Artist spots hidden images of animals in Mona Lisa

An artist claims to have finally cracked the 500-year-old mystery of the Mona Lisa - by spotting hidden images that nobody has seen before. Ron Piccirillo found the heads of a lion, an ape and a buffalo hovering in the air after turning the painting on its side. He also discovered a crocodile or snake coming out of the left hand side of her body by following the instructions as laid out in the journals of Leonardo da Vinci, who painted the picture. Mr Piccirillo claims that his discovery cracks open the meaning of the work - that the Mona Lisa is actually a representation of envy.

His theory will be extremely controversial amongst art critics who have come up with dozens of theories about the painting and its enigmatic smile since it was completed around 1519. Mr Piccirillo, 37, who is an oil painter and graphic designer, said made his discovery after "employing an old artist's trick" of turning the Mona Lisa on its side to get a fresh perspective on the painting. It was at that point that he noticed the lion's head hovering in the air above the Mona Lisa's head.



He said: "Then I noticed the buffalo and I thought: 'Oh my god'. Then I realised I was really onto something. I just could not believe what I was looking at. I realised: 'This is what I've been looking for'. I spent the next two months pouring over da Vinci's journals and came across the passage on envy which for me sums up what this is about. The Mona Lisa is a depiction of envy. It's amazing because everyone thought that da Vinci never wrote about the Mona Lisa, but now it appears that he did."

The passage in question talks about how the artist trying to paint envy must "give her a leopard's skin, because this creature kills the lion out of envy and by deceit" - a reference to the hidden lion's head. Once Mr Piccirillo cracked that everything else fell into place. In further claims which are likely to set the art world alight, Mr Piccirillo says he has found similar hidden images, (video), in other Renaissance painters like Titian and Rafael.

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