Leonardo's secret signature and Pollaiolo's hidden marks decoded

Massimo Giontella, a physician and researcher, reveals that Leonardo da Vinci's painting 'Il Musico' (The Musician) is actually a self-portrait signed with the cryptic acronym 'Can-An(g)', interpreted as 'Cantor Angelicus' (Angelic Singer). This signature was hidden in the sheet music held by the figure, who is not a professional musician but Leonardo himself, who performed with a silver lyre at the court of Ludovico il Moro in Milan in the early 1480s. Giontella also deciphers the double encrypted signatures of Antonio del Pollaiolo in the Villa di Rusciano in Florence. The villa, donated by the Florentine Republic to Federico da Montefeltro after the Volterra campaign, was renovated under Pollaiolo's architectural direction. Pollaiolo's signatures appear in a manuscript by Vespasiano da Bisticci commissioned by Jacopo Bracciolini for the Count of Urbino, and in a surviving frieze from the villa's chapel. The manuscript's incipit shows Florence from Porta a San Miniato, while the frieze features the Montefeltro ostrich emblem flanked by four small figs and putti holding clubs—Pollaiolo's personal symbols referencing his melancholic artistic temperament and his hero Hercules. Giontella has studied Pollaiolo for fifteen years with Riccardo Fubini, emeritus professor at the University of Florence.