NARRATOR: Amazing inventions
centuries ahead of their time. The helicopter, the
airplane, the submarine-- all of these were Leonardo
da Vinci's concepts. NARRATOR: Paintings said
to contain hidden messages. It is only a
portrait, and yet it seems to have dimensions
and mysteries that have yet to be explained. NARRATOR: And
sophisticated robots designed more than
five centuries ago. People would never have
seen something like this, that was able to move on its own. NARRATOR: Leonardo da
Vinci is considered one of the most brilliant
minds the world has ever known. But what was the source
of his profound intellect? He was absolutely immersed in
finding out, maybe even proving that we were not alone. NARRATOR: Millions of
people around the world believe we have been
visited in the past by extraterrestrial beings. What if it were true? Did ancient aliens really
help to shape our history? And if so, might there have
been a secret extraterrestrial connection to Leonardo da Vinci
and other artists of his time? [theme music] 3, 2, 1, 0. NARRATOR: February 24, 2011,
embarking on its final voyage, space shuttle Discovery docks
with the International Space Station. Its mission-- to deliver the
most advanced model in robotic engineering to date-- Robonaut 2. But believe it or
not, this masterpiece of modern technology
is the latest in a line of humanoid
robots whose design is based on illustrations
created more than 500 years ago, by Leonardo da Vinci. When you look at Robonaut 2,
you can trace its lineage back to Leonardo da Vinci. The basic design and
structure and ideas, you can see in what
Leonardo was working on. They were like three
dimensional blueprints. You could virtually
create a human being from these, which is essentially
what the NASA engineers did. Leonardo holds the position
as the greatest human genius that we know of. He had very high
intellectual ability, extraordinary creative
range, and used them to accomplish quite a bit. Leonardo is somebody who
was able to operate across all these various fields,
which is very unusual. He's trained as a
painter, a sculptor, but he manages to move
into geometry, optics, mechanical design, anatomy,
geology, and so on. And in each of these he
has extraordinary insight. So if you're wanting to talk
about a universal genius-- which is a very
Renaissance idea-- then Leonardo is the
definition of that. NARRATOR: Leonardo
da Vinci's work, covering a staggering
range of disciplines, is still influencing science,
technology, medicine, art, and numerous other fields,
nearly half a Millennium after his death. But just who was
Leonardo da Vinci? Was he simply a man of profound
intellect and imagination, or is there perhaps
something more to his genius? Leonardo di Ser Piero
da Vinci was born just outside Florence in Vinci,
Italy, on April 15, 1452. He lived during the height
of the Italian Renaissance, an era marked by great artistic
and scientific achievement and a universal
quest for knowledge. Renaissance is
French for "rebirth," and it saw itself as giving
birth again to the values that they somewhat
romantically attributed to the classical past, to
ancient Greece and ancient Rome. And they see the
1,000 years that have passed between Rome and
the rise of the Renaissance as a dark age. And they want to bring
the light of humanism back to the world with
intellectual and artistic innovation. Florence was larger than
London, larger than Paris, and larger than Rome. At the time Leonardo
lived there, all these bright
people had gathered. NARRATOR: But while the
Renaissance is considered an age of enlightenment, it was
also a time fiercely dominated by the Roman Catholic Church. When we come to
the Renaissance, the Church is pretty
much running everything. So every artist,
pretty much anybody, anybody who could read
or write, is either in the monastic
system of the Church, and of course the Church
is the main patron for all the different
artists in the Renaissance. NARRATOR: At a time
when everything was subject to the
scrutiny of the Church, a young Leonardo da Vinci
accepted one of his earliest artistic assignments-- the illustration of a wooden
shield with a likeness of the mythical
Greek monster Medusa, a Gorgon whose
head was literally covered with live snakes. Leonardo drew
Medusa so frightening that his father believed
that he was actually looking at live snakes. NARRATOR: But why, when most
prominent artists of his day were painting images from
the Judeo-Christian Bible, would Leonardo have
chosen to depict a mythical Greek monster, one
that many ancient astronaut theorists believe
may have been based on an extraterrestrial creature? When we compare him
to modern geniuses, we know, for example, that
these beings were absolutely interested in the idea that we
were not alone in the universe, that somehow we
had been contacted by extraterrestrial beings. Leonardo da Vinci is a person
who believed in the existence of extraterrestrial beings. NARRATOR: While
still a teenager, Leonardo earned
an apprenticeship with one of the most renowned
artists of the time, Andrea Del Verrocchio. And it is widely considered
that their most notable collaboration during this period
was "The Annunciation," a scene depicting the moment when
the Virgin Mary is informed that she will soon be made
pregnant with God's child. Verrocchio seems to
have begun the picture and begun in his traditional
medium of egg tempera, which is an egg binder for the pigments. And at some point Leonardo
intervened and finished the picture, and he
painted an angel. NARRATOR: In 1989,
experts in Florence performed an
extensive examination of "The Annunciation" to verify
if the angel in the painting was truly the work of Leonardo. After close expert and
scientific inspection, it was concluded that it was
undoubtedly the artist's work, but they also
discovered something strange and unexpected. When subjected to
x-rays, Leonardo's angel became invisible. Verrocchio used a lead-based
paint for at least parts of his Virgin Mary. Leonardo, on the
other hand, seems to have used rather
different pigments. Leonardo completed it
using a non-lead-based paint, which is why when looked at
with certain X-ray technology, Leonardo's angel disappears. Now, why would Leonardo,
being the apprentice, finish his mentor's work with
a different type of paint? And one possibility is that
he was leaving some type of message, because he was
notorious for hiding things inside his own paintings. NARRATOR: Might
Leonardo da Vinci really have painted the angel
knowing he would be creating a secret message that wouldn't
be discovered for 500 years? And if so, why? Some believe the
answer may be found by examining the next phase of
the legendary artist's life. From the years
of 1476 to 1478, there is a gap in his life. We don't really
know where he was or what he was doing
in those years. There are years in
which he disappears from the historical account. There is a hiatus,
and we don't know even what town he was living in, much
less with whom he was working or what he was doing. NARRATOR: What could account
for a man of Leonardo da Vinci's stature literally
disappearing from all known historical records,
especially when it was precisely during this period
when he was just beginning to come into prominence? One possible scenario here
is that during those years, Leonardo da Vinci
was, in a sense, tutored by some special
individuals, people who were showing him things that a normal
person wouldn't necessarily have seen. Perhaps like the
biblical prophet Enoch, he was even taken
aboard a spaceship, and the aliens showed
him Earth from above and gave him a concept of
the cosmos, and machines, and inventions, and of
Earth that no one before him had ever had. NARRATOR: Is it really
possible that Leonardo da Vinci had received guidance from
extraterrestrial beings, as many ancient astronaut
theorists contend? One fact is certain, that
after Leonardo's return to Florence in 1478, his
creative output reached a whole new level,
going beyond art and extending to numerous
other disciplines. He would produce aerial
maps of Italian cities with incredible accuracy. He would design and
build the world's first self-propelled vehicle. And he would invent
machines years and even centuries ahead of their time. There are some people who
think that maybe there's an extraterrestrial
influence to what he knew. Because you have people
throughout history, who had magically, mysteriously come
along every few hundred years or so, that then contribute
to the fantastic advancements to the human race and
the human species. NARRATOR: What was the secret
behind Leonardo da Vinci's incredible burst of creativity? And why, during the
age which gave rise to the likes of Copernicus,
Michelangelo, and Shakespeare, did Da Vinci tower above
his contemporaries? Ancient astronaut
theorists believe answers may be found by
examining Leonardo's paintings and the many secret messages
that can be found hidden within his famous works of art. The Vatican, set within
the fortified walls of a 110-acre plot of land and
surrounded by the city of Rome, it is the smallest independent
nation state in the world. And it was here,
from 1513 to 1516, that Leonardo da Vinci began
performing an act that, during the time, was a
crime punishable by death-- the dissection of human corpses. Leonardo was brought from
Milan to the Vatican to paint. But because the Vatican had
these great catacombic depths, they were very cool places,
and so you could dissect a body without losing it
to decomposition. A number of autopsies we know
were performed in the Vatican under the nose of the pope,
whose policy of the Catholic Church was to forbid that. Da Vinci stops at nothing to
find out about the human body. He buys dead bodies. Even though there is a penalty
of death on doing the things he is doing, it's like he
cannot stop himself. He needs to know. Da Vinci has this extraordinary
drive to know and understand, despite the fact that
it might kill him. NARRATOR: In his 36
months at the Vatican, Leonardo da Vinci documented
dozens of dissections with incredible detail. But to keep his work secret,
his notes on human anatomy were recorded in code, using a
device known as mirror writing. We know from early in
his Leonardo adopted mirror writing. At a later point in his career,
it also served his purposes. Mirror writing is
writing backwards. Why did Leonardo do it? He wrote backwards so
prying eyes couldn't see what he was writing. He realized that the things
that he was working on, including various
inventions and even anatomy, were something that the
Church would not approve of, so he had to do these
things in secret. And he knew that
it was dangerous. Da Vinci implemented
mirror writing in all of his creations, and
he most certainly was not playing games when he did this. It was in order to preserve the
knowledge that he had gained from the uneducated masses. NARRATOR: But why was Da Vinci
so obsessed with the workings of the human body? What secret and
forbidden knowledge was he trying to
uncover or reveal? Florence, Italy, 1503-- Leonardo da Vinci begins work
on a portrait commissioned by a wealthy silk merchant for
his wife, but it is a painting he will never part
with, obsessing over every detail for what would be
the last 16 years of his life-- the Mona Lisa. It is only a
portrait, and yet it seems to have dimensions
and mysteries that have yet to be explained. The Mona Lisa's smile
is not the kind of smile that we tend to
see in portraits. She seems to know
something that we don't. What starts as a portrait,
a representation of a woman, turns into something
quite different. It turns into a kind of
philosophical meditation on all his
intellectual concerns. NARRATOR: What was it about the
Mona Lisa that would so consume the final years of
Leonardo da Vinci's life? And why would he dedicate so
much of his time to a single 20 by 30 inch portrait? There are a lot of
theories that Leonardo has secret symbols and secret
messages in his paintings. Everything he's
doing, he's rethinking even traditional subjects
in the very beginning, and really imagining them
in new and creative ways. NARRATOR: All his life,
Leonardo da Vinci incorporated a technique called
mirror writing. Is it possible that he also
used a similar technique in his artwork, leaving
hidden messages that can only be revealed with
the use of mirrors? The mirror writing is
something which defines him. And so the possibility that
he was also using the mirror as an unknown dimension, whereby
he needs to have the mirror to see certain things
within his paintings, is definitely something which
I think we need to explore. NARRATOR: At Northeastern
University in Boston, Massachusetts, graphic
designer Terrence Masson uses computer technology to
search for hidden messages in Leonardo's masterworks. We know that he was insatiably
curious about reflections, and refractions, and optics, and
the human anatomy of the eye, and how that
mirrored reflections of conical shaped mirrors. NARRATOR: Is it possible that
Leonardo applied his mirror technique to hide secret
messages in the Mona Lisa? But if so, why? That's our classic Mona Lisa. Leonardo's portraiture
always had very dramatic hand positioning. His hand position was a clue to
the access points of rotation of these mirrored angles. So if we try this,
what do we see? NARRATOR: Is this
helmet-shaped creature simply the product of a parlor trick? If so, then why can
a similar creature be seen in another famous
painting by Da Vinci? Virgin and child with St. Ann. Well, this painting,
"Virgin of the Rocks," we always notice the dramatic
hand poses of Leonardo. Is that giving us a hint about
where to put the reflective plane? So we're in a 3D
environment here. We can do anything we want. We just make a little duplicate. Get a little closer. That's a little spooky. So interesting similarity to
what we did with the Mona Lisa, right? We've got something close
to a modern understanding of alien heads. NARRATOR: Could there
really be hidden messages in Leonardo da Vinci's
paintings, messages that reveal the artist's connection
to otherworldly beings? And why was the
artist so obsessed with dissecting the human form? Was it for purposes of his
art, or was there another more extraterrestrial reason? Perhaps the answer can
be found by examining the work of other artists
during the Renaissance. London, England-- housed
here in the British Library is Leonardo da Vinci's
Codex Arundel, a collection of 283 papers containing
drawings, inventions, thoughts, and writings covering numerous
scientific and creative disciplines. Leonardo is quite
well documented. Compared with most
artists of the time, we've got thousands and
thousands of pages of writing, which tell us a lot about
what he's thinking about. But there's almost no personal
record, interestingly. Leonardo's quite a private
figure in that respect. NARRATOR: Found among
Leonardo's papers were a few personal
anecdotes composed just after his two year disappearance
between 1476 and 1478. In one account, the artist
details his youthful adventure encountering a vast,
mysterious cave. He describes being on
the edge of this dark cave, and saying that
he felt terrified by the darkness of that cave
and what might be within it. On the other hand, he
felt a certain desire to try to understand
what was in there. Some have speculated that
this incident occurred around the same time in his
childhood as when he fashioned his famous shield with the head
of the monstrous Medusa on it. So the question is, what exactly
did Leonardo find in this cave? We can assume that this was
a very significant event in his life because it made a
strong enough impression on him to write it down as one of
the few autobiographical notes he ever made. NARRATOR: Why did Leonardo da
Vinci, a man who wrote almost nothing of his
personal life, choose to write about this cave
as one of the first entries in his journal? And why was his experience with
the cave so important to him? Some ancient astronaut
theorists believe that several of the artist's
paintings and drawings provide evidence that
Da Vinci may have had an extraterrestrial encounter. One of the things that we
see in the grotesque heads is a fairly mark a departure
from the natural appearance of the human body, the human
face, even in its most extreme manifestation. Visually, the works
are so compelling. They're often slightly creepy. They've got a very
strange presence to them. They are misshapen
faces, elongated skulls, flattened faces. Very eerie, troubling,
monstrous images. Now, this is an artist known
for careful realistic depiction of what he was looking at. Which raises the question, what
in the world was he looking at? Did he actually
encounter creatures that looked like this? They're very, very strange. Are Leonardo's
grotesque heads simply products of the artist's
creative imagination, or might they be evidence
of Da Vinci's encounters with other worldly beings? According to historical
records, there were, during the
Renaissance, a large number of unexplained phenomena seen in
the skies over parts of Europe and Asia. During the Siege of
Constantinople in 1453, soldiers reported that a
fire descended upon them from the sky. In 1458, a giant moon-like
disk was seen soaring above the landscape in Japan. And in 1492, during Christopher
Columbus' epic journey across the Atlantic,
weird lights were seen floating
above the ocean. Just before Christopher
Columbus reaches the New World, he sees anomalous lights in
the sky, and he reports them. People see them from his ship. These lights cannot
be explained. Some ancient UFO was seemingly
guiding Columbus' ships to the New World. So here we may well have
ancient aliens making sure that Columbus would do something
so important as discovering the New World. NARRATOR: Might Leonardo
da Vinci have been aware of these early UFO sightings? Ancient astronaut
theorists believe the answer is a profound yes,
and point to even greater evidence that can be found
by studying the works of other Renaissance artists. In the Renaissance
period what we see is this extraordinary
explosion of paintings, which show anomalies in
the background, anomalies which today
we identify as UFOs. There are paintings
that depict something very odd in the sky, depictions
of UFOs, of strange orbs, or rays coming out of the sky,
or falling stars with people sitting inside of them. NARRATOR: Why would 15th
century artists depict mysterious objects in
paintings of biblical scenes? Were they trying to communicate
something about the origin of Christianity? Or could these
otherworldly images be linked to the numerous
sightings of bizarre flying objects in the sky? At Northeastern University,
researcher Terrence Masson examines the strange images
found in Renaissance paintings. One specific example, "The
Baptism of Christ" by Gelder, is just bizarre. So many other examples
can be explained by different iconography,
graphic representations of angels and clouds
and lights, but if you look at this painting, it's just
a solid shiny disk with four laser beams shining down
on the Christ child. A specific example is the
Madonna with St. Giovannino. You look at this, and it's not
one of those that is easily explained away as being
a literal interpretation of an angel in a
cloud, for instance. So the striking feature
of this is, what is that exactly in the sky? So we can get in
close and zoom in. And we can see it's
clearly something. It's not a mistake. It's not a blemish. It was obviously painted there. You can see the brush strokes. Even more so than that, the
composition of the painting shows our shepherd
shielding his eyes. It's definitely not
an angel or a cloud. Something's flying,
and it's unidentified. So when pressed, we have a
16th century painting of a UFO. It's as if the painter
is trying to depict some divine messenger. And those depictions
apparently are of UFOs. And here we have the Renaissance
painters basically bringing us Jesus and a UFO together
in the same painting. During the Renaissance,
people like da Vinci may well have had knowledge
of extraterrestrials. NARRATOR: Might the mysterious
images in Renaissance paintings be evidence that Leonardo
and his contemporaries had encounters with
extraterrestrial beings during the 15th century? For the answer, ancient
astronaut theorists turned not to Da
Vinci's artwork but to his incredible inventions. The Boeing AH-64
Apache helicopter, this four-blade
twin-engine attack aircraft has a top speed of
192 miles per hour, and can reach heights
of 21,000 feet. It is also able to fly just
a few feet above the ground in an effort to avoid
radar detection. But even more amazing
than this modern day aerial marvel is the fact that
its construction may have never been possible without the
designs for vertical flight first drawn up by Leonardo da
Vinci nearly 500 years ago. The helicopter, the airplane,
the submarine, all of these were Leonardo da
Vinci's concepts. He invented all of
the modern weapons that we're actually using today. If we had developed the
various ideas, concepts, and scientific discoveries
of Leonardo da Vinci, there is an argument to
be made that we possibly could have landed somebody on
the moon in about the 1800s. He was 500 years before his
time, and many of his devices could not have been
constructed during his time. They didn't have the technology. NARRATOR: One
design of Leonardo's that the inventor was
actually able to realize during his lifetime was this
one, the world's first fully functional robot. In 1517, at the famous Chateau
de Clos in Amboise, France, 65-year-old Leonardo da Vinci
presented King Francis I with a gift in the form of a
full-sized mechanical lion. Like the replica that exists
today in the Chateau museum, the mechanical lion
could move independently and was able to display
amazing dexterity. From the accounts that
we have of Leonardo's lion, we know that it moved across
the floor on its own power. The vast majority of people who
were watching this presentation to the King would probably have
encountered the mechanical lion with fear, because
in their experience, they would never have seen
something like this, that was able to move on its own. NARRATOR: But how
did Da Vinci even conceive of such an elaborate
and sophisticated device, one that wouldn't be duplicated
for another 300 years? He was challenged
by the engineering. How do I get a robot to walk,
even if it's a lion robot? And even if he didn't
use the word "robot," he did create a
functioning robot. For Leonardo to take
his ideas and his drawings and literally be able to
project their use in the future is just remarkable. He's given credit for all
mechanical and robot ideas that we know today. NARRATOR: Here, at the Leonardo
da Vinci Machines Exhibition in st. Louis, Missouri,
Italian artists and engineers have painstakingly
recreated over 60 of Leonardo's inventions. This is the first
tank we know of. Leonardo da Vinci had the idea
for the 360-degree firepower. It was originally
designed for horses, but the horses became spooked so
easily that he quickly designed it to the human being. At the time that
it was presented, the tank was a bit impractical. It was not built
until centuries later. This is Leonardo da Vinci's
underwater breathing apparatus. Leonardo theorized that you did
not want to exhale into the air that you were inhaling. He had the idea
for carbon dioxide, and he brought down another
tube that you could exhale into that tube, only receiving
fresh air from the surface. He invented the
air compressor. Somebody on shore or on a boat
could press down and force the air through the
tube to the helmet, allow the person to breathe. When the British replicated
the Leonardo design, it worked. NARRATOR: But of all Leonardo da
Vinci's incredible inventions, perhaps the most impressive
are those involving aircraft technology. Nearly 400 years before the
Wright brothers' first flight at Kitty Hawk, North Carolina,
the 15th century inventor had designed numerous
flying machines, including a hang glider and an aircraft
that operated like a modern day helicopter. This is Leonardo da
Vinci's famous air screw, and this is the
first attempt that we know of for vertical flight. This was designed to have
four human beings run around in a circle, providing power,
literally screwing it up into the air. The air score resembles
our modern day helicopters. Leonardo needed
to know answers to some of the big
questions, which the ancient alien
question has as well-- the question of flight. There is no
question in my mind that a person like Leonardo
da Vinci most certainly asked himself the question, are
we alone in the universe? And his conclusion, even
at that time was no. NARRATOR: What was the
source of Leonardo da Vinci's incredible and
prophetic inventions? Were they the product
of his immense genius? Or is it possible, as ancient
astronaut theorists believe, that Leonardo had
been influenced by an otherworldly
intelligence, an intelligence he encountered in the past,
or one that he possessed from within? The North Apennines, Italy-- here in the mountains
just outside Florence, a young Leonardo da Vinci spent
much of his time examining the mysteries of nature. Because his parents
were not married, he was excluded from the
prestigious academies attended by many of his contemporaries. In Florence the Platonic
Academy is reformed and this institute of
learning comes about. Now, we know that
Leonardo da Vinci is not allowed to enter this Academy. This is a young man who was
pretty much left on his own in some ways for up
to 19 years, traveling around the countryside. He was looking at rocks. He was studying birds. He was looking at
the flow of water. He was studying mountains. He was literally
immersed in nature. No other artist
in the Renaissance really showed that much
interest in the natural world and the surrounding world. He strives for knowledge. He strives for information. He is able to create a
body of knowledge which is on par with the body of
information which the Platonic Academy as a group of
beings is able to put out. NARRATOR: It was also in
the North Apennine Mountains that Leonardo is believed
to have discovered the cave that he wrote
about in his journal. The story of the
cave, it's very likely that it happened around 1480,
since it appears that that's the moment at which this
is written in the codex. The fact that Leonardo chooses
to record this encounter with the cave I think
indicates that it had a significant impact on
the artist, psychologically. NARRATOR: But although the
exact location of the cave and the date Leonardo
discovered it remains unknown, there are many who believe
that it may provide the key to understanding
the source of the artist's incredible genius and the
answer to the mystery of what happened to him during
his missing two years. He goes inside the
cave, then he disappears. And it suggests to me
time travel, portals. He's opening
portals or stargates and beaming to either
the past or the future, and then returning
to the present time. In history, you have certain
people like Leonardo da Vinci, whose genius is
just so incredible and the visions that they have,
in many ways it's like they're able to see the future. And they're not going to just
influence the world then, but what they're going to do
is going to dramatically change the world forever. You have to wonder where people
get this kind of inspiration. And in the case of
Leonardo, he was able to see things
and invent them, in a sense, things
that we weren't going to have for hundreds of years. NARRATOR: Is it really possible
that Leonardo da Vinci may have obtained his incredible creative
and scientific knowledge as the direct result of an
extraterrestrial encounter? Or might Leonardo have fallen
through a time portal, one which allowed him to actually
visit the future, a future where robots, helicopters,
military weapons, and other amazing
machines actually existed, and which the artist would
later try to duplicate? Some ancient astronaut
theorists believe the answer can be
traced back to work he did on "The Annunciation"
and the significance of his so-called
disappearing angel. Leonardo and
Verrocchio's "Annunciation" portrays the moment at which
the angel Gabriel has arrived and is telling the
Virgin Mary that she's pregnant with the Son of God. What some scholars have
speculated is that by painting the angel in "The Annunciation"
so that it disappears under X-ray, he is telling
us that, like Gabriel, he is the messenger. And then, with
his next painting, we're told that this great
gift to mankind has arrived. And Leonardo da Vinci's
contributions to mankind are truly a gift to the world. You have to wonder if Leonardo
wasn't doing this because he was being encouraged
in secret by some kind of extraterrestrial masters,
who were somehow behind him. NARRATOR: Might Leonardo da
Vinci, the man many have called the greatest genius
who ever lived, have been chosen by
extraterrestrial beings to accelerate the advancement
of the human race? Or was he merely
trying to communicate the incredible future inventions
he had witnessed firsthand? Without doubt, the most
influential personality of the first
millennium was Jesus. Now, you go to the
second millennium, and I believe Leonardo
is the most important dominant personality, made the
most contributions in the most areas during those 1,000 years. Wherever we look
in ancient times, we find that the genius
was always identified with superhero
defined qualities. Even today, we put geniuses
on a separate pedestal and almost worship them. And this is really something
throughout mankind's history. So the question is, where
does this come from? And whenever you
look into mythology, you will also find that the
geniuses were the ones who were created by the gods. Genius and divine
go hand in hand. NARRATOR: Leonardo
da Vinci, the man who created some of the most
famous artwork in the world, designed machines 500
years ahead of their time, and laid the groundwork for
today's advanced robotics, was he a time traveler, a man
who by accident was provided a glimpse into the future? Or was he chosen to
serve an unknown agenda, a human messenger who
conspired to keep a secret pact with extraterrestrial beings? Perhaps the answer
lies not in space but right before our eyes,
hidden in plain sight, within the smile of a
500-year-old portrait.
