Secret codes hidden in famous paintings! These classical artists seem to have hidden secret messages within their famous paintings
#10. “Mona Lisa by Leonardo da Vinci”- Artists, critics and even scientists have studied this portrait’s famous smile for centuries and the more it is studied the more hidden secrets and details are revealed. Painted by Da Vinci in the 16th century even the subject of the painting has been debated. Is it Lisa Gerhardini the wife of an Italian aristocrat? Is it an obscure self-portrait of Da Vinci himself? But some of the biggest mysteries involve what is hidden in the brushstrokes. Recently, Italian scholars announced that the artist and inventor left microscopic inscriptions within the painting. On a bridge behind Mona, there is what the scholars believe is either the letter L followed by the number two or the number seventy-two. If you zoom in on her left eye you can see what looks like either the letter B or the letters C and E. In the right eye, even more distinguishable are the letters L and V. The most confounding writing lies behind the painting where the numbers 149 followed by a smudge where a fourth letter may have been placed. The scholars reason that this most likely was the year Da Vinci painted the piece but that could place it as being created almost a decade before most art historians currently believe--somewhere between 1503 and 1517. What do these numbers and letters mean? Are they a secret code? Was Da Vinci using some sort of paint-by-numbers kit? Or are they just scribbles and initials?
#9 “El Autobus by Frida Kahlo”-Mexico’s most renowned matron of masterpieces, Frida Kahlo, was known for her surreal and self-deprecating style of art but no piece has a more striking hidden meaning than that of her 1929 piece, known in English as The Bus. On first viewing it appears as a picture of an ordinary bus-stop, seated are representations of each class of Mexican society: a housewife, a man of the working class, a Native-Mexican and children, a white-collar businessman and a beautiful young woman clad in pink. But when considering Kahlo’s backstory the painting becomes a much darker affair. Four years before she painted this piece, at the age of 18, Kahlo was involved in a life-altering traffic accident when the bus she was riding on crashed into a trolley. She would survive but was permanently damaged from a handrail that penetrated her pelvic bone leaving her unable to bear children and cause her to live in pain the rest of her life. Traumatized by the event, it would become the basis for a bulk of her work and El Autobus is no different. It depicts the scene just before Kahlo, the lady in pink, gets on the bus headed towards fate.
