What did Da Vinci look like?
This was one of my favorite talks at Ted. It's only four minutes long.
Siegfried Woldhek knows faces -- he's drawn more than 1,100 of them. Using sophisticated image analysis and his own skills as an artist, he's come up with a fascinating discovery about Leonardo Da Vinci.LinkLeonardo Da Vinci's life and work is well known -- but his own face is not. Woldhek used some thoughtful image-analysis techniques to find what he believes is the true face of Leonardo. Here, he walks viewers through exactly how he did it.
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Brilliant.
The Mona Lisa is also Leonardo's face painted as if he had been a woman. Leo may have had some trans gender feelings.
From what I understand, that was proven to not be true, or at least is widely believed to not be the case. Check out the wikipedia article on it.
P.S. I imagine if it was such common knowledge that the Mona Lisa WAS Leonardo's face, it probably would have been mentioned by the face expert.
BoingBoing! Man I hate you guys for finding all the good stuff first!
I had thought the drawing of the old man was considered to be DaVinci anyway, or had been in the past.
i really thought the structure of the nose on the statue and the young man looked significantly different, the statue seemed to have a thinner slighter nose than that in any of the drawings/paintings. really, i can see a lot of similarity in the paintings/drawings but i dont think they look much like the sculpture, mainly the nose seems way different to me.
#6: The nose continues to grow as we age, so it makes sense that the statue (which is Leonardo at his youngest) has the thinnest nose.
"We know he was a good looking man..."
Very objective criteria...
I call shenanigans.
That was awesome.
What did Da Vinci look like? I don't know, what did Of Nazareth look like, or The Great, or The Sixteenth? "Da Vinci" isn't a surname.
Of course, if someone were to consider a name to be something that one uses to refer to another person...
Nah.
@ #4 dougrogers
LOL. 'They' don't find *all* the good stuff first. Readers find some of it for them. See the Suggest a link button at the top of the page ;)
#2 Andrew
Well I don't know, that's just what I was taught buy my drawing professor. Not in absolute terms but as an intriguing theory. Did you mean this Wiki page?
Speculation about Mona Lisa
Therefore if Siegfried Woldhek is correct then his work removes one objection doesn't it? Siegfried's research here means that yes, the Mona Lisa portrait really is a dead ringer for Leonard's known (according to Siegfried) self portrait. Add to that the other finding of Lillian Schwartz, that the Mona Lisa's forearms are male and you've got a really interesting story.
I think that Siegfried's work lends credence to Dr. Lillian Schwartz's. Even if the Mona Lisa is not a self portrait of Leonardo as a woman it most certainly is a portrait of a woman who's facial and skeletal features are undeniably those of a man. That's why she's smiling, she's keeping quite a secret.
It's sometimes amazing to me just how blind straight folk can be sometimes. Every drag queen, every tranny and every woman knows that our notions of feminine beauty are based on the male form. But then that is how human sexuality works. Some libidinal currents must be repressed or they lose their power and become, ahem, deflating.
But Cholling, if the post had followed traditional scholastic practice and been titled "What did Leonardo look like?", we'd have gotten a dozen smart-ass comments about how he looks like a big turtle with a blue mask.
I saw DaVinci's face on a piece of toast today!
/Just before I ate it. Was that a mistake?
Of all the TED talks, I hope I don't get disemboweled for saying that this has to be the least interesting. I am tempted to say "because who cares" for a reason but that would be wrong because clearly the many comentors care. But still, this seems like the kind of vanity that can not possibly make any difference or actually matter in any way.
Evidence that the Mona Lisa was a woman who lived next door to Leonardo at one point was found recently:
http://dsc.discovery.com/news/2008/01/16/mona-lisa-identity.html
#14 Avram: You're probably right. That or a random DiCaprio reference.
#16 JS7A: Funny, you don't look like a TED talk. That's what Boingboing needs, some actual disemboweling!
Mona Lisa's face being DaVinci was actually just a cartoon I drew in the 80s or 90s. I'm really astonished at the currency it's gotten, since I never published it anywhere. If only I could harness this mutant ability of mine.
every woman knows that our notions of feminine beauty are based on the male form
Hm, I must have been absent the day they taught this in Womanhood 101.
I like TED.
This video was a lot of fun to watch. Thank you BoingBoing for keeping me up past my bedtime.
Noen: That's one paragraph in an entire article about speculation regarding the Mona Lisa. It's no more proven as fact than any of the other speculation there. My point is that that speculation is questionable. I'm not saying it's definitely wrong.
However, I think trying to impose your own beliefs or feelings about transgender issues or sexuality, or to surmise that someone who is long dead must have believed something that you can't prove, is sort of ridiculous. I'm not saying it's impossible, but just because you want something to be true doesn't mean it is. And saying that we're all just "blind straight people" is highly suspect as well. I also am a big supporter of LGBT rights and awareness, and was one of the few guys in Women and Gender Studies classes in college. I'm not claiming to be an expert on the issues, but this seems to me to be another representation of something I often saw in the classroom: trying to make a LGBT issue out of every little thing, whether it realistically applies or not.
As some commenters have noted, there are a lot of flaws in this theory.
Namely, I don't find those 3 men to be attractive. Who decided that they were the only 3 attractive men that Leonardo drew? Why can't I decide which ones are attractive?
"Why can't I decide which ones are attractive?"
Because it isn't that hard to tell the difference. Leonardo drew some pretty ugly peasants. Are you even familiar with his work? I am and it isn't hard to separate out the butt ugly from the handsome.
"trying to make a LGBT issue out of every little thing, whether it realistically applies or not."
Sure, I understand, but there really are explanations for human behavior and sexuality that enable us to shed light on the past. Michaelangelo was gay, gay, gay. Most of the Renaissance Masters were, do you want a list? It's pretty long. All down through history most artists have been gay or as we would say today, GLBT. That's why they were great artists.
I don't get why this should be surprising or controversial. We've known for some time now how human sexuality works. It sure as hell isn't "Ugh, Me Tarzan, you Jane." There is machinery working underneath all that.
I am also not saying that it's absolute, I'm just saying there is a strong case for Leonardo being trans or at least having some transgender feelings and Siegfried's research here only strengthens it. Michaelangelo hated him intensely for his effeminacy and wrote letters to that effect.
Even Sister Wendy talks about Leonardo being gay.
"Are you even familiar with his work?"
Certainly. I've seen his sketches in preparation for the Last Supper. Several relatively attractive, 3/4 angle men. I suppose it's logical to assume that each of those are self portraits, too.
““We know he was a good looking man...” Very objective criteria...I call shenanigans.”
Contemporary accounts testify to the attractiveness of Leonardo, particularly Paolo Giovio. Vasari, although writing later, also attested to his reputation as a physically beautiful man.
“I'm just saying there is a strong case for Leonardo being trans or at least having some transgender feelings and Siegfried's research here only strengthens it.”
Much has been made of his supposed homosexuality, and such evidence as is available suggests homosexual rather than heterosexual inclinations, but it is doubtful whether the notebooks and other documents provide sufficient material for a full-scale psychoanalysis in the Freudian manner.
As for Siegfried Woldhek’s claim, I have a few reservations:
The traditional attribution of the portrait image of Leonardo in old age originated at a time when people still recalled his appearance, but the so-called self-portrait drawing cannot be taken unquestionably as representing the painter himself. It may have originated considerably earlier than its customary date of circa. 1512 and could not therefore be a portrait of the artist himself as an aged man. None of the supposed portraits of the young Leonardo in his own works or those of others (such as Verrocchio’s David) possesses a secure foundation in fact.
Also, Woldhek himself states the 1485 portrait’s title; The Musician. A simple image search for the painting will reveal that the figure holds a sample of sheet music and a quill pen. Even though Leonardo is known to have written music, the presence of such objects in a self-portrait of Leonardo do not seem likely. Luca Beltrami suggested at the turn of the century that this musician is a certain Francesco Gaffurio who was master of the music at the court of Lodovico Sforza in Milan. There is nothing inherently improbable in this identification, and the conjecture is supported by the apparent age of the portrait and the known dates of Gaffurio's life. There also exists another portrait by Ambrogio de Predis that resembles the musician and is attributed as a representation of Gaffurio.
My biggest problem with this video is that Woldhek is trying to pass off his work as art history when it is not. Until he learns to decipher and analyze the fifteenth- and sixteenth-century documents that are related to these artworks, I suggest he stick to caricatures.
On another note, I had never heard of TED talks before and now I love them! Thanks BoingBoing!
Thanks for sharing your thoughts.
It is true that none of the portraits possesses a secure foundation in fact. The experts disagree about basic facts such as when they were made, who is on it and even who made them. The Musician and the red crayon drawing of the old man are good illustrations of this situation.
Re the Musician.
Apparently the catalogue of the Biblioteca Ambrosiana listed this painting In the nineteenth century as ‘Portrait of Ludovico il Moro’ and it wasn’t until a 1905 cleaning which revealed the sheet music along with the letters 'CANT...ANG...'. that the search for a musician started. Belrami proposed Gaffurio in 1906 and several others have been suggested since then (Francesco da Milano, Atlante Miglioriti, Josquin de Prez, the singer Angelo Testagrossa). Zöllner (2003) concludes that the identity of the Musician is ‘absolutely undecided’. Nicholl (2004) adds that known portraits of Gaffurio (a painting in Lodi and the woodcut on his De Harmonia bear no particular resemblance to the man in the Leonardo portrait.
Re the Turin red crayon portrait of an old man.
Kwakkelstein (1994, correspondence) is one of the experts who does not believe that it is a self-portrait. He maintains it is a generalized portrait of an old man. He also writes that the drawing was not made around 1513 as most experts think, but around 1490 – 95 based on stylistic comparisons with other red crayon drawings of Leonardo. Others have written that the person depicted is too old to be Leonardo, that it is his father, etc, etc.
In other words: there is no trace of consensus among the experts and the opinions are stuck in conflicting details. A review of the existing literature or fifteenth and sixteenth-century documents may be interesting but it will not lead to agreement. Almost every point of view can be refuted by experts who think otherwise. I am trained as a methodologist (philosophy of science, theoretical ecology) and know that in such situations it is usually an outsider that finds new answers to old questions. Maybe I am such an outsider. I’m not trying to pose as a art historian. I’m simply saying making an argument from a fresh perspective.
As far as I can tell, Leonardo’s work has not been scanned before for potential self-portraits from an artist’s rather than from an art historian’s perspective; it would seem that the following argument has not yet been made:
Leonardo probably made self-portraits, like his contemparies. So, looking for potential self-portraits in his total body of work, only 3 match the criteria. They share important facial features (wow), are made in the right order (wow again) and match the age of Leonardo (according g to the most commonly used dates, triple wow). And Verrocchio’s David, a probable youth portrait of Leonardo, shows the same features. (!!)
As a methodologist I find an argument that takes into account 3 pictures, that surfaced independently of another plus another outside portrait inherently more convincing that discussions about separate portraits.
I’d be interested to hear your comments.
Dear Siegfried,
Thanks for posting. It wasn’t my intention to question your methodology, but rather to point out that the Musician poses a very big problem for your argument. Attributions aside, we can’t ignore the fact that the portrait, even if it suggests self-likeness, seems a very odd format for LDV to use as self portrait. I do think you have something, but now you need to plug the holes that art historians, unfortunately, are trained to pick out.
Start with the sheet music because it’s the biggest hole. God knows what happened during the 1905 restoration, but can you compare the music to anything else by the hand of LDV? Looks like a lot of it got scrubbed, but even with the little that remains, can it be compared to examples of written music in the LDV notebooks? Can music historians identify the tune? Or at least place it stylistically into the time period you want it to fit into? (I almost wish it were written in reverse!) Are there documents related to Gaffurio that can be held up to the music in the portrait? If the written music is analyzed and compared to a (pray God) existing record of Sforza court music and the results show that it is not typical or Gaffurio’s œuvre, perhaps you can debunk the Beltrami attribution once and for all. Is the music jibberish? Is it overpainting? It’s too significant a component of the portrait to be ignored.
You’ve got likeness and chronology on your side, but move away from the faces now and try to further support you claim with peripheral evidence. I find the idea of the Vitruvian Man being a self portrait absolutely captivating, and a fitting context for such a prolific figure. Keep going.
bravo! Bravo!
You are right: the sheet music is too significant a component of the portrait to be ignored. From what I’ve read, Beltrami’s case and the other attributions are rather flimsy. They point to musicians that Leonardo probably has known. Full stop. I am not aware of other supporting evidence for any of the identifications, but I’m the first to admit that I haven’t tried to find all the sources. However, I do know that for knowledgeable authors such as Zöllner (2003) and Nicholl (2004) the identity of the Musician remains an open question. And as many others have pointed out, Leonardo was a keen musician himself, so it is not completely out the question that he chose to depict himself with a music sheet.
As for the music and the text on the sheet, I understand that there has been much speculation about it, without leading to any form of consensus. Also there is of course the question how much of the painting was actually done by Leonardo. All of it? Only the face? Plus the hands?
These are all questions that I’d like to leave to the art historians. I’ll stick to my own field, faces. The similarity between the boy (14-17 yrs) and the Musician (ca 33 yrs) is striking and based on some uncommon features such as the way nose is connected to the forehead and the shape of the mouth. What I will try to do is add some more insights from face experts , e.g plastic surgeons and CSI technicians.