The Italian artist and inventor of the Renaissance, Leonardo da Vinci, left behind so many secrets and mysteries that it will take more than one century to study them. This time a surprise for the researchers of the famous painter's work was presented by his painting "John the Baptist".
Another John
I must say that the canvas itself is unusual both in the manner of execution and in the plot. Firstly, most of the portraits created by the artist, with rare exceptions, have a landscape as a background (La Gioconda, Madonna with a Carnation). The background of the painting "John the Baptist" is deep black.
Moreover, not a single detailed analysis of the painting with the help of the most modern instruments helped the researchers find traces of brush strokes - even at the micro level, the surface of the painting is absolutely smooth.
Now for the plot. Most of the artists depicting John the Baptist saw him (especially in icon painting) as a stern, haggard man, in whose eyes all the pain of the world and suffering for the human race seemed to be concentrated. And only for da Vinci, John is a well-fed young man with an ambiguous grin, and in his eyes one can read not suffering, but an outright vice.
And only a small cross in his left hand speaks of the fact that it is John the Baptist who is before us, and not a young boozer and a libertine. By the way, the artist's model was his favorite student Salai, who, according to one version, served as a model for "Mona Lisa".
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If you take a mirror
But the latest, more thorough studies of the painting showed that, in addition to John the Baptist, the artist created on the canvas a portrait of another strange, incomprehensible and, most likely, unknown creature to his contemporaries. But on the other hand, this creature is well known thanks to the creativity of science fiction writers to the inhabitants of the XXI century.
Judge for yourself: huge eyes, a skull tapering to the chin, a powerful forehead, a narrow mouth and no nose. Right! Before us is a canonical, if I may say so, portrait of an alien. More precisely, half of the portrait. But the whole image of a guest from space can be obtained by bringing a mirror to the picture.
A similar technique was often used by artists who hide encrypted symbols in their paintings.
True, to detect an alien, one mirror is not enough. His portrait is so carefully disguised that it can only be seen using computer image processing by uniformly lightening the background.
If you “ finish a little ” image of a face, then we will face an almost typical “ gray ”, only with horns on the head.
Why did the famous painter need to hide an extraterrestrial life form in his painting? Firstly, Leonardo da Vinci was a great lover of such secret symbols, he repeatedly used them in his works. And since not all of these symbols were encouraged by the church, they had to be carefully hidden.
But why the portrait of an alien is so similar to the image replicated by modern cinema, why the artist disguised it in his canvas and, most importantly, where in the 16th century the painter could come up with the idea of the existence of an extraterrestrial life - these questions have not yet been answered.
Magazine "Secrets of the XX century" №14. Igor NIKITIN