User:Dpezzutto/sandbox

Speculation on the Mona Lisa Mona Lisa landscape and the Val di Chiana map People of Arezzo in the Val di Chiana, a valley in Tuscany, have traditionally claimed the Mona Lisa landscape as theirs. It has been demonstrated that that Leonardo arranged the landscape in the Mona Lisa to hold two disjoined halves of one image.1 That image can be reassembled by juxtaposing two copies of the painting side-by-side. An article, published Cartographica, claims that this reconstituted landscape corresponds to Leonardo’s topographic map, the Val di Chiana. Analysis of these findings has determined that the work is an elaborate and sophisticated puzzle. The puzzle is solved by staring at the painting with eyes converged, to appreciate the three-dimensional image as a stereoscopic illusion. Leonardo perpetrated this prank as a pun on La Gioconda as the playful or jocular lady.2

1 Bair, Derek. Discovering Da Vinci’s Daughter. Raleigh, N.C., USA: Lulu Press inc. 2007. 173-177. 2 Pezzutto, Donato. “Leonardo’s Val di Chiana Map in the Mona Lisa,” Cartographica, 2011, 149-159.