By Christina Ng | ABC News Blogs
Artist Ron Piccirillo claims he found the heads of a lion, an ape and a buffalo hovering in the air in the background of the Mona Lisa, after turning the painting on its side. (Photo Credit: Associated Press)
New York artist Ron Piccirillo is claiming to have unlocked the secrets behind one of the most mysterious faces in history – Mona Lisa.
Piccirillo argues that several animals can be seen hidden in the painting when it is set horizontally. The Rochester graphic designer and painter said a lion, ape and buffalo can be seen around Mona Lisa’s head and a snake or crocodile is near her right shoulder.
The animals led Piccirillo to Leonardo da Vinci’s journals and a few passages that mention the animals he sees.
“When I came across these answers, which I call the ‘accidental discovery,’ I wasn’t seeking the information,” Piccirillo told ABCNews.com. “I was just able to pull out a lot of puzzle pieces together that led me to the answers. It all came from Leonardo’s writings.”
One of the passages that references “her heart gnawed by a swelling serpent” also says, “Give her a leopard’s skin, because this creature kills the lion out of envy and by deceit.” Though the passage does not mention the “Mona Lisa” specifically, Piccirillo said he believes the references to the serpent and the lion lead back to the painting and back to the woman with the infamous smile.
Piccirillo said he believes that Mona Lisa was not an actual person, but, rather, symbolic of the human trait of envy. He also believes that his discovery will be important to an art community that has been puzzled by the painting for centuries.
“I was definitely aware of how big the impact would be in the art world,” he said. “I knew it was going to be the biggest thing in 500 years.”
Members of the art community do not necessarily agree with Piccirillo’s sense of the importance of his discovery.
“I don’t believe there’s any reason to dwell on this particular theory,” Brown University art history professor Evelyn Lincoln told ABCNews.com. “It doesn’t help me understand the Mona Lisa to think of her as hiding iconographic symbols that are rather disconnected of envy.”
Lincoln called the theory “problematic” and said that the interpretation may have more to do with the viewer than the painting itself. She pointed out that the image people are looking at is not the original painting and that even the original has been worn down by time, with crack and oil.
Lincoln also noted that da Vinci’s journals themselves are fragmentary and were put back together after his death.
“The idea that we should be turning the painting upside down and around for an odd iconographic rendition of envy seems to be a personal obsession that this particular graphic artist seems to find in every painting he looks at,” Lincoln said. “It’s not my Mona Lisa.”
Still, Piccirillo said he is confident in his assessment and his theory.
“I’ve been an artist all my life and always been aware of the mysteries of the Mona Lisa, but I was never that interested in it. I was more interested in the beauty of the art itself,” he said. “But once you know what to look for, it’s there.
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- Artist ‘solves’ mystery of Mona Lisa by finding hidden animals in painting (mirror.co.uk)
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As My World Turns 
If it’s true this is a fun discovery, but not quite the the biggest thing in 500 years. On the other hand, the flat rejection of this notion is quite typical of the cloistered academia set, who deny any idea which doesn’t have it’s genesis in their own camp.
I’m an artist too. Being an artist gives you a perspective and insight into what happens during the creation of a piece of art that those who study and love art–but don’t make art–often don’t appreciate.
It is not at all improbable that Leonardo put “hidden images” into this painting. In fact, if they’re there then what else could have happened? They didn’t grow there. They were drawn and painted there. Is there any hidden meaning? Probably not. Probably not related to envy.
Hidden iconographic imagery was frankly, a language of art for many periods, certainly Leonardo’s. But even if these images are there (and I’m not saying they are) it doesn’t mean that there ever was any intent to represent any “meaning” at all. It could just as easily have been Leonardo having fun with the artwork for nobody’s pleasure but his own.
By: Peter Wadsworth on December 9, 2011
at 2:29 PM