The three essays illustrate  that when confronting classical themes without cultural conditioning but only simply analyzing the images using the relative historical-biographical knowledge, certain images of Leonardo begin to appear in a new, very different, or surprising way, from that proposed by official critics. The first essay shows how two well known designs, thought to be studies of faces by Leonardo, are none other than sketches for a costume party organized by the painter and well documented with the theme of Homini salvatichi, wild men.

The second essay concerns two sketches of old bearded men that critics considered to be self portraits of Leonardo based on the theory of auto-miming. Assuming these as work hypothesis  we notice in the sketches a strange conformation of  the upper border of the ear, folded in an unusual way. Thus one can guess that finding portraits with that same ear conformation would be portraits of the painter when he still did not have a beard. The discovery of such images, when all the other physical traits coincided, would allow us to see the real face of Leonardo.