How to find the true face of Leonardo Siegfried Woldhek

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good morning let’s look for a minute

as the greatest icon of all Leonardo da

Vinci we’re all familiar with his

fantastic work his drawing these

paintings his inventions his writings

but we do not know his face thousands of

books have been written about him but

there’s controversy and it remains about

his looks even this well-known portrait

is not accepted by many our historians

so what do you think is this the face of

Leonardo da Vinci or isn’t it let’s find

out Leo now there was a man that drew

everything around him he drew people

anatomy plants animals landscapes

buildings water everything but no faces

I find that hard to believe

his contemporaries made faces like the

ones you see here faster 3/4 so surely a

passionate drawer like Leonardo must

have made self-portraits from time to

time so let’s try to find them I think

that if we were to scan all of his work

and look for self-portraits we would

find his face looking at us so I looked

at all of his drawings more than 700 and

looked for male portraits there are

about 120 you see them here which ones

of these could be self-portraits well

for that they have to be done as we just

saw our fast or 3/4 so we can eliminate

all the profiles it also has to be

sufficiently detailed so we can also

eliminate the ones that are very vague

or very stylized and we know from his

contemporaries that Leonardo was a very

handsome even beautiful man so we can

also eliminate the ugly ones or the

caricatures and look what happens only

three candidates remain that fit the

bill and here they are yes indeed the

old man is there as is this famous pen

drawing of the home of a true pianist

and lastly the only portrait of a male

that Leonardo painted the musician

before we go into these faces I should

explain why I have some right to talk

about them I’ve made more than 1,100

portraits myself for newspapers over the

course of three hundred thirty years

sorry thirty is only but there are

eleven hundred and very few artists have

drawn so many faces so I know little

about drawing and analyzing faces okay

now let’s look at these three portraits

and hold on to your seats because if we

zoom in on those faces remark how they

have the same broad forehead the

horizontal eyebrows the long nose the

curved lips and the small well-developed

chin I couldn’t believe my eyes when I

first saw that there is no reason why

these portraits should look alike all we

did was look for portraits that had the

characteristics of a self-portrait and

look they do are very similar now are

they made in the right order the young

man should be made first and as you see

it from the years that they were created

it is indeed the case they are made in

the right order what was the age of

Leonardo at the time does that fit yes

it does he was 33 38 and 63 when these

were made so we have three pictures

potentially have the same person of the

same age is Leonardo at that time but

how do we know it’s him and not someone

else well we need a reference and here’s

the only the only picture of the Inara

that’s widely accepted that’s a statue

made by Verrocchio of David for which

Leonardo posed there’s a boy of 15 and

if we now compare the face of the statue

with the face of the musician you see

the very same features again the statue

is the reference and it connects the

identity of Leonardo to those three

faces ladies and gentlemen this story

has not yet been published it’s only

proper that you here at Ted here and see

it first the icon of icons finally has a

face here he is Leonardo da Vinci

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you