The Binary Circumstance

Tyler Cowen addresses the age-old question of who was the Mona Lisa.

I remember hearing a theory a long time ago that the Mona Lisa is really a portrait of Leonardo da Vinci in drag.

The theory was that da Vinci painted himself in the mirror. Some scholar had used a computer to analize Mona Lisa’s face and superimpose it on a mirror image of Leonardo’s with success.

The only pictures I can find of Leonardo da Vinci show him much older, however.

But I think the face of Mona Lisa does have a masculine quality to it, especially if you take off all the eye shadow. People say that Mona Lisa’s smile is “enigmatic” and that might be partially because it’s androgenous. The nose is definitely big and not very feminine.

Has anybody else out there heard that theory before who knows more about it?

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