Forget everything you thought you knew about Mona Lisa. Leonardo da Vinci actually called the painting Envy. And he hid clues in the art that reference a scene from Dante Alighieri's The Divine Comedy.


Centuries have passed before artist Ron Piccirillo is the first to discover this, along with the secret symbols of animal heads in Leonardo's art. Having felt as though something was missing from his life, Piccirillo suddenly feels destined to figure out the actual identity of the woman and the reason for her smile in the painting he is sure has been incorrectly called Mona Lisa--a painting that will change his life forever. Guided by Leonardo's clues and Dante's writings, Piccirillo learns how to see the real truth hiding below the surface--not only in famous artworks, but in his own life.


In 2011, Piccirillo's story appeared on The Today Show and news outlets all over the world when he began to crack the mysteries behind Leonardo's puzzling masterpiece. Since then, he's made many new discoveries, which he has kept secret until now. His book, Solving Mona Lisa, will forever change how art and classic literature is looked at and studied. But when it comes to Renaissance art from artists like Michelangelo and Leonardo, nothing is ever what it seems.


This version contains color images.