This is a revelation of what one could possibly perceive if one were to scrutinize Leonardo da Vinci's Mona Lisa. This revelation is based on the Da Vinci Code and Leonardo s suggestion that the artist who wishes to enhance his faculties for creative invention may stare at a stain on a wall and therein perceive whatever he wishes to see. Fascinated by the story, The Da Vinci Code, albeit fictitious, I enjoyed the possibility that Leonardo da Vinci s painting may be replete with codes, hidden imagery and messages; something that I have always wanted to believe since my discovery of the above suggestion, but I have never found satisfactory proof to substantiate that belief. Since discovering this statement in 1980, I have however constantly scoured this image in search of hidden imagery. Finally, the da Vinci Code provided me with literary justification to prolong my speculation on that possibility and to continue to dabble in my search for a rational solution of the mystery. I was and still am obsessed with the existence of plausible hidden imagery, which my mind s eye finds when I look for them. However, they frequently prove to be figments of my own imagination which reflect my own idiosyncrasies grasping for evidence of Leonardo s input. I now feel that in psite of the lack of proof, I have come up with a rational explanation.
So, in Leonardo s version, I perceive her hair as a row of cypress trees. Her eyes are a broken bridge with its reflection in the golden sun kissed waters of the Arno River tinted with crepuscular hues of the Tuscan evening. The shadow beneath her nose mimics a Venetian gondola drifting, like Leonardo, down the Florentine waterway. Her lips are a canoe. If one scrutinizes the background landscape one may perceive a fish, Ishthus, about to devour a snake, Satan, which has just crawled across the neck of a dead pope, Gregory V, who condemned Mary Magdalene to a reputation of ill repute. In the upper part of the painting one may perceive another dead pope, St Peter, with his hands clasped, atop the heap, but dead. The body of that St Peter creates a T-shaped cross with the form of the Mona Lisa; could she possibly have been Leonardo s clandestine Magdalene? That form created by her body and the dead Pope above, St Peter, create the shape of a scale which may weigh the souls that approach the Pearly Gates.
Her upper body is a director's chair upon which is draped a length of blue silk fabric. Her left arm is congruent with that of the director's chair. The hand of bananas which is usually a deferential reference to my own father - the hand that fed me- is now the delicate hand of the Mona Lisa (Mary Magdalene). Her right arm is a loaf of bread. There is a pear which serves as the extention of her hand and the grapes which yield the wine are in a basket. Both bread and grapes sit in that basket on her lap, indicative of the conception of Saint Sarah.
There are two animals in Leonardo's version that few people have noticed hidden in plain sight. If one follows the outline of the neck and chest of Leonardo's Mona Lisa one shall see the outline of a kitten. Over her left shoulder, one shall see the head of a growling dog created by the meandering river which is spanned by an aqueduct or bridge. I have transformed the dog into a baby s crib and in the crib a black baby girl stands. Could she be Saint Sarah? Is there any significannce to the dog and cat? These two do not usually get along. One chases the other which is hidden in plain sight. The plot of the da Vinci code consisted of a chase, seeking what is hidden in the bosom of the Magdalene.
What I have sought to do in this painting is to show that I can replicate the Mona Lisa creating therein an alternative reality -A Parallel Universe- within the three dimensional illusionary space where she exists. My objective here is to search for another dimension beyond our three dimensional terrestrial space.