The Lady Speaks: Uncovering the Secrets of the Mona Lisa

By W.N. Varvel

This thoroughly original work of art history presents a provocative theory about Leonardo da Vinci, the Mona Lisa, and Theological Gender Equality.
 
The famous Mona Lisa smile has mystified viewers and intrigued historians for centuries. Completed in 1515, Leonardo da Vinci’s masterwork has hidden the lady’s secret well. Now, after years of research and analysis, W. N. Varvel has decoded the hidden meanings of Mona Lisa. In The Lady Speaks, Varnel reveals the vital message her smile conveys: a secret too dangerous for the artist to acknowledge during his life but one which he hoped future generations would understand and embrace.
 
The coming of the “New Jerusalem” depends on the world’s recognizing what lies behind the Mona Lisa smile. Detailing how the artist wove a calculated fabric of clues, symbols, and images, Varvel establishes not only da Vinci’s, but also Michelangelo’s, belief in Theological Gender Equality. In a thrilling achievement of art history detective work, Varvel tracks clues, links previously unnoticed connections, recreates scenarios, identifies villains and heroes, and presents a persuasive case for what the lady must be thinking.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Open Road Integrated Media
• Release date: Feb 13, 2014
• ISBN: 9781612541532

Book preview

INTRODUCTION

Asmall group of gifted students at Texas A&M University and their search for meaning in the weeks following the events of the Texas A&M Bonfire Tragedy on November 18, 1999, led to the motivation for this project. This tragedy claimed the lives of twelve wonderful students. To my personal horror, seven of the twelve fallen students were under my tutelage at the time of the accident.

An attempt to find the injured was doggedly undertaken during the first response to this tragedy. Every effort was made to discover and transfer the maimed and seriously wounded to medevac, while the deceased were solemnly remitted to an area of distinct honor, prepared by the students. I witnessed the honorable actions of these fine young men and women as I participated in the rescue effort as a first responder to the tragedy. The camaraderie and strength of spirit manifested in the effort of lifting oak logs—whose weight was measured in tons and not pounds—proved that the angels in heaven were with us during those very early morning hours of November 18, 1999.

To this small group of students who were with me during those hours, I give thanks.

Our mutual attempt to find reason in chaos after this tragic event allowed the spiritual healing process to begin through our search for reason within the Testaments and understanding through art. We discussed the topic of the afterlife within the context of the Testaments, and our exploration led us to consider artistic sources as well, including Leonardo da Vinci’s St. John the Baptist and Michelangelo’s Pietà of St. Peter’s. After much spiritual healing, we became convinced that something sacred or hidden was buried within the art of these two great masters. We began to see that a collaboration in thought as well as a competition in talent had taken place between Leonardo da Vinci and Michelangelo.

When I left Texas A&M University in 2000, I decided to pursue this intriguing corollary through research at Michigan State University in East Lansing and the University of Michigan in Ann Arbor on a full-time basis. This decision allowed time for further investigation and afforded me much-needed time away to find some closure and peace for my own soul.

I thank the librarians at Michigan State University, the University of Michigan, and Dalhousie University in Nova Scotia, Canada, for their tireless efforts with the procurement of rare and often difficult-to-acquire texts through the University Library Book Depository Services Program throughout 2001–2004. Through their combined service and dedication, the foundation of this twelve-year investigation was accomplished, leading to the publication of this text.

I extend heartfelt thanks to Dr. James Hopfensperger, chair of the Department of Art and Art History at Michigan State University, and his two postdoctoral associate professors—Dr. Estelle Lingo, PhD, Brown University, and Dr. Stuart Lingo, PhD, Harvard University—for their insights and comments in the spring of 2003 pertaining to a collaborative effort in theme between Leonardo da Vinci and Michelangelo.

As with all long and difficult projects, there is always an individual whose mantra is carried by the researcher throughout the duration of the project. This special distinction and honor goes to Dr. James Hopfensperger, whose own intuition suspected that something grand existed within the art due to this apparent collaboration. His question toward the end of the spring semester 2003 was simply, What is the theme of this collaboration and what does it mean? He gave me the following words of wisdom: Bill, hunt this thing down to its bitter end, wherever it goes and wherever it leads. Never give up and publish the results.

I took the good doctor’s advice.

Through the past studies of Dr. Cecil Gould, PhD, at the University of London, Dr. Johannes Wilde, PhD, at the University of London Courtauld Institute, and Dr. Kenneth Clark, PhD, at Trinity College, Oxford, the necessary extensions were found in the work of Leonardo da Vinci and Michelangelo to hypothesize a common theme.

Not until the spring of 2004 did a potential answer come into sight. Dr. Rona Goffen, PhD, of Columbia University was researching the topic of women and women’s issues of the Renaissance as expressed in the artistic masterpieces of Leonardo da Vinci, Raphael, and Michelangelo as an extension of her latest book, Renaissance Rival, published in 2002. An attempt to coordinate the research effort on this question with Dr. Goffen was initiated in October 2004 but was met with great disappointment and heartache upon receiving the news that Dr. Goffen had passed away on September 8, 2004.

By adding the research accumulated by Dr. Goffen to previous data, I concluded that theological gender equality was the answer to the question of common theme. The artistic records and repertoires of Leonardo da Vinci and Michelangelo, when compared and contrasted, revealed when and where this collaboration in theme occurred—during the years 1498 to 1519 when their professional careers intersected.

After six years of study and work on Leonardo da Vinci’s great masterpiece, the Mona Lisa, I also correlated directly the theme of theological gender equality to the words of chapter 14 of the book of Zechariah in the Old Testament. This unique connection was found in August 2010, and since then, when looking upon the Mona Lisa with this new understanding, I have been and forever will be greatly humbled and awed at the genius in both art and theology that Leonardo da Vinci displays within the portrait.

PART I

Artists and Visionaries

CHAPTER

1

Marching Toward the New Jerusalem

Tell me. Will any good come of it?" With this single question and a final stroke of the brush, Leonardo da Vinci completed the greatest masterpiece in painted portraiture, the Mona Lisa, in 1515. It had been a continual labor of love that started in the year 1500 and took fifteen years to produce.

Leonardo had first promised the Marquesa of Mantua, Isabella d’Este, in January 1500 that he would finish her portrait, which she had requested. Leonardo prepared two sketches of Isabella in profile and another preliminary pen and ink drawing for her portrait during his monthlong stay in Mantua before he continued on his journey to seek a new patron in the city of Venice (Figures 3, 4, and 5).

While in Venice, Leonardo showed this preliminary pen and ink drawing of the portrait of Isabella d’Este to his friend Lorenzo da Pavia, who wrote to Marchesa Isabella on March 13, 1500: Leonardo da Vinci is in Venice, and he has shown me a portrait of Your Ladyship that is very lifelike. It is very well done and could not possibly be better.

Leonardo specifically promised Isabella d’Este that he would paint her portrait in colors. He would find himself able to keep his promise fifteen years later, only by way of taking a papal commission given to him by Pope Leo X in March 1515.

Pope Leo X commissioned Leonardo to paint a small welcoming gift for Isabella d’Este, upon her diplomatic visit to Rome in October 1515, which allowed Leonardo approximately seven months to complete the commission. Little did anyone know—certainly not Pope Leo X—that Leonardo would take this commission and produce an unparalleled masterpiece of such genius that it would take society nearly 500 years to uncover its hidden message. This message was mutually held by Leonardo and Isabella d’Este and placed within her portrait, waiting for civilization to advance far enough to finally see the unseen.

Leonardo’s bravado in using a papal commission for his own personal theological dissertation did not escape the ire of Pope Leo X. When he heard that Leonardo was not able to complete the commission in time for the arrival of Marquesa Isabella d’Este in Rome, the pope replied tersely, This man will never accomplish anything! He thinks of the end before the beginning.

No more artistic papal commissions were issued to Leonardo after this disastrous encounter with Pope Leo X, although additional technical and engineering commissions were granted. Pope Leo X apparently wanted to put the whole episode behind him; His Holiness never asked to see the finished commission. Isabella d’Este would never lay eyes upon the Mona Lisa either, for reasons of prudence and safety to both Isabella and Leonardo.

For the era of the Italian High Renaissance, the hidden message within the Mona Lisa was heretical. The argument within the Mona Lisa was a perfect presentation of Leonardo’s blasphemous message—so much so that it also was perfect heresy. If Pope Leo X had seen the Mona Lisa, Leonardo would have had some serious explaining to do.

Putting prudence before valor, Leonardo kept the Mona Lisa a secret for four years, at which time he orchestrated its purchase into the royal collection of King Francis I of France. Leonardo did not tell the twenty-five-year-old King Francis of the existence of the hidden message in the Mona Lisa. Leonardo had every reason to fear that King Francis might openly declare war upon Rome if a full understanding of this message were given to him. Leonardo took the secret of this message to his grave in 1519.

As Leonardo sat before the completed portrait of Isabella d’Este and viewed the painting under the gentle candlelight of his workshop, located within the basement of the Belvedere of the Vatican, he was surrounded by a myriad of scientific equipment and experimental apparatuses. All of this equipment was designed to investigate natural phenomena in optics, metallurgy, mechanics, botany, and hydrology.

Leonardo’s multitalented scientific exploits correctly heralded him as the last universal man of the Italian High Renaissance, but in addition to his firm belief that science and innovation would propel mankind to ever greater heights of economy and industry, there was still one lingering question that filled his great mind with concern for the future: Although civilization would continue to advance scientifically and industrially, would civilization advance socially and morally as well, sufficiently enough to uncover the hidden theological message that he had placed into the Mona Lisa?

In Leonardo’s own words, Will any good come of it?

Leonardo had purposefully hidden his special theological vision for the future in the Mona Lisa for yet unborn generations to uncover and understand. This message was both heretical and blasphemous to the Roman Catholic Church and to all Christendom at the time of its painting during the Italian High Renaissance. This very real threat, the crime of heresy, did not deter him from painting the truth into the Mona Lisa in 1515, just as it had not deterred him from expressing this thought some seventeen years prior within The Last Supper, another of his artistic achievements.

Leonardo was not the only artist who uncovered and presented this hidden message within his art. The great Florentine artist Michelangelo placed the same message that Leonardo painted into both The Last Supper and the Mona Lisa into his first panel painting, The Manchester Madonna. In August 1498—the same time Leonardo was completing The Last Supper upon the refectory wall in the Santa Maria delle Grazie convent in Milan—Michelangelo was working under the patronage of Jacopo Galli in Rome.

Michelangelo was extremely passionate about his theological vision of the future. He truly believed that his destiny was to share this vision with the general public of his generation. He also realized that his generation might not be ready to receive, understand, or accept this message, so he remedied the situation by placing this same message throughout several pieces of his art in the hope that future generations might discover, understand, and accept it. Michelangelo stated these concerns when he said, My artistic creations are my progeny; they will speak the truth to the generations of the future. He placed this vision in both the first and second panel paintings of his professional career, The Manchester Madonna in 1498 and The Entombment in 1500.

Michelangelo was driven to teach his concept with such ferocity that he even went beyond the medium of paint, turning to sculpted stone to convey his theological vision of the future to the masses. His finest representations in sculpture containing this message appear in the Pietà of St. Peter’s and the deceptively unfinished-seeming St. Matthew.

Unfortunately for Michelangelo, general society during his lifetime was unable to see the message he desired to teach them. In his most courageous and daring effort as an artist, he placed these same hidden thoughts within the frescoes that grace the ceiling of the Sistine Chapel, some sixty-five feet in the air, to protect these ideas and theological thoughts for future generations to understand and to teach these self-evident truths to society at large and to all of Christendom.

Leonardo da Vinci and Michelangelo were aware that they were courting the threat of torture at the hands of the Inquisition. If their precious hidden messages were ever communicated to the clergy, both artists could have expected to serve an extended sentence of spiritual purification at the hands of the tribunal of the Holy Office of the Inquisition. Their artwork presenting these hidden messages would have been destroyed immediately, precluding our current generation of ever finding the truth.

Michelangelo and Leonardo dared not write, speak, or teach this hidden concept to the masses in any type of public forum. If they had, both would be writing their individual death warrants due to the views of Pope Innocent VIII, who, on December 5, 1484, issued the onerous papal bull Summis Desiderantes Affectibus, which clearly gave full papal authority and approval for the Holy Office of the Inquisition to proceed in correcting, imprisoning, punishing, and chastising all women and those who aided or abetted them in their cause, engaging in prophetic utterances of spirituality, in the crimes of heresy against the Roman Catholic Church.

The established groups of Christian churches throughout Europe were behaving in such a barbaric and medieval manner in regard to the theological rights of women that this hidden message would certainly not be recognized by the ecclesiastical orders of Christendom during the Renaissance. Both artists realized that something cannot be found if viewers are completely unaware that it exists.

Each artist concluded that this truth would be recognized within Christianity only by the direct action of the general public due to the blindness of the priests. Once the general public was both taught the existence of this hidden truth and shown that this message was indeed true, only then could reforms within the ecclesiastical structure of Christianity bring about an equitable solution.

Leonardo was particularly aware of the innate potential of future generations to advance within the areas of science and technology; however, he also realized that the complete advancement of a civilization was predicated upon the advancement of social, moral, and theological reforms as well. These reforms would be slow but steady in their coming and necessary if civilization were to advance toward the heralded Christian concept of the New Jerusalem. Leonardo’s recognition of the interdependence between his hidden message and the establishment of the New Jerusalem profoundly motivated him to place both messages in the Mona Lisa.

Michelangelo believed these same ideas concerning the future of humanity. Michelangelo expressed them directly within his great seventeen-foot sculpture David. Leonardo had seen the David eleven years earlier and was impressed enough to sketch Michelangelo’s grand sculpture in pencil, prior to its public debut in Florence in 1504.

Leonardo must have casually mused at how Michelangelo had portrayed the young King David, the biblical founder of the Old Jerusalem and the symbol for mankind’s achievement in establishing the New Jerusalem, with his sling thrown over his shoulder and his courageous, forward-looking gaze expressing