EPPH - Every Painter Paints Himself

Vinceti’s Bogus Claims

In my last entry here I criticized an Italian art historian’s recent conclusion that Salai, Leonardo da Vinci’s’s young assistant, was the model for several of Leonardo’s paintings, including two of St. John the Baptist. Yesterday I read that the same man, Silvano Vinceti, is planning to dig up the bones of the Mona Lisa and reconstruct her face. He hopes to prove, among other things, that she is not modeled on Leonardo’s own face. Intrigued by such stupidity, widely reported in the media, I have now discovered (rather late) that Mr Silveti is not an art historian nor even a regular historian. I’m afraid he’s not even a scholar. He’s a TV host.

Silveti has been breaking into tombs for nearly a decade. The self-styled President of the Committee for Italian Cultural Heritage dug up the remains of Dante Alighieri to reconstruct his face. He plundered the bones of Pico della Mirandola to measure his skull. He exhumed what was left of Petrarch only to discover that the poet’s head had been swiped and replaced with a young girl’s. Now he wants to disturb dear, old Leonardo to debunk claims that the Mona Lisa is a reconstruction of his face. I don’t know why he would bother. The claim is not that Leonardo himself was the model for the Mona Lisa but that the Mona Lisa has exactly the same proportions as Leonardo’s Self-Portrait, a fact that can proved or disproved simply by comparing them.

Anyone interested in Silveti’s nonsense may want to read the article on him in the Wall Street Journal. Next time you hear from Silvano Vinceti, don't believe it. Take a pass.