Perhaps no other painting is as famous as Leonardo Da Vinci’s Mona Lisa, and yet here again a man gets credit for the work of a duck.  You’d think the guy would try being original once in awhile, but even after making duck soup out of his rival (see Leonardo’s Vitruvian Duck), Da Vinci was apparently unsatisfied to leave it alone.

Click Drawing To Expand

Leonardo Junior

Now, as we’ve explained, ducks are constantly quacking up about their history, which is why we know that Leonardo Duckvinci had a son.  Being the first hatching in the brood, Leonardo Junior was named for his father and turned out to be one truly gifted artist.  In fact, many in the duck art world have confused the two Duckvinci’s, but it turns out Junior was the better artist and one of his works was the inspiration for Da Vinci’s famed Mona Lisa.

Infamous History

And thus we come to the incident which will forever go down in duck history as Da Vinci’s greatest barnyard rip-off.

Historians would have us believe that the subject of the Da Vinci’s painting was a woman named Lisa del Giocondo.  Wrong!  Oh, sure the woman may have visited Da Vinci’s studio, but as a mother of six children, does anyone believe she had the time to sit around and pose for the guy?  Not on your life!  Think about it.  She was married to this decrepit, wrinkly-pruned silk merchant who was worth big bucks.  Now, as any self-respecting gold-digger will tell you, if she was going to sit around anywhere, it’s far more plausible she sat at home and pretended to be interested watching her dear hubby don a pair of socks.   Meanwhile, who watched all those kids?  You know her old man never lifted a finger.  No, the facts are clear:  Lisa del Giocondo was a simple wife whose numerous familial duties prevented her from modeling for Da Vinci.

The Real Inspiration

So who or what was Da Vinci’s actual inspiration?  A barn.  That’s right, a barn.  Da Vinci happened to go out for a walk one day and saw some Duckraffitti sprayed (er drawn) all over the side of a barn.  And guess who was pictured there?  None other than Lisa Duckaroni (aka Mona Gallina or “My Hen” as her young beau Leonardo Junior called her).

As it happened, once Da Vinci saw the side of the barn, he knew he’d have to own the original work if he was going to do a painting.  Thus, he hired a crew of cheap illegal laborers from the North to dismantle the structure board by board and rebuild it inside his studio. And yes, we suspect the workers were French due to their thoroughly outrageous accents.

As a curious aside, the rebuilding project turned into a bit of a fiasco as the barn didn’t fit inside his studio so the laborers rebuilt that too—all without the proper permits, which may explain why it burned to the ground a year later.  Thankfully by that time Da Vinci had already paid a famous Tibetan Sherpa to copy the barn drawing to parchment paper, but that’s a story for another day.

Facts Are Facts

How do we know all these intricate historical details are true?  Hey, it’s not like we’re making this stuff up off the top of our heads.  No, we’ve been given the straight duckpoop by our very own Javabird.  He ought to know.  Why?  Because he turns out to be Leonardo’s twenty-sixth great grandson’s uncle’s cousin’s sister’s cleaning woman’s son, twice removed.  Now, with connections that close,there’s simply no way to deny the truth when we see it.  And yes, we’re absolutely, positively convinced beyond a shadow of a doubt, which is to say we’re utterly, totally, completely and unconditionally certain to the nth degree, that there’s a teensy tiny chance this all really happened.

One Need Only Compare

If you still don’t believe Da Vinci copied Duckvinci, you need only compare Duckvinci’s original with Da Vinci’s cheesy copy.  For example, look at that glorious snozola (er duckbill) and those eyes—one gazing despondently as if crushed by the weight of the world, and the other gazing seductively as if suggesting we meet behind the barn for a romantic encounter.  And then there’s her smile.  What smile could be more enigmatic?  Oh, yeah, baby, Duckvinci’s Mona Gallina is the real DeCoy, there’s no doubt about it.  Further proof is impossible, but we’ll give it to you anyway.  Duckvinci vandalized that barn…check that…sketched his drawing on the side of the barn just a few nights after his poor papa joined the eternal duck choir in the sky, which was many, many years before Da Vinci picked up his brush to paint the Mona Lisa.

And now you’ve heard it all…or have you?  Stay tuned.

Art by Shaun Novion
Interpretative History By Bob Anderson
© 2010 Javabird LLC.  All rights reserved.

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For other startling duck history, you may also want to visit our
Famous Ducks Of History page.

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