DA VINCIʼS SIGNATURE IN THE COSMOS

Dr. Robert D. Elliott (NCSU)

Five hundred sixty-five years have passed since the birth of Leonardo Da

Vinci on April 15, 1452. A recent discovery in 2005 of his painting of Christ,

thought forever lost, now bursts upon the 21st century replete with a cosmic

message proclaiming his understanding of the workings of the cosmos –

born out in a heretofore unnoticed cryptic signature, discovered by the

authors in 2010; and (revealed at the national SECAC Conference 2013).

During 2005 a badly overpainted Salvator Mundi (Christ as Savior of the

World) was restored by Diane Modestini for NY art dealer Robert Simon.

An intact DaVinci original (1509) was uncovered, last seen in the collection

of King Charles I in 1650.

Unlike the existing copies by Leonardoʼs assistants, which showed Christ

holding the traditional globe of the earth, Leonardo paints his Christ holding

a rock crystal ball. Curiously, there are three very prominent white dots that

break the crystal-like continuity of this sphere.

The authors hypothesized that these are stars forming a triangle and were

possibly part of a constellation. In 2010, Dr. Elliott discovered that the

prominent triangle made by these star-like spots could be linked to a known

observable star-pattern in the sky - that found in the Constellation of Leo

the Lion. Utilizing Photoshop to proportionally size and overlay the Leo

Constellation of the modern sky chart atop Leonardoʼs crystal sphere; the

finding was that the angles in both were a precise match, even to the

congruence of relative sizes of Leonardoʼs painted stars and those in the

actual Leo constellation

Properly sized to the three dots on the sphere, I realized that two outer

stars in Leo the Lion match and trace out the circumference of the sphere.

Thus the differences in sizes and blur of Leonardoʼs stars correspond to the

relative visual magnitude of Denebola, Chertan ,and Zosma the three stars

in the triangle of Leo, while the heart star Regulus, and Algieba: demarcate

the outer circumference of the crystal sphere. There are two known

constellations in the night sky that feature a triangle shape, the

constellation Triangulum, and the triangle that appears in the Spring sky in

the constellation of Leo the Lion.

Mathematician Myrick Pullen verified, mathematically, that a match of three

points has a very convincing probability; and that four or five points of

congruence is extremely high.

Boldly, Leonardo places his own star signature, as Court Painter atop that

symbol of Platoʼs (and Christʼs) universe, the sphere.

Soon thereafter, I contacted Professor Martin Kemp and shared my

hypothesis that the three stars matched precisely the triangle found in Leo -

to which he responded that my idea was “ingenious.”

Upon revealing our discovery to owner Dr. Robert Simon; restorationist

Diane Modestini affirmed that the three spots were original to the painting.

Noted Leonardo scholar Martin Kemp, in 2009, upon assessing the newly

discovered Salvator Mundi ascertained that the orb was painted to

represent a rare and precious pure rock crystal, as denoted by its tiny

natural speck-like inclusions. “His Christ is conjointly Savior of mankind

and Master of the cosmos.”

In Nature (Dec., 2011), Andre J. Noest (University, the Netherlands),

amplified Kempʼs analysis by suggesting that “the painting shows no optical

distortion in the folds of the clothes, for example, as would be expected

from refraction by an orb of calcite, quartz, or glass, or even a water- filled

glass vessel. In reality, an inverted and nonlinearly reduced image of most

of the chest, arm and shoulder would appear within the orbʼs outline; the

heel of the hand would appear in the top half of the image.” Noest

concludes that

“The absence of refraction or reflection effects suggests that the orb

depicts an idealized celestial sphere, with the painted specks on its surface

representing heavenly bodies.”

The author and mathematician Pullen believe that the painted stars may

indicate some familiarity with a telescopic image of a star. The broken

edges of the three spots might be intended to depict the blinking of stars;

as opposed to the steady beam of larger planets. Also in a higher power

telescope the light will “wander” a bit.

“Construct glasses to see the moon magnified” - (Leonardo, Codex

Atlanticus, (fol. 190 r-a))

Vasari wrote that between 1513-15, Leonardo was developing instruments

for grinding large concave mirrors on the rooftop of the Vatican..

.. “In order to observe the nature of the planets, open the roof and bring

the image of a single planet onto the base of a concave mirror. The image

of the planet reflected by the base will show the surface of the planet much

magnified.” -Leonardo (codex Arundel. C. 1513)

During the last decade before his death, Leonardo completed his painting

by placing his own star signature above the mystical crystal orb held in the

hand of Christ as Savior of the Cosmos. He signed none other of his

paintings except this one - utilizing a cryptic triangle from Leo the Lion seen

exactly as it would have appeared overhead in April 1452.

Written in three stars, the leitmotif of this ʻhereticʼ and ʻmagician,ʼ as his

contemporaries had come to view him, would forever signal that Leonardo

Da Vinciʼs ideas, though willingly suppressed in his church dominated era,

would one day be acknowledged by some future generation. Visually he

would bequeath them… through his calculations and notebooks…and in

painted form - to us… in scattered evidential remnants - a riddle to be

applied.

Notes

The authors would like to acknowledge the William Keating Bayley

Information Technology Laboratory at NC State University for its gracious

technical assistance.

1 Luke Syson, Leonardo Da Vinci: Painter at the Court of Milan, p. 104.

2 Martin Kemp, “Art History: Sight and Salvation, Nature 479, 2011, p. 174

3 Jay M. Pasachoff, A Field Guide to Stars and Planets, Boston, Houghton Mifflin, 1992, p. 87

4 Andre Noest, Nature, Dec. 2011, p. 303 5 Monica Azzolini, The Duke and the Stars: Astrology and

Politics in Renaissance Milan [ Cambridge, Harvard University Press, 2013], pp. 133, 134.

6 Giorgio Vasari, “Life of Leonardo Da Vinci”, inLives of the most Eminent Painters, Sculptors, and Architects, translated bu Gaston DeC. De Vere, (London: Philip Lee Warner, 1912-1914), p. 95

7 Myrick Pullen, “Salvator Mundi and golden rectangle diagram.”(illustration). The mathematical angles seen in the crystal orb compared to the angles in published star charts were measured and computed by Mathematics scholar, Myrick Pullen, Fearrington, NC