Italy has witnessed a fair number of gender scandals lately and now the name of its greatest artist may be added to the statistics.

Experts from the Comitato nazionale per la valorizzazione dei beni culturali e ambientali [National Committee for Cultural and Environmental Heritage] are seeking permission from the French authorities to have Leonardo da Vinci’s presumed remains exhumed in order to prove or disprove a theory that the Mona Lisa [La Gioconda] is, in fact, a self portrait.

The artist, long thought by many to have been homosexual, may have painted himself as a woman because of his love of riddles. The theory was first put forward by Dr Lillian F Schwartz of Bell Labs, a technological research company in the USA. Dr Schwartz found that, when a self portrait of Leonardo is reversed and merged with an image of the Mona Lisa using computer technology, the facial features align perfectly. However, critics say that there is no proof that the image used by Dr Schwartz was actually a Leonardo self portrait.

Nor can we be sure that the remains kept in a chapel of the Château d’Amboise [Loire, France] are those of the artist, who died in France in 1519. They are labelled as his “presumed” remains. Silvano Vincenti, the President of the Italian committee, says that their first job, once permission is granted, will be to ascertain this by using carbon dating and comparing DNA samples from bones and teeth with the DNA of some of Leonardo’s male descendants.

Giorgio Gruppioni, an anthropologist from the committee, says that if they can find Leonardo’s skull they could reconstruct it and compare it with the face on the famous painting.
Permission for the exhumation is expected to be granted in the summer.

Could this be why La Gioconda has been laughing at us all these years?

Do you think it is right to exhume Leonardo’s remains in order to prove a theory?