We humans are fans of babies, of any kind. No matter how fearsome the species they become as adults (polar bear or grizzly, leopard or lion), they seduce us with their cute curiosity as babies.

Their playfulness is the trait of baby animals that we humans find so endearing. We recognize the antics of baby animals as those of our own babies and we are programmed to love babies.

Before our human offspring, the young of other animals lose that sense of pleasure of jumping and spinning simply by being alive. All too soon, they must get down to the serious business of eating, fighting or fleeing those who would eat them, and finding mates to fill the world with copies of themselves.

Of course, our lives follow the same basic schedule and most of us ‘grow up’ soon enough and leave the joy of youth behind. Not all of us, however. The ones who never lose that sense of play are the adults we call Artists and scientists. The labels divide these people into two camps, but their members share a common motivator: curiosity.

For scientists, the question is ‘Why is this so?’

For artists, it’s ‘What if…?

I was lucky enough to have landed for life in one of these camps, although had circumstances permitted, I think I would have been just as happy in the other. About thirty years ago, I had a very rare flash of what seemed like a brilliant intuition. I was in a field form outside of my skill base.

It was a proposal for an exchange particle that might be a useful addition to current theories of how gravity works. Although I had no training in this area, it seemed like a likely line of investigation. I thought if I came up with this, surely people in the field must be working on it and really wanted to know what progress was being made.

How could I dare enter the debate? Who would listen? I dared. I wrote to the Director of Physics at the university in my state capital with a summary of my crazy idea and how he had achieved it. In fact, he answered him, telling me about the experiments that were being carried out all over the world to find such a particle. Physicists had already given the elusive particle a name: the Graviton.

It’s happening to me again, a ‘Emperor’s New Clothes’ moment. This time it is an idea that fits within my own field of Painting. However, this time, I am completely at a loss as to how to test it. You see, it is a mysterious work recently identified as the work of that imposing genius and trickster, Leonardo Da Vinci.

Since it is no longer physically possible for me to travel to see the original, I can only reflect on the printed reproductions of the painting titled Salvator Mundi.

So, in hopes of getting an answer from someone who can enlighten me, I’m throwing my possibly ridiculous thought into the ether of cyberspace. Here it goes:

In all the reports I have read, the experts refer to an object held in the left hand of the Jesus figure as a “globe” or as a crystal “sphere”, representing the world. In my view, this is clearly a round lens, like the one that is a component of the camera obscura, which Leonardo described in his notebooks and is now believed to have been used to make the Shroud of Turin.

Could this glass object be the playful clue he left, in plain sight, for another one of his cryptic pranks on us all?