Lisa Shea Forums General Discussion Da Vinci Code Do You See Leonardo's Hidden Penis?

[size:14pt][font:Arial]Do You See Leonardo’s Hidden Penis? Greetings all! Thanks Lisa, PDM, and friends at Lisa Shea.com for the kind birthday wishes! Here’s a curious story that’s just breaking on the web in the wake of the recent world news item based on Leonardo’s Virgin and Child with St. Anne and St. John the Baptist, also known as the Burlington House Cartoon and housed at the London National Gallery. This is old news on the Altreligion.about.com forum where it originated, but a web search shows it has recently been picked up on copy sites like digg, and reddit, and has also been part of discussions on various forum blogs like snarfd, clipmarks, and others. Take a good look at the close-up below… Do you think Baby Jesus’ left arm is drawn to look like a penis? [img]http://img.photobucket.com/albums/v238/jerxw/rr/davinci-1.jpg[/img] Leonardo drew three seemingly inexplicable details here, which have been mentioned by some who have commented so far: 1. The greatly disproportionate thickness of Baby Jesus’ left wrist. We all look to Leonardo as the master of human proportions. 2. The heavy veins that seem totally out of place on any baby’s arm, but are a standard part of penis anatomy. 3. The otherwise naked left wrist, which clearly appears to have a surrounding ‘frill’….that’s kind of obvious too. Here’s the original explanatory text and associated comments that further explore Leonardo’s distinctive and ever-puzzling symbolism: http://altreligion.about.com/library/davinci/bl_differentdvc13.htm I’m planning to take a vow of silence myself, in hopes that a true variety of opinions will emerge. We do know that Leonardo was a bit mischievous and certainly brilliant enough to turn anything into anything else. He was also fascinated with the anatomy and function of this organ and left us various sketches of it, including the androgyne Angel in the Flesh, in which someone has clearly tried to erase the “Angel’s” offending private part: [size:11pt] [/size] [size:14pt] [/size] [img]http://www.gayheroes.com/images/Angelo.jpg[/img] I’m neither endorsing the case for nor the case against this curious proposition, but leaving it up to you as my fellow forum members to make up your own minds. What do you see in this striking detail from the Virgin and Child with St. Anne and St. John the Baptist, which I and many others consider one of the loveliest drawings of all time? If you do see something unusual, what might it say about Leonardo, the art world’s incomparable man of mystery? [/font][/size]

I see what looks like an unfinished sketch ~ nothing more exciting than that.

I agree completely.

No disrespect intended, Stargazer, but the second sketch (angel) makes me think of Tiny Tim, that bizarre guy who sang "Tiptoe Through the Tulips" back in the late '60's!

ummm, im not quite sure what to say...

I think Lionardo was trying to tell us all about the Sacred Feminine, the Role of the Sacred Feminine in the Gnostic Pantheon, including sacred geometry, hidden symbolism,and a language encrypted for centuries only now coming to understand.

I think that it is possible to read all sorts of theories into Leonardo's works ~ and it is interesting to condsider and discuss them ~ but I don't think that we shall ever know what was actually going on inside his mind.

i just brought out my 20lb heavy History of Italian Renaissance Text from university,
The finished work sans Baptist is beautiful all arms and legs accounted for...the sketch here is interesting only because it was attacked (shot several times) and restored. What else strikes me is Anne and Mary looking like two heads on one body and her unfinished hand pointing up plunked on there. It is a unfinished sketch/cartoon. I do prefer Mary's face in the cartoon one it is prettier.

No we shall never know what was actually going on inside Lionardo's mind,True, but perhaps in his writings and the symbols he and other artist of his time have left us will give us both direction and great insight to what was going on in the times, both present and thousands of years ago.

all it looks like to me is that the baby may have something on that has a sleve or something. The thickness? a sleeve would hang down a tad when the arm is horizontal, making it seem larger. The veins? wrinkles. The frill? the end of the sleeve....

that's all I see.

[size:14pt][font:Arial] Before locking into any final position about the existence of Leonardo’s hidden penis, you might want to check out the rest of this story. The reason is pretty much plane to see. This topic, if credible, would be serious news both as art history and in the world of psychology. However there’s a bit more to it than I would want to post here. For those (adults only please) who can handle some darker psychoanalytic speculations about our beloved Leonardo da Vinci you might want to try the site I’ve linked to below called Divertimento da Vinci. Be prepared to deal with: 1. A graphic deconstruction of Leonardo’s proposed visual ambiguity. 2. Sigmund Freud’s well-known take on Leonardo’s much contested sexuality as revealed in Leonardo’s own infantile fantasy of the “vulture’s” tail. 3. Possible occult references that Freud may have revealed in Leonardo’s proposed homoerotic iconography. http://divertimentodavinci.blogspot.com/[/font] [/size]