Ha ha, angostura, that's funny. We are talking about Leonardo's The Virgin and Child with St. Anne and St. John the Baptist, right? Have a look here (621x842px) and there (701x1000 px).
You view little Jesus's arm as a penis (the heck whose penis should that be?). I however view Jesus's left arm as an arm, and on its end, where you see a glans, I see an opened(!) hand, the bland gesture of which underneath little John's chin is making the latter raise his eyes to Jesus's right hand that is giving him a blessing sign. (This ficti...

Ha ha, angostura, that's funny. We are talking about Leonardo's The Virgin and Child with St. Anne and St. John the Baptist, right? Have a look here (621x842px) and there (701x1000 px).
You view little Jesus's arm as a penis (the heck whose penis should that be?). I however view Jesus's left arm as an arm, and on its end, where you see a glans, I see an opened(!) hand, the bland gesture of which underneath little John's chin is making the latter raise his eyes to Jesus's right hand that is giving him a blessing sign. (This fictional composition is of significant christological symbolism, expressing how the hierarchical relationship between John and Jesus were to be seen, although Jesus began his work when John, as a charismatic prophet, was already taking great effect.)
That's what I see, and methinks that happens to be adequate to that what was supposed to bee seen in this draft of an altarpiece for the Florentine monastery of Santissima Annunziata, and not a male organ that is designed for biological reproduction. (Ha! The idea!)

You were so kind as to tell me something about pedantic pontification and about ivory towers and other forms of escapism. You didn't want to bite yourself, did you? You don't confuse disposition to omnipresent sexual fantasies with objectiveness, do you?
You may get your head out of the sand and view as penes whatever you want, for the sake of evolutionary advantage (); I prefer to see them where they really are (but that's admittedly not always nor necessarily an evolutionary advantage to me or somebody else ).

My...my, Johanna, guess I hit a nerve. If you read the rest of that article, you might understand that you see exactly what YOU were meant to see, from a very different world where you could either agree that fanatical repression was all sweetness and light, or you could be burnt alive for seeing the truth. That's the world of Leonardo and many other great thinkers like Copernicus and Galileo.
There was, however, an underground movement of those intellectually stifled called hermeticism. It was the precursor of modern science. It wanted to see reality a bit closer, unlike you who want to show it to me from farther away. These were real people, not plaster saints, and they often had a wicked...

My...my, Johanna, guess I hit a nerve. If you read the rest of that article, you might understand that you see exactly what YOU were meant to see, from a very different world where you could either agree that fanatical repression was all sweetness and light, or you could be burnt alive for seeing the truth. That's the world of Leonardo and many other great thinkers like Copernicus and Galileo.
There was, however, an underground movement of those intellectually stifled called hermeticism. It was the precursor of modern science. It wanted to see reality a bit closer, unlike you who want to show it to me from farther away. These were real people, not plaster saints, and they often had a wicked sense of humor, something fanatics completely lack. Over and out.

In again, angostura.
I see, making little Jesus's left arm a monster penis, in a draft for an altarpiece, was an expression of "an underground movement" which "was the precursor of modern science".
This is absurd idle speculation and defames Leonardo as a partial nincompoop.
Leaving this aside, I establish as a fact that our positions concerning the perception of things, converge in the end: What we see and as what we view it, depends on what we look for and how we see it. Albeit your wording, "you see exactly what YOU were meant to see" (sort of being either deceitfully bamboozled by the painter or brainwashed by the ruling system at the time of his), is critically askew. Are y...

In again, angostura.
I see, making little Jesus's left arm a monster penis, in a draft for an altarpiece, was an expression of "an underground movement" which "was the precursor of modern science".
This is absurd idle speculation and defames Leonardo as a partial nincompoop.
Leaving this aside, I establish as a fact that our positions concerning the perception of things, converge in the end: What we see and as what we view it, depends on what we look for and how we see it. Albeit your wording, "you see exactly what YOU were meant to see" (sort of being either deceitfully bamboozled by the painter or brainwashed by the ruling system at the time of his), is critically askew. Are you reading coffee grounds?

The best mysteries defy all attempts at rational or mechanical explanation, because they require a deeper understanding.
(Your source)

Ave, oh thou merrily resurrecting esoteric, occult metaphysics!

If he [Leonardo] were around today he'd probably be drawing hemisected sketches of the Popcorn Trick.
(Your source)

This is but a revealing wish; believing it, "requires a deeper understanding" - namely of the movements in the depth of one's trousers.
A. Schopenhauer: "Jeder sieht am andern nur so viel, als er selbst auch ist."

Everyone wants miracles, treasure, scandal [...] so that which offers the most emotional satisfaction tends to win.
(Your source)

Yep.
A. Nin: "We don't see things as they are, we see them as we are."
J. Lubbock: "What we see depends mainly on what we look for."
Or,

as Leonardo might have said, 'Chi cerca trova' or seek and you shall find.
(Your source)

Dancing in a round is fun, sometimes.

A picture is a communication medium. The artist's visual vocabulary and the viewers' visual vocabulary are not necessarily congruous. The viewers' interpretations do not necessarily meet the artist's intentions, especially when - as in the case of Leonardo's cartoon The Virgin and Child with Saint Anne and Saint John the Baptist (National Gallery, London) - the object in question (it's a draft!) is partially not elaborated.

But, believe [url=http://www.informatik.uni-bremen.de/~...

Dancing in a round is fun, sometimes.

A picture is a communication medium. The artist's visual vocabulary and the viewers' visual vocabulary are not necessarily congruous. The viewers' interpretations do not necessarily meet the artist's intentions, especially when - as in the case of Leonardo's cartoon The Virgin and Child with Saint Anne and Saint John the Baptist (National Gallery, London) - the object in question (it's a draft!) is partially not elaborated.

But, believe me or not: Jesus's arm is an arm, and his hand has nothing to do with John's (hidden) shoulder but with the latter's chin (don't you see four adumbrated fingers?).

Chi cerca trova (seek and you shall find).
-- 1) Jesus of Nazareth; 2) Leonardo da Vinci

Amen, I say unto you, "what we see depends mainly on what we look for." (J. Lubbock)
One's mind's eye creates one's ideas of the being. Sensual apperception is more than a mere recording: it's a projection from the inside to the outside.
I'm not against it. Not at all. I only wanted to call attention to it.

Thank you.

Thanks for jumping in thisnamecantbetaken.
To the question "...isn't Jesus' little arm just a kind of inkblot test?"...my response would be Yes and No.

Yes, because as Johanna has pointed out, there is no view without point of view.

No, because this is not a random pattern, it is a purposefully designed image by one of the world's greatest masters of visual ambiguity. He was also fascinated with the anatomy and function of the penis, and has left us many sketches of it, to say nothing of the many more that were destroyed.

As to why, your guess is as good as mine, however, I started by reading the article from the beginning and found plenty to think about and look up:

http://altr...

Thanks for jumping in thisnamecantbetaken.
To the question "...isn't Jesus' little arm just a kind of inkblot test?"...my response would be Yes and No.

Yes, because as Johanna has pointed out, there is no view without point of view.

No, because this is not a random pattern, it is a purposefully designed image by one of the world's greatest masters of visual ambiguity. He was also fascinated with the anatomy and function of the penis, and has left us many sketches of it, to say nothing of the many more that were destroyed.

As to why, your guess is as good as mine, however, I started by reading the article from the beginning and found plenty to think about and look up:

http://altreligion.about.com/library/davinci/bl_differentdvc.htm