of reading these artworks," Conti said.

According to Conti, Leonardo da Vinci and other Renaissance artists had knowledge of the allegories mentioned in many biblical references and in the treaties of Philo of Alexandria, a 1st century philosopher and theologian.

"All the images are related to explanations given by Philo, who reveals that the Bible is a symbolic representation of the history of the human intelligence," Conti said. "Adam is the intelligence that resides in the mind of every human, while Eve is the corporal sensibility. The hidden images in the paintings tell this story and can only be seen with a mirror by those with sharp vision."

He claims that clear references to the language of mirrors also exist in the book "Lives of the Artists" by Giorgio Vasari, the 16th century painter and art historian.

Nevertheless, the theory has raised skepticism in Italy.

While the Vatican commented that the study required "solid proof" and needed to be supported by art critics, the daily Il Giornale dismissed the claim as "pareidolia," a psychological phenomenon.

"Our brain tries to give a coherent meaning when faced with ambiguous figures, such as when we look at the clouds in the sky," Joseph Thornborn wrote in Il Giornale. "If we apply the mirror technique to a picture of Marilyn Monroe, we obtain a disquieting face with a chalice. Right, there is the Holy Grail on Marilyn's forehead."

Rossella Lorenzi's blog: Archaeorama

The Museum of Science: Leonardo da Vinci

The da Vinci Glow

The Metropolitan Museum of Art on da Vinci