Conservators made a small but notable discovery while doing some needed restoration on the portrait of Sir Walter Raleigh. There has always been a small crescent moon located in the upper left hand corner of the painting. But below that, found beneath a thin layer of centuries old paint, there also appears to be two rows of blue waves that had previously been covered up.
The History Blog (which, if you claim to be any sort of fan of history, you really should check out), the moon represents Elizabeth and the waves represent Raleigh (take the "L" out of Walter and you get water):
"It's just a few wavy lines of dark blue underneath the crescent moon, but they symbolize Raleigh's devotion to Queen Elizabeth who is represented by the moon. Just as the moon controls the tides, the Queen controls her humble servant who is naturally content to be swayed by her irresistible influence."
There were poems and courtly gestures exchanged, tracts of land and titles given, but, of course, Raleigh later fell out of favor with Elizabeth when he secretly married one of her ladies-in-waiting without her consent. It was probably while he was locked up in the Tower of London, thinking about how he'd pissed off Elizabeth, that someone felt the need to smudge out his lying, moon-resisting ocean waves from the portrait. Read here for more information on the rest of the symbology in the painting.
For instance, the highly scrutinized Mona Lisa by Leonardo da Vinci hasn't finished mesmerizing us with her eyes. In 2010, with the help of a digital microscope, the president of Italy's National Committee for Cultural Heritage discovered letters contained within those mysterious irises -- the letters "LV" in one and possibly "CE" in the other. Another secret code of devotion inserted by an artist? Maybe. Read here for more.
And another genius artist of the Renaissance left us with a bit of a mystery to ponder too. Michelangelo's Sistine Chapel fresco is supposedly riddled with seditious images. One of the more intriguing examples concerns the "Creation of Adam." In a theory first put forth by Dr. Frank Meshberger in 1990, God can be seen floating within a human brain.
Compare it to this diagram overlay:
Remarkable, right? It's interesting because Michelangelo was known to sit in on the dissection of cadavers as a young man (something banned by the Church at the time) and would have had a thorough understanding of human anatomy, no doubt supported by some amazing sketches. Yet no one seemed to notice this incredible similarity for nearly five hundred years.
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