Mona Lisa

I wonder why she's wearing black?

Can’t a piece of art just be a piece of art?  Is it necessary for us to know Mona Lisa’s medical condition at the time of the painting?  Who cares if she had crabs?  Do people lose sleep at night wondering if Marissa Miller has bursitis in her knees?

For Dr Vito Franco, from Palermo University, Mona Lisa shows clear signs of a build-up of fatty acids under the skin, caused by too much cholesterol.  He also suggests there seems to be a lipoma, or benign fatty-tissue tumour, in her right eye.

Zzzzzzz.  Dr. Franco, thanks for cracking the case of a centuries old make believe problem?  Is there nothing more pressing to accomplish with that PhD you have so laboriously worked at achieving?

Leonardo Da Vinci’s 16th Century portrait was not the only work of art to receive the professor’s medical diagnosis.  He also suggests the delicate elongated fingers in Botticelli’s Portrait of a Youth reveal the boy was perhaps suffering from Marfan syndrome, a genetic disorder that affects connective tissues.  Dr Franco has even diagnosed the artist Michelangelo himself – depicted in Raphael’s The School of Athens.  He says his swollen knees in the painting appear to indicate excessive uric acid and he could have been suffering from renal calculosis.

Great.  What’s next, finding out if Hannibal had a partially sprained MCL while navigating elephants through the Alps?  I’m on pins and needles waiting to find out.

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