Mona Lisa's animal secrets laid bare

A US artist says he's finally cracked the 500-year-old mystery of the Mona Lisa - by spotting hidden animal images.

Ron Piccirillo found the heads of a lion, an ape and a buffalo hovering in the air after turning the painting on its side.

He also discovered a crocodile or snake coming out of the left hand side of her body by following instructions laid out in the journals of Leonardo da Vinci.

Mr Piccirillo, 37, claims that his discovery cracks open the meaning of the work - that the Mona Lisa is actually a representation of envy.

He says he made his discovery after "employing an old artist's trick" of turning the Mona Lisa on its side to get a fresh perspective on the painting.

It was at that point that he noticed the lion's head hovering in the air above the Mona Lisa's head.

He said: "Then I noticed the buffalo and I thought: 'Oh my god'. Then I realised I was really onto something. I just could not believe what I was looking at. I realised: 'This is what I've been looking for'.

"I spent the next two months pouring over da Vinci's journals and came across the passage on envy which for me sums up what this is about.

"The Mona Lisa is a depiction of envy. It's amazing because everyone thought that da Vinci never wrote about the Mona Lisa, but now it appears that he did."

The passage in question talks about how the artist trying to paint envy must "give her a leopard's skin, because this creature kills the lion out of envy and by deceit" - a reference to the hidden lion's head.

"It is beyond coincidence to have identified these hidden images after finding references to them in Leonardo's own writings," he said.