Architectonics of dress

The photographs are illustrate the wording in red italics.

There are three items of dress which may join the allegorical nature of the things in the painting. There is, first, the gold button which in a discreet way may indicate loyalty. If we are dealing with Mary Tudor in 1537, she has just agreed that she is illegitimate and so not royal, so discretion is the order of the day.

She carries what I assume is a watch (which is dented). If truth is the daughter of time, then truth is also the mother of a time, an order, a civilisation that lives in truth. The watch may be a sort of small globe representing a gathering of man in time living by truth – in Christendom amended and restored.

The third item worth noting is the slightly strange arrangement around the lady’s neck. There appear to be four laces whereas I suspect there are only two. One lace terminating more exactly than one would expect appears to make two buttocks out of Mary’s flesh. One other, also terminating exactly, may indicate an arm. Two others in synchronisation not to be expected may make another arm. An embryonic head is created by the lady’s ruff. We are dealing perhaps with man in embryo.

Several people looking at the picture have noted this. It was Leonardo who set the complete man in a geometric pattern. The lady stands on the floor with a geometric pattern. If this is the same pattern Leonardo used, this would be confirmatory that the work with the laces and with the clock is envisaging a new age. The golden button indicates power maybe.

The circumference of the watch equals the side of the square, so that if you put the shape of the watch in the square you get Leonardo’s shape in which he portrayed the perfection of the human form, a circle in a square.