Leonardo da Vinci fruity theory roundup…

What would it feel like to be a footballer with no goal? An actor with no stage? A projector with no screen? Or (finally getting to the point) a pseudohistorian with no infamous historical figure to attach his/her nutty theories onto?

All of which is why I feel sorry for poor old Leonardo da Vinci. He barely counts as a genuine historical figure any longer, for he has transformed into merely a blank canvas to be doodled upon by every new generation of messed-up researchers. Even the mention of his name in The Da Vinci Code is largely risible (he no more invented the ‘cryptex’ than the microwave oven). For every nutjob theory about Michelangelo, there must be a hundred crazy Leonardo ones: how they must be laughing at him in the Florentine Renaissance fama corner of Heaven.

Still, when you put a load of these fruity theories together, I (for one) come away with a reassuring sense of constancy: that the pareidoiliac capacity of the mass of human minds remains just as capable of finding new (yet often just as manifestly false as ever) ways of reading Leonardo’s works. So here are some recent ones you may not yet have heard of… probably for good reason, in most cases. Just so you know, I’ve placed them in broadly decreasing order of plausibility, to lull you into a frog-in-a-saucepan sense of false security.

(1) Might Giorgio Vasari have sealed Leonardo’s “Battle of Anghiari” mural behind a wall to preserve it? San Diego “art diagnostic specialist” Maurizio Seracini suspects he did, for when he worked on Santa Maria Novella, he sealed Masaccio’s fresco “Trinità” behind the wall on which he painted part of his “Madonna of the Rosary” – we know this to be true, because Masaccio’s original was rediscovered in 1861. And so Seracini is trying to build the most amazing camera in the world to peer through the wall, to see if Leonardo’s fresco is still at least partially there. And the evidence? “A tiny painted green flag” in Vasari’s picture, reading “‘Cerca, trova’ — seek and you shall find.” It’s not much, but is it enough?

(2) Not many people know that top-drawer da Vinci art historian Carlo Pedretti has long been hunting for a nude Mona Lisa: it’s a kind of Holy Grail of wobbly art history. In fact, Leonardo may well indeed have painted one, for there are a number of copies originating from the school surrounding the Florentine, all apparently from an original “Monna Vanna”. But is the one in the link Leonardo’s? Almost certainly not: but keep searching, Professor Pedretti, keep searching!

(3) In his imaginatively titled (but as yet unwritten) book-and-forthcoming-feature-film-documentary “The Mona Lisa Code”, Scott Lund thinks that Mona Lisa is an anagram of “Anima Sol”, and that she stands in for Janus in a deviously-crafted stereoscopic illusion, constructed around a map of Rome. Well, if it’s good enough for the Huffington Post, who am I to disagree? Personally, I’m rather more troubled by the anagram “No Salami”: did Leonardo intend the painting as pro-vegetarian propaganda? Or perhaps “Sal (sapit) omnia“? Once you start down that idiotic road, there really is no end to it. *sigh*

(4)-(6) If you’re suffering from intellectual poverty, here’s a bargain you can’t afford to turn down: three Last Supper theories for the price of one, courtesy of at Artden. Read all about Slavisa Pesci’s 2007 mirrored image wonderment; Giovanni Maria Pala’s 2007 claim that you can read a musical score from the hand-positions; and Sabrina Sforza Galitzia 2010 claim that there are hidden signs of the zodiac, pointing to a deluge to end the world starting on March 21st 4006 (but don’t worry, it’ll all be over by November 1st 4006).

(7) But finally, arguably the best of the lot is from Michelle Legro, an editor at Lapham’s Quarterly. Her hilarious post Top Chef, Old Master starts from the seed of [I think] truth that Leonardo was commissioned to automate the Sforza kitchens (though it all ended in disaster), but which she then grows into a wonderful towering wedding cake of nonsense. Sadly, the problem is that such gentle, well-informed satire is wasted on a world for whom mad Leonardo theories are ten-a-penny. I mean, why didn’t he just use his microwave oven? Tcha!