Cindy Dupuis (CD): Hello Jean Luc Angrand, can you tell us about your interpretation of the MONA LISA by Leonardo da Vinci?
Jean Luc Angrand (JLA): It is a painting depicting a woman seated on a throne. She wears a veil on her head and she smiles in a peculiar manner.
In the background, a desolate, almost lunar landscape. This is where most descriptions end.
My interpretation is that in the foreground, what seems to be a woman, is not one! It is the hermaphrodite.
The hermaphrodite is, for alchemists, a mythological creature that embodies the perfect fusion of feminine and masculine principles.
A Greek myth stated that Zeus, the supreme god of Olympus, split the first human species into two parts because its power threatened the gods.
The first human species was therefore both male and female; hermaphrodites.
From this violent action wanted by Zeus, humanity divided into two sexes was born; Leonardo reunites the feminine and masculine principles. A chemical wedding.
In the foreground, Leonardo thus represents the hermaphrodite which embodies the species that sinned, the original humanity, and which was punished by Zeus, the supreme god of the Greeks/God in Christianity.
Michelangelo, another giant of painting, also juxtaposed pagan deities and biblical prophets in the Sistine Chapel; Leonardo goes even further, he merges Adam and Eve in the Mona Lisa to make them into an hermaphrodite.
As you've understood, these great Italian Renaissance painters loved to draw parallels between ancient and biblical narratives. Leonardo thus draws a parallel with Adam and Eve banished from Paradise. Those two had also heavily sinned.
Here he wants to signify the revenge of Adam and Eve's descendants on God through science; the ultimate blasphemy!
He therefore blends this biblical narrative with the alchemical protocol that unites the separated feminine and masculine principles by the God Zeus.
The alchemical calcination indicated by the landscape and the stage of the alchemical protocol called Hermaphrodite usually results in the creation of the Philosopher's Stone; for Leonardo, the Philosopher's Stone is humanity seated on a throne; the ultimate blasphemy!
Leonardo's ultimate blasphemy was to present this ancient creature, the Hermaphrodite, sitting arrogantly on a throne earned by human science. A science that in his mind would sooner or later surpass or enhance alchemy.
This arrogantly smiling creature, therefore, philosophically represents humanity itself: a humanity that has become hermaphrodite again through its scientific genius; Adam and Eve triumphant. Transhumanism before its time; the ultimate blasphemy!
A blasphemy because in this work, humanity no longer follows the Judeo-Christian path that is supposed to lead it to the Eternal Father; it dares to seize God's throne! The ultimate blasphemy!!!
CD: Thank you, Jean Luc Angrand, for sharing this knowledge. JLA: Thank you for the interview.