“Sometimes a cigar is just a cigar .” - Sigmund Freud ***** CAN YOU SEE A VULTURE? "The Virgin and Child with St. Anne" by Leonardo da Vinci (1503) In a 1910 essay, Freud made a valiant attempt at divining an aspect of the painter Leonardo da Vinci’s personality through the above painting. Freud peered at the picture after tilting his head to the left, and noticed a vulture. Off went Freud on his psychoanalytic jet and concluded that the picture hid an insight into the painter’s life. It seemed to speak volumes about da Vinci’s ‘homosexual’ childhood fantasy. Freud relied on a translation of da Vinci’s writings, apart from the painting, for his interpretation. Only the unforgiving arrow of time would pass true judgment on Freud’s mental frolics. The great man had mistranslated the word for ‘vulture’. The edifice on which Freud’s theory of da Vinci’s sexual fantasies rested was an illusion. Freud apparently considered the essay to be the on
"Thus, at the court, both great and small; Behave alike, for all ape all." - Jonathan Swift, The Logicians Refuted