How Leonardo Did It…
Lots of people have asked me how artists hid things in their art.
Well, there were many techniques. Mantegna, Dürer, and Giotto did it in ways you can see on the new website ‘www.whatalyknew.com’…, but that intriguing page has now been joined by a new one with an excerpt that reveals a far more subtle way of doing it. Leonardo’s method.
He tells how Botticelli threw a sponge at the wall, and then – in the mess that resulted – pointed out all manner of things hidden away. It was a means of showing his students how to find inspiration even in chaos.
Leonardo here describes how to turn this upside down. He sketches a message into his painting, one that he wants to lurk there unnoticed. To do this he then tells how to hide it from all but the wisest eyes: he explains how to encode a message into the apparent chaos of the background.
The conversation here is fictional, but builds on real quotes by Leonardo to show you how it was done… Click the image below and not only discover the secret that artists kept hidden for centuries, but be one of the first to see the clandestine drawing he himself tucked away in his priceless Mona Lisa!