Mona Lisa...Mona Lisa men have framed you...

Well, the internet was all abuzz with the latest "discovery" - hidden numbers & letters inscribed by Da Vinci, not visible to the naked eye, found in her eyes and elsewhere under her cloak.  If they are there, great - but excuse my Italian, Chissenefrega?! So What?!  Well, to answer that question, it is, of course of interest to the latest in a long string of Italian 'historians' making wild discoveries about art -- one of my favorite being, the Director of Florence's Accademia Gallery, suddenly 'discovering' that her statue of David is looking over his shoulder, about to launch the rock in the palm of his hand from his slingshot.

She loved to banter (and made me change it in my audioguide, soon to be released-I didn't) that the perfectly round marble stone in David's palm was 'excess marble' left over by the greatest sculptor who ever lived - yeah, right.  Little did she care that Michelangelo's own friend, contemporary and biographer, Giorgio Vasari, reported what, precisely, the master had depicted.  No, we were kept in titillating suspense over 500 years for that bombshell - he was holding a stone to launch at Goliath! - to be "discovered".

Buy your own 'Paint-by-Numbers' Mona Lisa Kit at amazon.com

As for the findings of markings underneath the Mona Lisa's fine lineaments?  Simple.  Da Vinci used one of those 'paint-by-numbers' sets.  Pretty soon, they'll 'discover' a Mona Lisa on velvet as well.

Article from the Guardian here
Excellent review (with a healthy dose of skepticism) here