Colorado Rep., Teacher Clash Over ‘Gender Fluid’ Da Vinci Lesson

A Colorado state representative is pushing back at her 15-year-old son’s high school history teacher for suggesting that the artist Leonardo da Vinci was “gender fluid” and that his painting of the Mona Lisa was a self-portrait.

“My 15-year-old’s HISTORY teacher told her students that Leonardo DaVinci was gender fluid and that the Mona Lisa was a depiction of his feminine side,” GOP Rep. Brandi Bradley of Littleton said on her X page earlier this week, reports The New York Post Saturday.

She added that “tonight is back to school night and she has no idea what kind of mama bear is coming for her.”

Bradley went to the school opening event, where she approached the teacher to ask why the class had watched a movie with scholars claiming that the Italian Renaissance artist was “probably gay or whatever.”

The teacher, according to a recording Bradley made, said “One of the kids in the other class asked me what that meant, and so with bringing it up to the class the picture (the Mona Lisa) was a self-portrait, according to some scholars.”

The teacher said that the discussion was to show the difference between the Middle Ages and the Renaissance when artists “had the opportunity to create however they wanted and express themselves fully.”

A man then told the teacher that historians believe the painting was of Lisa del Giocondo, the wife of an Italian nobleman in the early 16th century, but the teacher said that was an “argument.”

“The recent works are showing and it’s supposed to be like the lore, but the recent scholars are saying that it was most likely a self-portrait and they have actual pictures of him and they can go behind the things to see the structure of the skin, the eyes, and actual features now,” the teacher responded.

For centuries, mystery has surrounded the identity of the Mona Lisa painting, which has hung in the Louvre in Paris since the 1700s.

Speculation has ranged from the painting being of the Italian noblewoman to da Vinci’s own mother, and some scholars have believed for years that the painting could indeed be a self-portrait of the artist, reports NBC News back in 2010, when efforts were being made to press French authorities to allow what was believed to be da Vinci’s remains to be exhumed.

There have also been historians who used digital analysis processes that superimposed da Vinci’s bearded self-portrait over that of the Mona Lisa, showing how the facial features aligned.

Bradley, meanwhile, asked to see which videos had been approved for the class, as she did not know “that I want my 15-year-old knowing what gender fluidity is.”

She added that her family has a “very biblical worldview” and she wondered “how inclusive” her “Christian conservative child feels in this room” as there were “LGBTQ [flags] everywhere.

The educator told Bradley that her views of the situation were incorrect, and that the videos explained how people can have a “more masculine and feminine side.”

Bradley claimed that she’s “never in her life” heard the story that da Vinci, also the painter of The Last Supper, was gender-fluid and said she’s “spoken to world scholars in history.”Bradley was first elected to represent Colorado’s 39th district in 2022. She will face Democrat Eric Brody in the Nov. 5 general election.