I have a new historical hero

[Lisa Gerrie]

From a Renaissance expert on the Diane Rehm show on NPR today...

Leonardo Da Vinci left behind a detailed inventory of his wardrobe.

Hmm?

He favored pink clothes.

Hmm.

He was a pretty clever guy, so it would have been be easy for him to hide something so that it would never be found.

Somebody should write a screenplay... "Indiana Jones and Leonardo's Lost Closet".

[Leslie Langford]

I wouldn't read too much into this by itself. In the past - and especially around the turn of the last century - pink was actually considered to be a very masculine color, and the equivalent of today's blue.

On the other hand, it is now commonly accepted by historians that Leonardo da Vinci was gay, and some even speculate that the person depicted in the enigmatic Mona Lisa portrait was actually a young man...

If Leonardo's wardrobe was flamboyant - even by the standards of his day - his gayness might go a long way towards explaining that.

[May(be)]

From a Renaissance expert on the Diane Rehm show on NPR today...


I'm upset I missed her show today! I think the beard negates any hints of his closeted crossdressing, though. I'm sure he looked fabulous!

[Lisa Gerrie]

> beard negates any hints of his closeted crossdressing

Nope. Trust me on this.

[Kate Simmons]

I interact with Leonardo on a regular basis. He is on the 7th spiritual level and has adopted a female spiritual form.:)

[Persephone]

Before the early 1900's pink was generally a color for boys and blue was frequently a color for girls. It varied a great deal by place. Even in 1920's America pink was more popular for boys. So it may have represented something very different in 1500's Italy.

There is a lot of talk though that the model for the Mona Lisa may have been Leonardo him/herself and not Lisa Gherardini, the wife of Francesco del Giocondo, as had been previously thought.


http://i3.photobucket.com/albums/y53/sandylewiscares/MonaLisaSelfPortrait.jpg

By the way, there is a very nice exhibit about Da Vinci at the history museum in Appleton, Wisconsin. We saw it a couple of weeks ago. It is about his machines, not his art and paintings, but provides insight into his creativity. It is there through January 6th, 2013 and then it may travel to other museums.

Just ignore the brutish locally created Houdini exhibit nearby. It is trash concocted by an uneducated curator.

Hugs,
Persephone.

[heatherdress]

There are a group of Italian scientists and art historians promoting a theory that his famous painting, the Mona Lisa, could actually be a portrait of the artist as a young woman. They hope to start a project that could involve exhuming da Vinci’s remains to entertain the notion.

http://abcnews.go.com/GMA/leonardo-da-vincis-mona-lisa-self-portrait/story?id=9662394

[LelaK]

Kate: I interact with Leonardo on a regular basis. He is on the 7th spiritual level and has adopted a female spiritual form.
Can you prove that, or something? And can you show us his female spiritual form? Of course, even if you can show it, I'd still be skeptical, unless there were some very substantial proof. But I do look forward to transitioning in the next life myself, probably in a way that's better than what I could do in this life, so far.

[carhill2mn]

Pink was a boy's color until about 1940. I do not know why the change occured.

[Beverley Sims]

I liked his flying machines but I only saw money lisa from a grate distance in the louver.
Or is that Mona Lisa in the Louvre.
I was more interested in the pyramid and the way it is cleaned by a machine crawling all over it. :)

[Kerstin]

I interact with Leonardo on a regular basis. He is on the 7th spiritual level and has adopted a female spiritual form.:)

You are joking right?

[heatherdress]

I think Leonardo is on Facebook, too.