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This paper argues that Freud saw a link between psychoanalytic interpretation and crime, or at least thought that interpretation had to be as radical as possible and entail the possibility of criminal transgression. This thesis, exposed to Pfister, underpins his famous interpretation of Michelangelo’s Moses, and has consequences for his psychobiography of Leonardo da Vinci. It was inevitable that Pfister should then follow his master and see a vulture in Leonardo’s Saint Anne painting where there is none. Such a hermeneutic drift will be contextualized theoretically through Walter Benjamin’s analysis of artworks, based on a dialectic of aura and traces. We look for clues to find a narrative that makes auratic work more accessible, which is why Freud may seem close to contemporary crime authors like Dan Brown. However, Freud’s “Da Vinci code” has a major difference: psychoanalytic efforts at interpretation do not aim to make us more obtuse, but more actively aware of our own sexualized genesis.