Let A=(aij) be an orthogonal matrix (over R or C) with no entries zero. Let B= (bij) be the matrix defined by bij= 1/ai j. M. Kontsevich conjectured that the rank of B is never equal to three. We interpret this conjecture geometrically and prove it. The geometric statement can be understood as variants of the Castelnuovo lemma and Brianchon‘s theorem.