Self-Portrait by Leonardo da Vinci
One of the world's most famous self-portraits is going on rare public display in the northern Italian city of Turin. Very little is known about the 500-year-old, fragile, fading red chalk drawing of Leonardo da Vinci but some believe it has mystical powers.
There is a myth in Turin that the gaze of Leonardo da Vinci in this self-portrait is so intense that those who observe it are imbued with great strength.
Some say it was this magical power, not the cultural and economic value of the drawing, that led to it being secretly moved from Turin and taken to Rome during World War Two - heaven forbid it should ever fall into Hitler's hands and give him more power.
Whatever the reason, this was the only work from the entire collection of precious drawings and manuscripts to be removed from the Royal Library in Turin at the time.
The library's current director, Giovanni Saccani, says nobody even knows exactly where it was hidden. "To prevent the Nazis from taking it, an intelligence operation saw it transported in absolute anonymity to Rome."
Under such difficult circumstances, preservation was not properly considered, "nor did they have the same knowledge and techniques back then," says Saccani. "Naturally, this did not do its condition any good."
Inside the Royal Library a pristine red carpet lines the stairs - we follow the steps down to a secure underground vault with reinforced doors.
This purpose built caveau has been the home of Leonard's
Self-Portrait, and thousands of other priceless drawings and manuscripts, since 1998. The picture's treatment today could not contrast more strikingly with the neglect it suffered during the first half of the 20th Century.
Comment: The irony here is that the very professions involved in this experiment - police officers, state officials, military officers - are full of psychopaths. So Hogg's suggestion, "extraordinary" and "bizarre" as it may appear to someone like Hennessy, is actually not that far from the truth. The problem is that psychopaths' lack of feelings for others is NOT an advantage. That's what they would like us to believe, and there has been a disinformation campaign for years to put these ideas in the public's awareness. But as Andrew Lobaczewski shows in Political Ponerology, psychopaths are anything but good in such situations; they make life intolerable for everyone else.