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The Hand

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One detail has puzzled art historians for centuries: Cecilia’s hand.

Larger than expected, it dominates the composition, almost too long, too present.

Leonardo’s own notebooks explain why. He wrote that a great painter must show not only “the outer form of man, but the movements of his soul” (il moto dell’animo). For him, the hand was part of that expression, a visible extension of thought. His anatomical drawings (Codex Windsor RL 19073v) study not just muscles, but how gesture flows from intention. So when Cecilia’s elongated hand restrains the ermine, it is, I think, not a mistake in proportion, but a deliberate act of psychology: intellect rendered through anatomy.

Leonardo’s portraits think with their bodies, and through Cecilia’s hand, we glimpse a mind at work.

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New on PAFexplorer (link in bio): Lady with an Ermine. Leonardo da Vinci’s Subversion of Renaissance Portraiture.

Before the enigmatic smile of the Mona Lisa, there was Cecilia Gallerani, turning, thoughtful, alive. Lady with an Ermine (c. 1489–90) already shows Leonardo’s radical break from convention: not only a dynamic pose, but a dialogue between sitter and symbol.

The contrast is striking. Behind Lisa Gherardini, a vast landscape unfolds, universalising her as timeless muse. Cecilia, however, is set against a darkened void, once a loggia, now overpainted, isolating her psychologically, binding her to the alert ermine in her arms.

Two portraits, two visions: one of eternal enigma, the other of fleeting motion.


 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 


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Cover of Mein Kampf

A book that should never be celebrated.

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Published on 18 July 1925, Mein Kampf fused personal grievance, pseudoscience, racial fantasy, and antisemitic poison.

It sold over 12 million copies by 1945.
Many didn’t read it. Too many did.
In 2025, as conspiracies and victimhood politics thrive, Mein Kampf remains disturbingly relevant. Not as history, but as warning.

**sm

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Bombed Berlin (Brandenburg Gate)

100 years since Mein Kampf was first published — and the ruins of Berlin remain its most damning legacy.

On 18 July 1925, Volume I of Mein Kampf was released.
The world ignored it. Twenty years later, the world burned.
This is not a date to mark with nostalgia, but with sober reflection.
Mein Kampf was more than rhetoric — it was a manual for racial war, wrapped in myth and hatred.