Acta Biomed 2019; Vol. 90, N.

4: 526-532 DOI: 10.23750/abm.v90i4.7134 © Mattioli 1885

Debate

secret hand gestures in paintings

Davide Lazzeri1, Fabio Nicoli1,2, Yi Xin Zhang3
1
Plastic Reconstructive and Aesthetic Surgery, Villa Salaria Clinic, Rome, Italy; 2 Department of Plastic and Reconstructive
Surgery, University of Rome “Tor Vergata”, Rome, Italy; 3 Department of Plastic and Reconstructive Surgery, Shanghai Ninth
People’s Hospital, Shanghai JiaoTong University School of Medicine, Shanghai, China

Summary. During the Renaissance period, hands were as important a focus of attention as the face was,
because they were the only other visible area of the body. Hence, representation of the position of the hands
became a decorative element that was almost as important as the face. Thus, given its high visibility, hand
gestures in portraits and paintings have been one of the most effective ways of conveying secrets, codes and
messages. From the historical and religious perspective, hand signs in visual art may provide clues about the
underlying iconographical symbols. This paper will examine the eventual hidden meanings behind a peculiar
hand gesture that has been widely used by several painters. (www.actabiomedica.it)

Key words: hand gesture, art, hand, painting, signs

Introduction effective ways of conveying secrets, codes and messages

(1-4). From the historical and religious perspective,
The art of a particular period is a suitable subject hand signs in visual art may provide clues about the
of investigation for exploring the existence of con- underlying iconographical symbols. However, because
genital deformities or medical illness based on physi- the actual intentions of the artist cannot be confirmed
cal depictions in drawings, paintings and sculptures or in the absence of historical documentation, any discus-
peculiar gestures and symbolic hallmarks. According sion about this topic can be only speculative (4).
to deductions made based on the artists’ work, physical There is a peculiar hand gesture that is widely
depictions in artwork could be an artistic convention, a used by painters of several nationalities belonging to
hallmark of the artist’s school, intentional or inadvert- the Renaissance, Mannerism, Baroque and later artis-
ent depictions of a real disease that affected the sit- tic movements: It is an unnatural position of one or
ter, or symbolic/religious messages or iconographical both hands in which the third and fourth digits are
attributes. In particular, the meanings of secret hand held tight together, as if almost fused, resembling syn-
signs and their hidden messages in artworks have in- dactyly, and the second and fifth fingers are separated
trigued art experts since the Renaissance. from the central ones. So far, no one has attempted
During the Renaissance period, hands were as to understand the common meaning of this represen-
important a focus of attention as the face was, because tation. Therefore, the goal of this investigation is to
they were the only other visible area of the body. Hence, discuss the meanings of and to speculate about the
representation of the position of the hands became a reasons for the depiction of this unnatural finger posi-
decorative element that was almost as important as tion. Our investigation is specifically focused on the
the face. Thus, given its high visibility, hand gestures religious meaning and the cultural iconography or the
in portraits and paintings have been one of the most secret message conveyed by the hand posture.
Secret hand gestures in paintings 527

Here, we have studied this gesture in four differ-

ent unnatural gesture across hundreds of portraits by
more than eighty painters:
- The hand placed on the chest
- The hand placed on the flank
- The hand pointing upward to the sky or downward
to the earth in a blessing position
- The hand grasping an object or holding a person.

Materials

This position can be observed in the works of sev-

eral artists, including masters such as Titian, Pontormo,
Bronzino, Raphal Santi, Michelangelo Buonarroti, El
Greco, Raphael Mengs, Juan de Juanes, and among
other painters across countries and centuries. Eight
portraits constitute the subject of this review, and they
were used as an explicative example, with particular fo-
cus on the hands of the models (Figure 1 to Figure 8).

Results
Figure 1. Cosimo I de’ Medici, 1538, Jacopo Carrucci aka Pontor-
mo, Tempera on panel, 95.6x74.9 cm, Metropolitan Museum,
Based on the authors’ experience in the medico-
New York
artistic field (4-11), we think that the unnatural hand
position in all the portrayed subjects is most probably
an artistic device or a symbolic hallmark rather than 1. Crypto-Jew (Marranos) recognition
a true pathologic depiction of syndactyly, given that
the occurrence rate of syndactyly is not very high and According to this hypothesis, the gesture was a
that the symbol is repeatedly used in the work of cer- secret sign used to recognize crypto-jews each other.
tain artists. Although the idea that this gesture may be During the time of inquisition according to the Catho-
a content-laden symbol, a secret physical (hand) sign lic Kings’ order of 1492, Jews living in Iberian Penin-
conveying a higher meaningful idea is fascinating, the sula were forced to accept or to leave Spain. Many Jews,
present investigation has the purpose to dismiss the although converted, continued to practice Judaism in
gesture to an uncommon oddity. secret, especially in the judería, which was the old Jew-
ish barrio (neighbourhood) of Toledo. These last Jews
Hypotheses and criticism about the hand gesture were called crypto-Jews or Marranos, which means
Christianized Jew, swine, or pig in medieval Spanish.
The hand gesture that we systematically identi- The derogatory term was used to refer to the ritual
fied is not present in any of the art manuals, symbol- prohibition against eating pork, which was adhered
ism guidelines, religious books, sects, or secret societies to by both Jews and Muslims. In the modern Spanish
in both the western and eastern world. Therefore, five language, Marrano still means pig or dirty, but it is no
basic hypotheses have been proposed to decipher the longer commonly connoted with religious contents.
meaning of the hand gesture. They are discussed and Oppenhejm in his book suggested that the hand
dismissed below. gesture was a type of a 16th century secret sign used in
528 D. Lazzeri, F. Nicoli, Y.X. Zhang

Figure 3. Penitent Magdalene, 1533, Titian Vecellio, oil on

wood, 85x68 cm, Galleria Palatina, Rome
Figure 2. Christ carrying the cross, 1577-87, Domenikos Theo-
tokopoulos aka El Greco, Metropolitan Museum, New York

Toledo among the crypto-Jews (i.e. false Christians) to

recognize each other (12). Although this meaning of
the hand gesture may be associated with the sitters of
the Spanish painter of that time, a lot of criticism has
been raised because such signs/symbols are not illus-
trated or mentioned in any of the full-bodied Sephard-
ic and Kabbalistic manuscripts/books from this period
or their antecedents. Indeed, it would be unrealistic to
assume that all the Iberian (or those who worked there)
painters, such as El Greco, Luis El Divino Morales,
and Juan de Juanes, were Jewish or that their patrons Figure 4. Separation of Earth and Waters, 1511-12, Michelan-
and sitters were Jewish. In addition, the term Marrano gelo Buonarroti, fresco, 155x270 cm, Sistine Chapel, Rome
was mostly used in Toledo’s judería, and not all the
Spanish painters included in this investigation came rated from the fourth and the fifth fingers, conceiving
from there or were working there. Therefore, it is pos- a sort of fan also known as the Kohanic Blessing. This
sible that Oppenhejm confounded the gesture of the last symbol can be found carved on Jewish tombstones
hand (herein analysed) with the well-known symbol throughout Europe; for centuries, it has represented a
in which the thumbs with the second and third fingers cosmic symbol, and even in modern times, the gesture
of each hand are held touching each other and sepa- refers to ‘an ancient matriarchal sign for strength and
Secret hand gestures in paintings 529

Figure 6. Posthumous portrait of Christopher Columbus, Sebas-

Figure 5. El caballero de la mano en el pecho (Gentleman with his tiano del Piombo, 1519, Metropolitan Museum of Art, New
Hand on his Chest), 1580, Domenikos Theotokopoulos aka El York. Someone consider Colombo a Jewish. [Marrano Jewish
Greco, oil on canvas, Museo del Prado, Madrid explorer, aided by Marranos Louis de Santangel and Antonio
de Marchena]

power’ (13, 14). Finally, there is no letter or religious a freemasonry’s conveyed code is fascinating, but it is
gesture, Hebrew or otherwise, similar to the splayed hard to accept.
hand. Therefore, the stylized gesture of the hand in-
vestigated in this paper is actually non-existent in the 3. Satanism (multiple V ’s and I’s for 666)
known Hebrew tradition of the 16th century, whereas
the gesture of the Kohanic blessing existed for cen- According to this hypothesis, the gesture was a
turies prior to that period. Thus, the hypothesis of a secret sign conveying satanic meanings. The hand ges-
widespread depiction of Marranos’ hand recognition ture may be read as the letters M and W, which may
sign in several portraits seems inconsistent. be interpreted as multiple V’s and I’s to symbolise 666.
This is because the letter V is pronounced as ‘waw’ in
2. Freemasonry or Masonic membership and rank Hebrew and ‘vav’ in Gematria and is the 6th letter in
both alphabets. However, there is no evidence to show
According to this hypothesis, the gesture was a that Renaissance, Mannerist and Baroque art had any
secret sign used to recognize masonic followers each connection with Satanism.
other. The enigmatic posture of the hand has fasci-
nated a lot of scholars of hidden societies, who cryp- 4. De’ Medici family membership
tically connoted the unusual splayed fingers with the
letter M, which indicated not only Masonic member- According to this hypothesis, the gesture was a
ship and rank, but also possession of occult secrets. The secret sign used to recognize a sitter as a member of
speculation that the hand gesture herein presented is the De’ Medici family. In portraits of Cosimo and
530 D. Lazzeri, F. Nicoli, Y.X. Zhang

5. Ignacio de Loyola’s gesture for the atonement of sins

According to this hypothesis, the gesture was a

sign with a religious meaning used during the spiritual
exercises by Jesuits. San Ignacio de Loyola (Figure
7) founded the Jesuits’ Order in 1541 and became its
first Superior General. The Saint used to recommend
a gesture for believers in his spiritual exercises: ‘each
time one falls into sin, in laying the hand on the breast
whilst inciting one’s inner self to grief.’ (15). After
analysing the paintings of one of the painters herein
referenced (El Greco), Cassou in 1934 proposed that
the painter wanted to depict the gesture with the hand
placed on the chest as a sign of moral pain in sinners
who were in the act of committing a sin (16). Later
on, Veronica de Osa embraced the same hypothesis in
her novel, The mystic finger symbol of El Greco (1956)

Figure 7. Portrait of Saint Ignatius of Loyola, 1491-1556

his family by Bronzino, each are shown making the

distinct hand gesture resembling an M. Some ar-
gue that this sign indicates their membership in the
Medici family. However, this gesture is not uniquely
depicted in members of the Medici family. In fact, it
is more likely that the gesture conveyed modesty. In-
deed, this gesture can be observed in the ‘modest Venus’
(also known as Venus Pudica and later popularized as
Medici Venus) (Figure 9), which is a 1st century BC
marble copy of a an original bronze Greek sculpture
depicting the Greek goddess of love Aphrodite. Some
scholars argue that the gesture seen in the Medici
portraits may be an allusion to this modesty. The
widespread depiction of the gesture in portraits of
the de Medici family created by Bronzino (Figure 8)
and the paintings of artists that followed makes this Figure 8. Portrait of Maria de’ Medici, 1553, Agnolo di Cosimo
speculation interesting, but it is hard to accept it as a Tori aka Bronzino, tempera on canvas, 52.5x38 cm, Galleria de-
unifying explanation. gli Uffizi, Florence, Italy
Secret hand gestures in paintings 531

(17). However, this speculation does not explain the

widespread presence of the gesture in paintings. The
‘Spiritual Exercises’ of Loyola was published in the
middle of the 16th century (1548), at which time some
of the painters had already depicted their sitters with
that hand gesture. It may be interesting to accept the
Loyolan theory for this gesture, in the case of artists
who incorporated this hand gesture after the publica-
tion of Jesuit rules, but the hypothesis is still weak.
The description of the penitent gesture by Saint
Ignacio does not specify at all the position of the fin-
gers, but it only deals with placing the hand upon the
chest. In addition, Loyola warned against the display
of the act of penance in public: it could be done ‘even
in the presence of many others but without their per-
ceiving what the sinner is doing’. Therefore, it would be
unlikely that the sitter displayed the act of penance in a
painting because it was prohibited outdoors according
to Loyolan laws. Further, based on the universal appli-
cation of the hand gesture in the artworks of so many
painters, it seems unlikely that they are trying to depict
the same spiritual sense or feeling of penitence. An-
other speculation that goes against this hypothesis is
that many painters have depicted this stylized gesture
in Christ, the Virgin, and other figures of Saints, too.
However, it is not likely that they would depict such
a gesture symbolizing suffering and regret for sinning
among non-sinning deities. Thus, it seems unrealistic
to label the hand gesture herein investigated as a Loy-
olan content-label symbol.

Discussion

The present retrospective investigation tried to

shed light on the reasons why a peculiar hand gesture re-
sembling syndactyly was depicted in hundreds of paint-
ings by various artists, including the great masters, such
as Titian, Bronzino, El Greco, Parmigianino, François
Clouet, Hans Memling, Anton Raphael Mengs and
Luis el Divino Morales, who adopted this sign in doz-
ens of portraits produced by them (Figures 1-8).
An inaccurate depiction of the model inadvert-
Figure 9. Venus de’ Medici or Medici Venus depicting the Greek ently drawn by an artist seems unlikely given their
goddess of love Aphrodite. Copy of a 1st-century BC marble high reputation and because of the large number of
copy, perhaps made in Athens, of a bronze original Greek sculp- paintings in which the same hand gesture has been
ture. Uffizi Gallery, Florence, Italy
532 D. Lazzeri, F. Nicoli, Y.X. Zhang

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Received: 24 February 2018
Conflict of interest: Each author declares that he or she has no Accepted: 6 April 2018
commercial associations (e.g. consultancies, stock ownership, equity Correspondence:
interest, patent/licensing arrangement etc.) that might pose a con-
flict of interest in connection with the submitted article Davide Lazzeri, M.D.
Plastic Reconstructive and Aesthetic Surgery,
Villa Salaria Clinic, Rome, Italy
E-mail address: [email protected]