The Mona Lisa

Standing at an overhead projector in a darkened penitentary library, Langdon had shared the Mona Lisa's secret with the prisoners attending the class, men whom he found surprisingly engaged - rough, but sharp. 'You may notice', Langdon told them, walking up to the projected image of the Mona Lisa on the wall, 'that the background behind her face is uneven'. Langdon motioned to the glaring discrepancy. 'Da Vinci painted the horizon line on the left significantly lower than the right'.

'He screwed it up?', one of the inmates asked.

Langdon chuckled. 'No. Da Vinci didn't do that too often. Actually, this is a little trick Da Vinci played. By lowering the countryside on the left, Da Vinci made Mona Lisa look much larger from the left side than from the right side. A little Da Vinci inside joke. Historically, the concepts of male and female have assigned sides - left is female, right is male. Because Da Vinci was a big fan of feminine principles, he made Mona Lisa look more majestic from the left than from the right'.

'I heard he was a fag', said a small man with a goatee.

Langdon winced. 'Historians don't generally put it quite that way, but yes, Da Vinci was a homosexual'.

'Is that why he was into that whole feminine thing?'

'Actually, Da vinci was in tune with the balance between male and female. He believed that a human soul could not be enlightened unless it had both male and female elements'.

'You mean like chicks with dicks?' someone called.

This elicited a hearty round of laughs. Langdon considered offering an etymological sidebar about the word hermaphrodite and its ties to Hermes and Aphrodite, but something told him it would be lost on this crowd.

'Hey, Mr Langford', a muscle-bound man said. 'Is it true that the Mona Lisa
is a picture of Da Vinci in drag? I heard that was true'.

'It's quite possible', Langdon said. 'Da Vinci was a prankster, and computerized analysis of the Mona Lisa and Da Vinci's self-portraits confirm some startling points of congruency in their faces. Whatever Da Vinci was up to', Langdon said, 'his Mona Lisa is neither male nor female. It carries a subtle message of androgyny. It is a fusing of both.'

'You sure that's not just some Harvard bullshit way of saying Mona Lisa is one ugly chick?'

Now Langdon laughed. 'You may be right. But actually Da Vinci left a big clue that the painting was supposed to be androgynous. Has anyone ever heard of an Egyptian god named Amon?'

'Hell yes!' the big guy said. 'God of masculine fertility!'

Langdon was stunned.

'It says so on every box of Amon condoms'. The muscular man gave a wide grin. 'It's got a guy with a ram's head on the front and says he's the Egyptian god of fertility'.

Langdon was not familier with the brand name, but he was glad to hear the prophylactic manufacturers had got their hieroglyphs right. 'Well done. Amon is indeed represented as a man with a ram's head, and his promiscuity and curved horns are related to our modern sexual slang "horny"'.

'No shit!'

'No shit', Langdon said. 'And do you know who Amon's counterpart was? The Egyptian goddess of fertility?'

The question met with several seconds of silence.

'It was Isis', Langdon told them, grabbing a grease pen. 'So we have the male god, Amon.' He wrote it down. 'and we have the female goddess, Isis, whose ancient pictogram was once called L'ISA'
Langdom stepped back from the projector.

[align=center]AMON L'ISA[/align]

[align=left] 'Ring any bells?' he asked.[/align]
[align=left] [/align]
[align=left] 'Mona Lisa...holy crap' somebody gasped.[/align]
[align=left] [/align]
[align=left] Langdon nodded. 'Gentlemen, not only does the face of Mona Lisa look androgynous, but her name is an anagram of the divine union of male and female. And that, my friends, is Da Vinci's little secret, and the reason for Mona Lisa's knowing smile'.[/align]