“Those who are in love with practice without knowledge are like the sailor who gets into a ship without rudder or compass and who never can be certain where he is going.” -Leonardo da Vinci

The “5 W’s” (who, what, where, when, why) are the trademark of professional reporters and journalists. The “3 H’s” (the head, heart, and hands) are the embodiment and the essence of any work of art. Missing any one element out of the three will reduce the value of an artwork and will make it either a decorative piece, a commercial announcement, a social statement, or a mere slogan. To approach a work of art, especially a great piece of work, we must take the “3 H’s” into the utmost consideration.

The world famous Mona Lisa (1503-1507) painted five centuries ago by Leonardo da Vinci, incited countless books and articles and drew praise, anecdotes, and various connotations. On the whole, it built barriers of confusion with corresponding conflicting authorities, hence discouraging any effort to penetrate to the core of the dilemma: “Who is she?”, and the escorting unanswered question, “What is the Sfumato Technique?”.

The Mona-logue is the result of a long period of frustration over the two objectives mentioned above. It therefore is an inward journey toward a self educational quest and is also an informative, which contains logistic support to realize the possibility of reproducing this masterpiece with an original approach.

The Renaissance is defined as a “rebirth” or in its infinitive, “to bring back to life Greek philosophies and Roman engineering.” To keep the Mona-logue more cohesive, we should briefly explore the Italian-Greek philosophers, who influenced Leonardo the most and whom he addressed as “the Ancients.”

According to the new Caxton Encyclopedia, books in Greek, Latin, and Italian printed during Leonardo’s life time, also known as incunabula are numerous. It is estimated that out of 450,000 incunabula’s, more than 100,000 were in circulation in Italy. For a scholar and artist, it was obvious that Leonardo da Vinci was exposed to the Greek philosophers listed below:

Plato (427-347 B.C.), whose conviction was that “true knowledge can be obtained only by recognition of the eternal and immutable ideas or forms, by no means neglected the phenomena of change of the imperfect phrases of knowledge which are given by sensations or expressed by mere opinions.”-Pictorial History of Philosophy, pg. 83 Plato expounded Philolaus’ philosophy.

Philolaus (480 B.C. of Croton, Italy) was a disciple of Pythagoras and the first to speculate that the earth was not necessarily fixed in space, but might be in motion. He suggested that it circled a “central fire,” of which the visible sun was only a reflection. It is suggested that Plato used Philolaus as a pretext to put forward Pythagoras’s philosophy.

Empedocles (490 B.C., Akragas Sicily), also a Pythagorean, suggested that the universe was made up of four fundamental substances: “Earth, water, air, and fire.”

Pythagoras (left Samos in 529 B.C. and emigrated to the city of Croton) was the founder of a cult marked by secrecy, asceticism and mythicism. He was the first to study the theory of numbers, initiated the study of sound, and the first to suggest that the earth was a sphere. He even theorized that it might move through the heavens. Leonardo da Vinci, too, was a Pythagorean.

Parallels between Leonardo and Pythagoreans

Pythagorean	Leonardo Da Vinci
-Study math, music, and astronomical subjects as to learn the divine properties of numbers	-Math, music, physics, and astronomy appeared in his studies throughout his notebooks.
-Mathematics should be revealed only to those who had been properly purified in both mind and body.	-"Let no man who is not a mathematician read elements of my work." -Da Vinci
-Never cut hair or beard.	-See reproduction of self portrait and anonymous portrait.
-Vegetarians; Pythagoreans were not allowed to eat meat or fish because they believed that human beings and animals reincarnate.	-Vegetarian; "The feeling of pain is not required in plants and therefore they do not feel pain when they are broken, as animals do." -Da Vinci He would not let his body become a "tomb for other animals, an inn of the dead...a container of corruption."
-Celibacy	-No known sex partner in his adult life.

An example of proof that Leonardo was familiar with Pythagoras’ thoughts appeared in his note book as he humored in his story, “A Jest”.