Mona Lisa A Self-Portrait? Da Vinci's Remains To Be Exhumed To Solve Mystery

Italy's National Committee for Cultural Heritage, an association of art historians and scientists, is seeking permission to dig up the remains of Leonardo Da Vinci. The aim is to determine whether Da Vinci's most famous painting, the Mona Lisa, may actually be a self-portrait of the artist in drag.

The group have received preliminary permission to dig up the artists tomb at Amboise Castle in the Loire valley, France. If official permission is given, the group could be digging by summer.

Giorgio Gruppioni, an anthropologist from the committee, said, "If we manage to find his skull, we could rebuild Leonardo's face and compare it with the Mona Lisa."

The identity of Mona Lisa has provoked debate in the art world for centuries. Some now argue that the artist's rumored homosexuality and love of riddles led him to paint himself as a female.

However, there are complications. For one, the tomb at the Amboise Castle is only the 'presumed' resting place of Da Vinci - his remains originally were kept in a church on the grounds that was destroyed during the French revolution. If he was reburied in the tomb in 1874, as is presumed, the committee will have to use DNA testing and carbon dating to try and work out if the remains are actually his.

However, the plans have led to some ridicule. Nicholas Turner, a former curator of drawings at the Getty Museum, said: "It sounds a bit fanciful, slightly mad, as if the Leonardo bug has taken hold too firmly in the minds of these people. "If Leonardo heard about all this, he'd have a good chuckle."

Comments

[tvtic]

07:24 PM on 01/31/2010

Must posthumous sapiens! L.H.O.O.Q. burning for you! Farewell cold water.

[Nate the Heretic]

09:37 AM on 01/28/2010

People have been asking this for a long time. What's more interesting, IMO, is that this may be a great example of a portrait using the golden ratio as a template for every angle of the face. So perfect, you have to wonder if such a woman(or man) could ever exist.

[HBHB]

08:30 AM on 01/28/2010

This is completely mental. Please tell me it's a joke.

[Macready]

09:02 AM on 01/28/2010

that is exactly what I think . . it is totally bonkers . . .

[tmf945]

08:20 AM on 01/28/2010

I have got to think there's more important things to worry about than this...some people have way too much time on their hands

[UncleJimbo]

07:32 AM on 01/28/2010

If It's a Self-Portrait,that would be a.....Drag!

[Robert Stack]

07:01 AM on 01/28/2010

Just a trivial observation:

I believe the artist in question should be referred to as either "Leonardo" or "Leonardo da Vinci" The reason being that his surname was not, in fact "Da Vinci". Leonardo was illegitimate, and therefore had no surname - The addition of "da Vinci" was merely a distinction of where he was born, used to distinguish him from other men named Leonardo. To refer to the artist as "Da Vinci" is like referring to Pieter Bruegel the Elder as "The Elder"

Of course it is possible that the accepted usage of the name "Da Vinci" might have changed in the wake of the Dan Brown book, but I really think that the title of the "Da Vinci Code" tells us more about Mr. Brown's ignorance of his subject matter than it does about the name of the well known artist.

As to the actual subject of the article, even if they could prove without a doubt that Leonardo da Vinci resembled the Mona Lisa, the results would be inconclusive. It is well known that artists throughout the ages have, consciously and unconsciously, incorporated their own facial features and expressions into the faces of their subject matter. It is therefore quite possible that Leonardo might have included a self portrait within the Mona Lisa without even realizing it.

[UncleJimbo]

07:34 AM on 01/28/2010

I bet you're a Hoot at Parties!

[Nate the Heretic]

10:55 AM on 01/28/2010

Nor was Alexander called 'The Great' in his own time. What matters is that we remember them, and just because the MSM chooses to shorten it up, does not mean his achievements are any less grand.

[lastpost]

06:11 AM on 01/28/2010

“Mona Lisa A Self-Portrait?”

Position a flat mirror, so it provides a reflection of only the right side of the face. Then reverse it, to reflect only the left side of the face. Maybe Leonardo knew more about don’t ask, don’t tell, (don’t see?), than we do even today.

[v eyepete]

04:42 AM on 01/28/2010

The Italians should stick to bilking tourists and leave the great artist to rest in peace. I have never heard of anything so absurd, as well as the flagrant miss-use of money that could be put to better use. There are retired people on pensions in Italy who can afford to eat nothing but pasta, but they could put money into this useless project. There is already a self portrait of Leonardo, and he looks nothing like the Mona Lisa which began with an a model, but has he traveled with the painting and continued to work on it for a lifetime, the model became irrelevant. These people should study art, not DNA. Someone should protest this idle curiosity that defames the dead.

[AverageJill]

03:55 AM on 01/28/2010

What will this do to the Nat King Cole classic song?

[RButler]

03:27 AM on 01/28/2010

I'm always skeptical when people attempt to discern something hundreds and thousands of years old when we are barely able to know what is going on right here, right now. Does this mean someone in the year 3000 will conclude that their were WMDs in Iraq or Marilyn Monroe was pregnant with JFK's baby? There is so much going on in our country right now that we can't get accurate information on.

[leanjhuls2]

02:48 AM on 01/28/2010

Can we just stop it and enjoy the enigma, please? Looking to answer a 400-mystery to discover fact will kill the romance.

[johnsopinion]

09:30 AM on 01/28/2010

It's only a "mystery" because someone said, "H-m-m, I wonder...........?"

They could just as easily have 'wondered' if the background of the
Mona Lisa was used in Avatar?

[rougebaisers]

02:47 AM on 01/28/2010

Yup

[SpaceboySD]

02:26 AM on 01/28/2010

Interesting...though not interesting ENOUGH of course, to dig up a freakin CORPSE over it!!!

Besides, I heard somewhere once that the reason she smiled like that was because all of her teeth were rotten.

[KriTiKiT]

02:25 AM on 01/28/2010

why you going to dig him up! just for the illusion of art, you will devalue the painting if you steal the mystery from the beholders mind...

there is something else to this I wanna know if they test for his dna

[undrgrndgirl]

02:18 AM on 01/28/2010

wasn't this "solved" sometime last year?