Academic Commentary
Critical analysis by international scholars
Scott Lund is the first to definitively identify the subject of the Mona Lisa as a human soul. He shows it to be a single soul shared between a mother and her unborn male child. Lund is also the first to identify the Roman god Janus as the dualistic theme of the painting.
Commentary by Prof. Dr. Dr. Gottfried Tichy
University of Salzburg, Austria
The Mona Lisa Code is a bold interpretation by Scott Lund of Leonardo's most famous painting. It is well worthy of discussion and investigation, but it is nothing for dull academics who do not believe in symbolism. While Lund does not hold a degree in Art History, as an investigative writer he has shown a lot of imagination and intuition, which is pretty rare in our time.
Many surprising evidences have been noticed and interpreted for the first time by Lund. It seems clear that Leonardo used the two-faced Roman god Janus as a metaphor to express the duality of the soul. It also seems quite reasonable that, in view of Lund's analysis of the ANIMA SOL anagram, the Mona Lisa painting got its name from Leonardo himself, and not posthumously by his biographer Giorgio Vasari, as is commonly written.
Other evidences given by Lund that support his Mona Lisa Code theory include: the scar on the index finger of the left hand indicating Rachel's traumatic delivery in the Old Testament; the absence of eyebrows and eyelashes being symbolic of the embryo that shares the face with its mother. These and many other symbols in the painting have been uniquely interpreted by Lund.
A monogram of Mary Magdalene - MM - can easily be noticed on the wrinkles of the sleeve next to Mona Lisa’s right hand. The explanation of why there is a monogram of Mary Magdalene has something to do with Dan Brown’s theory of a Holy Bloodline in his novel and movie: "The Da Vinci Code." But contrary to Brown, Lund gives a lot of fact-based proofs to support his thoughts. The archetype for a mother in the Old Testament was Rachel, and most things in the Old Testament do seem to have their symbolic parallels in the New Testament, so Rachel logically has her counterpart in Mary Magdalene.
In our time, many people look at a painting of a lady and believe that that’s all there is. It is really refreshing to read the ideas of Lund, who reveals that the fundamental mystery of the Mona Lisa is that she is not a mortal woman, but a soul shared between a mother and her unborn child. Has Scott Lund truly deciphered the Mona Lisa? You do not need to be an academic insider to realize that sometimes things are more than what they appear to represent on the surface.
Prof. Dr. Dr. Gottfried Tichy
University of Salzburg, Austria
December 2, 2010
