Solving Mona Lisa

This version contains grayscale images. See other versions for color illustrations.

While examining Leonardo da Vinci’s Mona Lisa, artist Ron Piccirillo comes across images of animal heads secretly hiding in the painting in a type of optical illusion Leonardo was known to invent. It leads Piccirillo to find other hidden clues throughout Leonardo’s art that no one had ever noticed before. Thus begins Piccirillo's emotional journey, determined to figure out their meanings as he also examines the events in his own life and any connection the two may have to solving the world’s greatest enigma. Did Leonardo create Mona Lisa as a puzzle that he intended for us to solve using our perception of our own life? Was Piccirillo destined to solve it? Or was there some higher power at work?

In Solving Mona Lisa, Piccirillo takes us through his revolutionary discoveries as he attempts to solve the mysterious identity of the woman in the painting and the reason for her smile once and for all. But he unearths way more than he bargains for. In his astonishing story, Piccirillo introduces amazing optical illusions for the first time ever in some of the world's most famous paintings by artists such as Leonardo, Michelangelo, and Botticelli that went unnoticed for centuries.

You'll never look at Mona Lisa the same way again. Literally!

In 2011, Piccirillo received worldwide attention for his discovery of hidden animal heads in Mona Lisa and other Renaissance art, including coverage by major media outlets like The Today Show, NBC, and the Daily Mail. Piccirillo spent the next few years figuring out exactly why artists like Giotto, Raphael, and Hans Holbein used special techniques to hide messages in their work. The result is Solving Mona Lisa.