Tom Davenport’s Strictly Speaking

Da Vinci: a sick, sick man


Note to the reader: an art historian might well write ‘Picasso executed this painting in 1940,’ meaning ‘Picasso painted this in 1940.’


A groundbreaking discovery by Cambridge History of Art fresher, Arabella Boddington-Thorneycroft ([email protected]) has brought to light striking new evidence about the relationship between the famous Renaissance sportsman and sex-icon, Leonardo Da Vinci, and the notorious fifteenth century maiden known as The Mona Lisa (real name Chelsea Parker).

Leafing through an early translation of the memoirs of the Seventeenth-Century Italian Art Critic known only as ‘Il Fleviore,’ Miss Boddington-Thorneycroft came across a hitherto undiscovered piece of information. Il Fleviore puts it simply: “In 1504, Leonardo Da Vinci, the famous artist from Florence, executed The Mona Lisa.”

Further research has revealed an even more disturbing reality: Da Vinci never enrolled for a BE at one of the famous north Italian Colleges of Execution. By law, Mr. Da Vinci could never have “executed” Miss. Parker without being an accredited executioner. This leaves just one horrifying conclusion: Leonardo Da Vinci murdered The Mona Lisa. 

Records show that Miss Parker was active in Northern Italy as a night club entertainer and semi-professional sailor (she represented Tuscany in the 1497 Olympic Games in New York) in the last two decades of the Fifteenth century and the first few years of the Sixteenth. The documentary evidence for her activities, however, comes to an abrupt end in 1504 – precisely the date the Il Fleviore records as the year of her “execution.”

But the story only gets sicker: it is a little known fact that, on top of his commitments as a sportsman and sex-icon, Da Vinci was also a well respected amateur artist. Research by the German art historian Geothe Von Fizzmark has shown that Mr. Da Vinci actually painted a portrait of Miss Parker, The Mona Lisa herself. The painting itself is now lost, but believed to be somewhere in France. Von Fizzmark dates it 1504, exactly the same year that the Mona Lisa was murdered.

This is perhaps the most gruesome discovery of all: it seems that, shortly after painting the Tuscan maiden’s portrait, Mr. Da Vinci took it upon himself to murder her. Or, even worse, the other way round.

Were it not for one last piece of conclusive evidence, we would never know the answer to this question. As fate would have it, one copy of Da Vinci’s portrait survives and shows clearly the poor girl to be uncannily white. It was previously thought by Von Fizzmark that this was due to a fleeting fashion for pale skin. But we now know that it was because she was in fact dead.

Naturally, speculation has been rife, with many suggesting that Mr. Da Vinci could have been a necrophiliac. If true, this outlandish claim would explain his close association with the outlawed TNC (Tuscan Necrophilia Club), of which he was made Chairman in 1505. This research undermines everything we thought we knew about Mr. Da Vinci. I need go no further.