Do You See Leonardo’s Hidden Penis?

[morgenstern]

Do You See Leonardo’s Hidden Penis?

Greetings all!

Here’s a curious story that’s just breaking on the web in the wake of the recent world news item based on Leonardo’s Virgin and Child with St. Anne and St. John the Baptist, also known as the Burlington House Cartoon and housed at the London National Gallery. This is old news on the Altreligion.about.com forum where it originated, but a web search shows it has recently been picked up on copy sites like digg, and reddit, and has also been part of discussions on various forum blogs like snarfd, clipmarks, and others.

Take a good look at the close-up below… Do you think Baby Jesus’ left arm is drawn to look like a penis?





Leonardo drew three seemingly inexplicable details here, which have been mentioned by some who have commented so far:

1. The greatly disproportionate thickness of Baby Jesus’ left wrist. We all look to Leonardo as the master of human proportions.

2. The heavy veins that seem totally out of place on any baby’s arm, but are a standard part of penis anatomy.

3. The otherwise naked left wrist, which clearly appears to have a surrounding ‘frill’….that’s kind of obvious too.

Here’s the original explanatory text and associated comments that further explore Leonardo’s distinctive and ever-puzzling symbolism:

A Different Da Vinci Code

I’m planning to take a vow of silence myself, in hopes that a true variety of opinions will emerge. We do know that Leonardo was a bit mischievous and certainly brilliant enough to turn anything into anything else. He was also fascinated with the anatomy and function of this organ and left us various sketches of it, including the androgyne Angel in the Flesh, in which someone has clearly tried to erase the “Angel’s” offending private part:



I’m neither endorsing the case for nor the case against this curious proposition, but leaving it up to you as my fellow forum members to make up your own minds. What do you see in this striking detail from the Virgin and Child with St. Anne and St. John the Baptist, which I and many others consider one of the loveliest drawings of all time? If you do see something unusual, what might it say about Leonardo, the art world’s incomparable man of mystery?

[Earl]

That Angel in the Flesh picture, the cock looks like graffiti.

I'm not right convinced, what does the full painting look like?

[timey]

I think people see what they want to see.

[Earl]

My question is why would Da Vinci paint a penis as Jesus' arm? What reason could he have?

[timey]

Here is the full painting:

[timey]

My question is why would Da Vinci paint a penis as Jesus' arm? What reason could he have?

Exactly. None as far as I can tell. It doesn't look much like a penis to me anyway.

[morgenstern]

My question is why would Da Vinci paint a penis as Jesus' arm? What reason could he have?

Only reason(s) I can find are a bit complicated for me to explain, but this is all covered in the link I posted:

A Different Da Vinci Code

[Ck]

The woman on the right of the picture is giving the other woman a right weird look.

[twocents]

I think it looks like a chubby baby arm, if you spend anytime with infants you know they all look like that. Which is why he was a master of astronomy and proportion, I can only imagine he painted a chubby baby arm instead of painting on a slender, graceful one.

[Victor29]

The woman on the right of the picture is giving the other woman a right weird look.

Looking at this picture in a gallery I doubt I would have seen a penis at all but I agree with CK that woman has a weird expression.

It could just be that the guy is not the genius he's made out to be and got the arm measurements a bit wrong. Or Freud may have seen something different into why someone may see a penis there! Some penis fixation, perhaps?