Scott Lund's adventurous quest for the Mona Lisa's hidden secrets

Scott Lund is an investigative writer who discovered hidden symbolic meaning in Leonardo da Vinci's "Mona Lisa" in 2007. His initial revelation was that the painting depicted a single soul shared between a mother and her unborn male child--a subject that Leonardo had written about. Soon, Lund had also figured out that the pervasive metaphor for the painting was the two-faced Roman Sun-god Janus, who aptly expressed its perplexing "duality." Even more surprising, Lund figured out that the letters of the name "Mona Lisa" could be rearranged to form an anagram of the Latin words "Anima Sol," which is interpreted as the noun for the human "soul," plus the name "Sol," which was what the solar god Janus was also called.

By early 2010, the various elements of Lund's theory came together as a unified whole, and he named it the "Mona Lisa Code." It became easy to see how Leonardo had masterfully incorporated all his essential esoteric beliefs into one painting. Before Galileo, Leonardo had made the "heretical" statement that the sun was the center of the Universe. He believed that all "souls" were created from the action of the sun, and that all seen "images" were caused by the action of the sun projected onto the back of the eye, where they were "absorbed" by the soul. This fundamental relationship between the "soul" and the "sun," was succinctly expressed in the anagram "Anima Sol," and formed the fundamental symbolic basis for the Mona Lisa.

On September 10, 2011, Lund took the "Janus metaphor" in a surprising direction. At a public press conference staged at the ancient Forum, in the heart of Rome, he presented a graphic illustration that proved the Mona Lisa had also been a "land survey." The incongruous right and left sides of the background landscape were shown to connect the center of the Vatican with the cult site of the Roman Childbirth goddess Diana at Lake Nemi, which is in a precise southeast direction of 29.5 kilometers distance. The association with the childbirth functions of the goddess Diana further reinforced the idea that the Mona Lisa figure was "pregnant."

It became amazingly apparent that Leonardo had ingeniously used the god Janus not only to represent esoteric religious duality, but also to symbolize the physical concept of a land survey. With his two faces looking in opposite directions, Janus was the perfect metaphor for a land survey, which consists of two points connected by a straight line. As revealed by Lund, Leonardo's ultimate jest was to place the viewer of the painting in the perspective of looking in two directions simultaneously, thus unknowingly "becoming" the god Janus!

Lund manifestly demonstrated that the right side landscape of the Mona Lisa was obviously viewed from the Tempietto of Bramante on top of the Janiculum hill in Rome, which was intersected by Leonardo's survey line. Bramante, who was "best friends" with Leonardo, built the elegant circular chapel on the mythical site of the "Citadel of Janus," where the god resided at the time he first brought "civilization" to Italy. Lund maintains that Leonardo's Mona Lisa and Bramante's Tempietto were sister projects started at the same time to express the religious doctrine of "The Two Faces of the Soul." The disclosure by Lund of the vantage point for Leonardo's vision of the Mona Lisa further reinforced the association between the duality of the soul and the god Janus. Although the Tempietto of Bramante has been acknowledged to be the singular iconic example of Italian Renaissance architecture, Lund was the first to identify its structure as representing the "Animal soul" in its lower half, and the "Celestial soul" in its domed upper half.

Lund wrote a book, "The Mona Lisa Code" (ISBN 978-1-4507-8133-6), detailing his discoveries in 2011, which was intended primarily for the purpose of academic critique. Unlike numerous so-called "theories" and speculations about the painting, the Mona Lisa Code comprises a vast amount of evidence that establishes a set of ideas central to what Leonardo da Vinci was known to have believed. The self-evident corroborating evidence of the Mona Lisa Code forms a prima facie case that challenges Academia, and largely disproves almost everything that has been previously written by art historians. Lund declares that additional disclosures about his discoveries will reinforce what has already been shown to the public.

Lund began writing in the tradition of American political investigative journalism, and subsequently turned his research skills toward the study of ancient Mediterranean history. In the past 22 years he has traveled extensively throughout Europe and actively pursued his inspired investigations. He has uncovered the existence of symbolic language extending from early antiquity up through the Age of Enlightenment, and says that the Mona Lisa uniquely expresses the continuity of that language. Lund has additionally discovered many other forgotten facts of the past, as well as identifying a number of previously unknown archeological sites of particular interest. He is currently writing an expanded version of his book for popular consumption, and is in pre-production for a feature-film documentary on the subject.

Lund founded a California non-profit, Fundatus, with the goal of using Leonardo da Vinci's genius as a model for child development. An accomplished pianist, visual artist, and adventurer, Lund considers himself the quintessential "Renaissance Man"--a notion he feels his Mona Lisa Code discovery eminently supports. He thinks: "It takes a Renaissance man to know one, and it takes an artist to know the Mona Lisa." He lives in Southern California and regards Austria as his "second home." Pacific ocean sailing and Alpine mountain hiking are his favorite recreational activities.

Bragging rights:

First to identify the Mona Lisa figure as a dual soul shared between a mother and her unborn child. First to identify the two-faced Roman Sun-god Janus as Da Vinci's metaphor for the Mona Lisa. First to recognize that the landscape of the Mona Lisa was a land survey. First to declare that Bramante's Tempietto in Rome was a "sister project" built in conjunction with Da Vinci's Mona Lisa. First to declare that the architecture of the Tempietto di Bramante symbolized the religious doctrine of the "Two Faces of the Soul."