A headline like "The Bizarre, Obscene, and Disturbing Hidden Images in Leonardo da Vinci’s Sacred Art," pretty much gets hit by us so enthusiastically that we double-crack our mouse buttons. Here's what we found:
[I]f an Italian group calling itself the Mirror of the Sacred Scriptures and Paintings World Foundation is correct, da Vinci and his contemporaries may have been doing a lot more with mirrors than anyone has previously imagined.
Perhaps you’ve wondered about the conventions of classical art — the outstretched hands and elegant gestures; characters which stare into space, as if looking for the Divine.
They’re cues, according to the Mirror of Sacred Scriptures website: guidelines for the placement of mirrors which reveal hidden faces, symbols, and subjects. The meaning of some are obscure. Others are disturbing, mystical — and occasionally obscene.
Well, at first we kinda thought the story was bullshit. Total, unremarkable bullshit. Something you could pretty much do with any picture you wanted. The Renaissance version of punching numbers into a calculator, turning it upside down, and getting the word "BOOBLESS." An meme so worthless and deeply reliant on stupidity that, if it were a TV show, it would be one of those 5-minute "celebrity profiles" that turn up on the TV Guide channel, and it would be about someone that you don't even remember who they are and don't really care but keep watching anyway and then you feel dirty and stupid when it's over.
WRONG! First off, this story did originally appear in La Repubblica, which we're told is an actual newspaper. Plus, we've recently uncovered yet another of these mysterious pictures ourselves, and now we are believers! Click through, if you dare, and have a look for yourself!
See how this 1510 work entitled "Study for The Children of Eve and Alfred E. Newman":
... becomes this:
Take that, stupid liminal mind!
[Mad Magazine Art via intermaweb.net]