Surreal News sensation. The Art world is reeling. Another painting discovered to have been hanging upside down since 1797!

A photograph has been discovered of the most visited, the most written about, the most sung about painting the Mona Lisa. Hanging in Leonardo Da Vinci’s studio, a photo taken a few days after the artist invented the helicopter and the camera and then published in the Italian lifestyle magazine Pueblo y Campesino in June 1503. It also shows the same picture sitting on an easel the other way up. Proving that Mona Lisa was in fact a trapeze artist and acrobat suspended in the air…Smiling… we can see…beaming… because she is proud of her shaved eyebrows- also cheerful because the circus performer’s hair had stayed in place due to a hidden hairpin and A hairspray (that Leonardo had invented but not yet patented) despite herself hanging upside down as his model…for Four years practising tricks- while Leonardo was busy inventing other things. Mona would -meanwhile- keep supple touching her toes and doing backbends. (Also revealed in the photograph are early Leonardo sketches made further away from his model. See detail.)

This new fact shows how modelling for the painting both strengthened Mona’s grip and strengthened her core because she had to be in a ‘proper’ position while she was swinging through the air…though evident that she seems to have lacked upper body strength -she was, no doubt able to do many pull-ups while smiling effortlessly patiently -her legs engaged-keeping them straight while lifting them up and over her head, keeping her toes pointed… all… while smiling…while waiting for Leonardo to complete the painting…between inventions.

Her subtle smile deceives the viewer… it belies and conceals her overuse and injuries of her shoulders and back, it contradicts her pulled muscles, and bruises, it denies the fabric burns, and dizziness or nausea from all of her upside-down spinning.

Leonardo likely painted from up on a step ladder and it’s evident he worked selectively -by obviously ignoring her legs hanging from the horizontal bar -starting-by painting her hands-one gently relaxed on the other-with no tension…but with bravado right at the top of the picture frame…and then worked his way down, which would also explain why some of the down under -earth view- below- starts millimetres short of the bottom edge.

Mona had stopped spinning and was static-she- wearing a loose fitting leotard- rigged from a single point when Leonardo painted her hanging upside down from silk fabric or ribbon. We can’t be sure if -while flying through the air -she used a hoop and what mid-air tricks she performed 40 feet high above the ground. Here it is evident that she is not wearing leather gymnastics palm grips. It’s assumed now that Mona played in Roman circus rings. Her father was a strong man. Mona Lisa performed as part of her mother's Troupe with her 4 sisters and two aunties.

Mona’s act included one-armed planges, momentarily dislocating her shoulder during each plange. She would flip her body over her shoulder repeatedly, sometimes hundreds of times in a feat of endurance, encouraging the Renaissance audiences to count each one in unison.

Rumoured Paintings of Mona Lisa trampolining have never yet been found “Was it a mistake when someone removed the work from its box? Was someone being sloppy when the work was in transit?”, the curator says. “It’s impossible to say.”

Part of the problem is that the painting does not bear the artist’s signature at the bottom, possibly because he hadn’t deemed it finished... Despite all the evidence pointing to the work being currently displayed upside down, the work will be shown the way it has hung for years

“If you were to turn it upside down now, gravity would pull it into another direction. And it’s now part of the work’s story.”

Story by ‘fanciful’ art correspondent Rory McLeod.