Madonna and Child - Metropolitan Museum, New York, ca. 1470

The Nibbio

There is a story about Leonardo much publicized by Freud, where Leonardo himself tells he dreams from time to time that when he was still a child in the cradle a Kite, a small bird of prey, "Nibbio" in Italian, did hit repeatedly his mouth with his tail.
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The Child's hand

In this Madonna we saw the impressive appearance of the Nibbio, but remarkable things appear at a deeper level of observation. The child raises the right hand in a standard expression of blessing. However a closer inspection shows that the middle finger and the index are superposed as indicated by the respective nails.
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The Adoration of the Magi, 1482 - Florence

The painting has been studied from a clinical dermatological point of view. There is evidence of a series of very suggestive minute figures and signs of pathological conditions, including common cutaneous lesions.
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The identity of Mona Lisa

Mona Lisa, the most beautiful woman in the world, has two ugly lipomas at the root of her nose, on her left side. They are located on a high-value point of the golden grid. Actually they are a sort of fingerprint, because they appear also on Leonardo's self-portrait in Turin.
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Madonna and Child - National Gallery, London

I found this Madonna and child on the Internet as a thumbnail. As it did appear a very elegant pictorial construction I adopted it as a background in one of my computers. So I kept scanning it with my eyes when the computer was hovering on its jobs. I discovered an inconsistent detail in the picture, a little square stick emerging from the breast of the Madonna.
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The Adoration of the Magi - Untere Belvedere, Vienna

Some years ago, strolling in the Oesterreichische Galerie in the Untere Belvedere in Vienna I was struck by a painting representing a sort of adoration of the Magi. I'm saying a sort of because the images were strange and mysterious. In fact a search of the literature did show that practically no art critic had dared to produce the usual disquisitions.
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Cenacolo - Santa Maria delle Grazie, Milan

An infinite number of papers and books have been dedicated to this very famous painting but some mystery did always remain and this may be one of the element of attraction, by the way common to other works by Leonardo. One day the librarian of my institute who keeps an eye on my trafficking with Leonardo did ask me: "The guys there gesticulate in an unordered way. As you are a Tuscan and have a feeling for gestures, what are they trying to say?"
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