Posted on 01/23/2010 8:36:00 PM PST by bruinbirdman
Scientists seeking permission to exhume the remains of Leonardo da Vinci plan to reconstruct his face to discover whether his masterpiece, the Mona Lisa, is a disguised self-portrait.
A team from Italy’s National Committee for Cultural Heritage, a leading association of scientists and art historians, has asked to open the tomb in which the Renaissance painter and polymath is believed to lie at Amboise castle, in the Loire valley, where he died in 1519, aged 67.
Giorgio Gruppioni, an anthropologist, said the project could throw new light on Leonardo’s most famous work. “If we manage to find his skull, we could rebuild Leonardo’s face and compare it with the Mona Lisa,” he said.
The identity of the Mona Lisa has been debated for centuries, with speculation ranging from Leonardo’s mother to Lisa Gherardini, the wife of a Florentine merchant.
Some scholars have suggested that Leonardo’s presumed homosexuality and love of riddles led him to paint himself as a woman.
Recreating Leonardo’s face could test the theory of Lillian Schwartz, an American expert who drew on computer studies to highlight apparent similarities between the features of the Mona Lisa and those of a self-portrait by the artist.
Talks about the exhumation with French cultural officials and the owners of the chateau have resulted in an agreement in principle, according to the Italian team, and the project could receive formal permission this summer.
The church in which Leonardo was buried was destroyed after the French revolution of 1789. The remains were reburied in the castle’s smaller chapel of Saint-Hubert in 1874, beneath an inscription that describes them as “presumed” to be the master’s.
Silvano Vincenti, head of the Italian team, said its first step would be to verify that the remains are Leonardo’s. They will use carbon dating and
(Excerpt) Read more at timesonline.co.uk ...
Rest in peace apparently doesn’t mean what it used to.
That is sick. It won’t prove their contention, and we don’t need to know that bad anyway.
“Cursed be he who moves my bones” -Lassie
LOL! Lassie was a boy!
Why should his grave be desecrated just to satisfy the desire to find an answer to such a trivial question?
It’s cremation for me. When I’m gone, leave me alone.
Jeez! Let the old homo rest in peace.
“cremation”
Same here. I doubt any ghouls will have any interest in my dusty remains, but there’s always the possibility of getting my ashes hauled one last time.
If I remember correctly, thirty seven years ago there was a TV series on the life of Leonardo by an Italian company.
They said Leonardo died, was buried in a glass enclosed coffin and put up with other glass coffins, where all could view his bones. Then during the Heugenot riots, the coffin and chapel were destroyed, the bones being thrown into a burial pit with hundreds of other bones.
Then someone dug up the bones and sorted out what they GUESSED might be Leonardo’s bones and put them in a different tomb.
The reason given is not good enough to justify an exhumation, but if they could locate some DNA, that might be worthwhile.
I wonder what stupid government gave them money for this.
Jeez! Do you have to help promote that gay activist revisionist history? There is no historical evidence that da Vinci was queer.
I think you’re right. That story sounds very familiar to me too.
Get real! I was first told of Da Vinci’s homosexuality by Brother Ambrose in my Catholic religious instruction class nearly 50 years ago.
No comment.
This is truly appalling! They can’t even be certain that the bones they would be digging up and attributing to him are actually his!! As for their “theory”, I think they have been reading too many Dan Brown-esque fiction novels. Wayyyy too many!!
You dummy.
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