The painting by Leonardo da Vinci "Mona Lisa" is the first thing tourists from any country associate with the Louvre. This is the most famous and mysterious work of painting in the history of world art. Her mysterious smile still makes people think and fascinate people who do not like or are not interested in painting. And the story of her abduction at the beginning of the 20th century turned the picture into a living legend. But first things first.
"Mona Lisa" is just an abbreviated name for the painting. In the original, it sounds like “Portrait of Mrs. Lisa Giocondo” (Ritratto di Monna Lisa del Giocondo). From Italian, the word ma donna is translated as "my lady." Over time, it turned into simply mona, from which the well-known name of the painting came.
The biographers of the artist's contemporaries wrote that he rarely took orders, but the Mona Lisa initially had a special story. He devoted himself to work with a special passion, spent almost all his time writing it and took it with him to France (Leonardo left Italy forever) along with other selected paintings.
It is known that the artist began the painting in 1503-1505, and only in 1516 he applied the last stroke, shortly before his death. According to the will, the painting was given to Leonardo's student, Salai. It remains unknown how the painting migrated back to France (most likely Francis I acquired it from Salai's heirs). During the time of Louis XIV, the painting moved to the Palace of Versailles, and after the French Revolution, the Louvre became its permanent home.
There is nothing special in the history of creation, the lady with a mysterious smile in the picture is of more interest. Who is she?
According to the official version, this is a portrait of Lisa del Giocondo, the young wife of Francesco del Giocondo, a prominent Florentine silk merchant. Very little is known about Lisa: she was born in Florence to a noble family. She married early and led a calm, measured life. Francesco del Giocondo was a great admirer of art and painting and patronized artists. It was he who came up with the idea to order a portrait of his wife in honor of the birth of their first child. There is a hypothesis that Leonardo was in love with Lisa. This can explain his special attachment to the picture and the long time he worked on it.
This is surprising, almost nothing is known about the life of Liza herself, and her portrait is the main work of world painting.
But contemporary historians of Leonardo are not so unambiguous. According to Giorgio Vasari, the model could be Caterina Sforza (representative of the ruling dynasty of the Italian Renaissance, considered the main woman of that era), Cecilia Gallerani (lover of Duke Ludovik Sforza, model of another portrait of a genius - “Lady with an Ermine”), the artist’s mother, Leonardo himself , a young man in women's attire and just a portrait of a woman - the standard of beauty of the Renaissance.
The canvas of a small size depicts a woman of medium size, in a dark cloak (according to historians - a sign of widowhood), sitting half-turned. Like other Italian Renaissance portraits, the Mona Lisa lacks eyebrows and shaves the top of her forehead. Most likely, the model posed on the balcony, as the line of the parapet is visible. It is believed that the picture is slightly cut off, the columns visible behind were completely included in the original size.
It is believed that the composition of the painting is the standard of the portrait genre. It is painted according to all the laws of harmony and rhythm: the model is inscribed in a proportional rectangle, the wavy strand of hair is in tune with the translucent veil, and the folded hands give the picture a special compositional completeness.
This phrase has long been living separately from the picture, turning into a literary cliché. This is the main mystery and charm of the canvas. It attracts the attention of not only ordinary viewers and art historians, but also psychologists. For example, Sigmund Freud calls her smile "flirtatious". And a special look is “fleeting”.
Due to the fact that the artist liked to experiment with paints and painting techniques, the picture has darkened very much by now. And its surface is formed strong cracks. One of them is a millimeter above the head of the Mona Lisa. In the middle of the last century, the canvas was sent on a "tour" to museums in the United States and Japan. Museum of Fine Arts. A.S. Pushkin was lucky enough to host a masterpiece for the duration of the exhibition.
The painting was very highly regarded among Leonardo's contemporaries, but over the decades it has become forgotten. Until the 19th century, she was not remembered until the moment when the romantic writer Theophile Gauthier spoke about the “La Gioconda smile” in one of his literary works. Strange, but up to this point, this feature of the picture was simply called “pleasant” and there was no secret in it.
The painting gained real popularity among the general public in connection with its mysterious abduction in 1911. Newspaper hype around this story gained huge popularity for the picture. It was possible to find her only in 1914, where she was all this time - remains a mystery. Her abductor was Vinchezo Perugio, an employee of the Louvre, an Italian by nationality. The exact motives for the kidnapping are unknown, probably he wanted to bring the canvas to his historical homeland of Leonardo, Italy.
"Mona Lisa" still "lives" in the Louvre, she, as the main artistic prima, has been allocated a separate room in the museum. She suffered several times from vandalism, after which in 1956 she was placed in bulletproof glass. Because of this, it glares strongly, so it is sometimes problematic to see it. Nevertheless, it is she who attracts most visitors to the Louvre with her smile and fleeting glance.
Mona Lisa. Who is she? - article
The Mona Lisa (also known as the Mona Lisa) is a portrait of a young woman painted by the Italian painter Leonardo da Vinci around 1503. The painting is one of the most famous paintings in the world. Refers to the Renaissance. Exhibited in the Louvre (Paris, France).
In no other painting by Leonardo is the depth and haze of the atmosphere conveyed with such perfection as in Mona Lisa. This is an aerial perspective, probably the best in execution. "Mona Lisa" received worldwide fame, not only because of the quality of Leonardo's work, which impresses both art lovers and professionals. The painting has been studied by historians and copied by painters, but it would have long remained known only to connoisseurs of art, if not for its exceptional history. In 1911, the Mona Lisa was stolen and only three years later, thanks to a coincidence, was returned to the museum. During this time, "Mona Lisa" did not leave the covers of newspapers and magazines around the world. Therefore, it is not surprising that the Mona Lisa was copied more often than all other paintings. Since then, the painting has become an object of cult and worship, as a masterpiece of world classics.
The person depicted in the portrait is difficult to identify. Until today, many controversial and sometimes absurd opinions have been expressed on this subject:
The mystery that surrounds the stranger to this day attracts millions of visitors to the Louvre every year.
In 1517, Cardinal Louis of Aragon visited Leonardo at his atelier in France. The description of this visit was made by the secretary of Cardinal Antonio de Beatis: “On October 10, 1517, the monsignor and his ilk visited in one of the remote parts of Amboise visited sir Leonardo da Vinci, a Florentine, a gray-bearded old man who is over seventy years old, the most excellent artist of our time . He showed His Excellency three paintings: one depicting a Florentine lady, painted from nature at the request of Brother Lorenzo the Magnificent Giuliano de' Medici, another depicting St. John the Baptist in his youth, and the third depicting St. Anne with Mary and the Christ Child; all are supremely beautiful. From the master himself, due to the fact that at that time his right hand was paralyzed, it was no longer possible to expect new good works.
According to some researchers, "a certain Florentine lady" means "Mona Lisa". It is possible, however, that this was a different portrait, from which neither evidence nor copies have been preserved, as a result of which Giuliano Medici could not have had anything to do with Mona Lisa.
According to Giorgio Vasari (1511-1574), author of biographies of Italian artists, Mona Lisa (short for Madonna Lisa) was the wife of a Florentine named Francesco del Giocondo (Italian Francesco del Giocondo), whose portrait Leonardo spent four years, still leaving its unfinished.
Vasari expresses a very laudatory opinion about the quality of this picture: “Any person who wants to see how well art can imitate nature can easily be convinced of this by the example of the head, because here Leonardo reproduced all the details ... The eyes are filled with brilliance and moisture, like living people ... Delicate pink nose seems real. The red tone of the mouth harmoniously matches the complexion ... Whoever looked closely at her neck, it seemed to everyone that her pulse was beating ... ". He also explains the slight smile on her face: "Leonardo allegedly invited musicians and clowns to entertain a lady bored from a long posing."
This story may be true, but, most likely, Vasari simply added it to Leonardo's biography for the entertainment of readers. Vasari's description also contains an accurate description of the eyebrows missing from the painting. This inaccuracy could arise only if the author described the picture from memory or from the stories of others. The painting was well known among art lovers, although Leonardo left Italy for France in 1516, taking the painting with him. According to Italian sources, it has since been in the collection of the French King Francis I, but it remains unclear when and how he acquired it and why Leonardo did not return it to the customer.
Vasari, who was born in 1511, could not see the Mona Lisa with his own eyes and was forced to refer to information given by the anonymous author of the first biography of Leonardo. It is he who writes about the uninfluential silk merchant Francesco Giocondo, who commissioned a portrait of his third wife, Lisa, from the artist. Despite the words of this anonymous contemporary, many researchers still doubt the possibility that the Mona Lisa was written in Florence (1500-1505). The refined technique indicates a later creation of the painting. In addition, at that time Leonardo was so busy working on the Battle of Anghiari that he even refused Princess Isabella d'Este to accept her order. Could then a simple merchant persuade the famous master to paint a portrait of his wife?
It is also interesting that in his description, Vasari admires Leonardo's talent for conveying physical phenomena, and not the similarity between model and painting. It seems that this physical feature of the masterpiece left a deep impression among the visitors of the artist's studio and reached Vasari almost fifty years later.
A careful analysis of the composition leads to the conclusion that Leonardo did not seek to create an individual portrait. "Mona Lisa" became the implementation of the ideas of the artist, expressed by him in his treatise on painting. Leonardo's approach to his work has always been scientific. Therefore, the Mona Lisa, which he spent many years creating, became beautiful, but at the same time inaccessible and insensitive way. She seems voluptuous and cold at the same time. Despite the fact that Jaconda's gaze is directed at us, a visual barrier has been created between us and her - a chair handle acting as a partition. Such a concept excludes the possibility of an intimate dialogue, as, for example, in the portrait of Baltasar Castiglione (exhibited in the Louvre, Paris), painted by Raphael about ten years later. However, our gaze constantly returns to her illuminated face, surrounded as a frame by dark, hidden under a transparent veil, hair, shadows on her neck and a dark smoky landscape in the background. Against the backdrop of distant mountains, the figure gives the impression of being monumental, although the size of the picture is small (77x53 cm). This monumentality, inherent in sublime divine beings, keeps us mere mortals at a respectful distance and at the same time makes us unsuccessfully strive for the unattainable. Not without reason, Leonardo chose the position of the model, very similar to the positions of the Mother of God in Italian paintings of the 15th century. Additional distance is created by the artificiality that arises from the flawless sfumato effect (rejection of clear outlines in favor of creating an airy impression). It must be assumed that Leonardo actually completely freed himself from portrait resemblance in favor of creating the illusion of an atmosphere and a living breathing body with the help of a plane, paints and a brush. For us, Gioconda will forever remain Leonardo's masterpiece.
Mona Lisa would have long been known only to connoisseurs of fine art, if not for her exceptional history, which made her world famous.
From the beginning of the sixteenth century, the painting, acquired by Francis I after the death of Leonardo, remained in the royal collection. Since 1793 it has been placed in the Central Museum of Art in the Louvre. Mona Lisa has always remained in the Louvre as one of the assets of the national collection. On August 21, 1911, the painting was stolen by an employee of the Louvre, the Italian mirror master Vincenzo Perugia (Italian: Vincenzo Peruggia). The purpose of this kidnapping is not clear. Perhaps Perugia wanted to return the Gioconda to its historical homeland. The painting was found only two years later in Italy. Moreover, the thief himself was to blame for this, responding to an ad in a newspaper and offering to sell the Gioconda. In the end, on January 1, 1914, the painting returned to France.
In the twentieth century, the picture almost did not leave the Louvre, visiting the USA in 1963 and Japan in 1974. Trips only consolidated the success and fame of the picture.
According to Wikipedia
Leonardo da Vinci. Portrait of Lisa Gherardini, wife of Francesco del Giocondo (Mona Lisa or Gioconda). 1503-1519. Louvre, Paris.
Mona Lisa by Leonardo da Vinci is the most mysterious painting. Because she is very popular. When there is so much attention, an incredible amount of secrets and conjectures appear.
So I could not resist trying to unravel one of these mysteries. No, I will not look for encrypted codes. I will not solve the mystery of her smile.
I'm concerned about something else. Why does the description of the Mona Lisa portrait by Leonardo's contemporaries not match what we see in the portrait from the Louvre? Is there really a portrait of Lisa Gherardini, the wife of the silk merchant Francesco del Giocondo, hanging in the Louvre? And if this is not the Mona Lisa, then where is the real Gioconda kept?
The fact that the Louvre Gioconda was written by himself, almost no one doubts. It is in this portrait that the sfumato method invented by the master (very subtle transitions from light to shadow) is revealed to the maximum. A barely perceptible haze, shading the lines, makes the Mona Lisa almost alive. It looks like her lips are about to part. She will sigh. The chest will rise.
Few could compete with Leonardo in creating such realism. Except that . But in applying the sfumato method, he was still inferior to him.
Even compared to earlier portraits of Leonardo himself, the Louvre Mona Lisa is an obvious progress.
Leonardo da Vinci. Left: Portrait of Ginerva Benci. 1476 Washington National Gallery. Middle: Lady with an ermine. 1490 Czartoryski Museum, Krakow. Right: Mona Lisa. 1503-1519 Louvre, Paris
There is no doubt about the authorship of Leonardo. But is it right to call the lady in the Louvre the Mona Lisa? Anyone may have doubts about this. It is enough to read the description of the portrait, a younger contemporary of Leonardo da Vinci. Here is what he wrote in 1550, 30 years after the death of the master:
“Leonardo undertook to complete for Francesco del Giocondo a portrait of Mona Lisa, his wife, and after working on it for four years, left it incomplete ... the eyes have that shine and that moisture that are usually seen in a living person ... Eyebrows could not be more natural: hair growing densely in one place and less often in another, in accordance with the pores of the skin ... Mouth slightly open with edges connected by the redness of the lips ... Mona Lisa was very beautiful ... the smile was given so pleasant that it seems as if you are contemplating a divine rather than a human being ... ”
Notice how many of the details in Vasari's description do not match the Mona Lisa in the Louvre.
At the time of writing the portrait, Lisa was no more than 25 years old. The Mona Lisa from the Louvre is clearly older. This is a lady who is over 30-35 years old.
Vasari also talks about eyebrows. Which the Mona Lisa doesn't have. However, this can be attributed to poor restoration. There is a version that they were erased due to unsuccessful cleaning of the painting.
Leonardo da Vinci. Mona Lisa (detail). 1503-1519
Scarlet lips with a parted mouth are completely absent from the Louvre portrait.
One can also argue about the lovely smile of a divine being. Not everyone sees it that way. It is sometimes even compared with the smile of a self-confident predator. But this is a matter of taste. The beauty of Mona Lisa mentioned by Vasari can also be argued.
The main thing is that the Louvre Mona Lisa is completely finished. Vasari claims that the portrait was left unfinished. Now that's a serious inconsistency.
So if the Mona Lisa isn't hanging in the Louvre, where is it?
I know of at least three portraits that fit Vasari's description much better. In addition, they were all created in the same years as the Louvre portrait.
Unknown artist (student of Leonardo da Vinci). Mona Lisa. 1503-1519
This Mona Lisa received little attention until 2012. Until one day the restaurateurs cleared the black background. And about a miracle! Under the dark paint was a landscape - an exact copy of the Louvre background.
Pradovskaya Mona Lisa is 10 years younger than her rival from the Louvre. Which corresponds to the real age of the real Lisa. She is prettier on the outside. She has eyebrows after all.
However, the experts did not claim the title of the main picture of the world. They acknowledged that the work was done by one of Leonardo's students.
Thanks to this work, we can imagine what the Louvre Mona Lisa looked like 500 years ago. After all, the portrait from the Prado is much better preserved. Due to Leonardo's constant experiments with paints and varnish, Mona Lisa darkened very much. Most likely, she once also wore a red dress, and not a golden brown dress.
Francesco Melzi. Flora (Columbine). 1510-1515 , St. Petersburg
Flora fits Vasari's description very well. Young, very beautiful, with an unusually pleasant smile of scarlet lips.
In addition, this is how Melzi himself described the favorite work of his teacher Leonardo. In his correspondence, he calls her Gioconda. The painting, he said, depicted a girl of incredible beauty with a Columbine flower in her hand.
However, we do not see her “wet” eyes. In addition, it is unlikely that Signor Giocondo would allow his wife to pose with bare breasts.
So why does Melzi call her Mona Lisa? After all, it is this name that leads some experts to the idea that the real Mona Lisa is not in the Louvre, but in.
There may have been confusion over the 500 years. From Italian "Gioconda" is translated as "Merry". Maybe that's what the students and Leonardo himself called his Flora. But it so happened that this word coincided with the name of the customer of the portrait, Giocondo.
Unknown artist (Leonardo da Vinci?). Isleworth Mona Lisa. 1503-1507 Private collection
This portrait was opened to the general public about 100 years ago. An English collector bought it from the Italian owners in 1914. They allegedly had no idea what treasure they possess.
A version was put forward that this is the same Mona Lisa that Leonardo painted to order for Signor Giocondo. But he didn't finish it.
It is also assumed that the Mona Lisa that hangs in the Louvre, Leonardo already painted in 10 years. Already for himself. Based on the already familiar image of Signora Giocondo. For the sake of their own pictorial experiments. So that no one interferes with him and does not demand a picture.
The version looks plausible. In addition, the Isleworth Mona Lisa is just unfinished. He wrote about this. Pay attention to how undeveloped the woman's neck and the landscape behind her are. She also looks younger than her Louvre rival. As if really the same woman was portrayed with a difference of 10-15 years.
The version is very interesting. If not for one big BUT. The Isleworth Mona Lisa was painted on canvas. Whereas Leonardo da Vinci wrote only on the blackboard. Including the Louvre Mona Lisa.
Maybe the real Mona Lisa hangs in the Louvre. And Vasari described it too inaccurately. And Leonardo has nothing to do with the three paintings.
However, in the 20th century, there was one incident that still makes one doubt that the real Mona Lisa hangs in the Louvre.
In August 1911 the Mona Lisa disappeared from the museum. She was looking for 3 years. Until the criminal gave himself away in the most stupid way. Placed an advertisement in the newspaper for the sale of the painting. A collector came to see the painting and realized that the person who advertised was not crazy. Under his mattress, in fact, the Mona Lisa was gathering dust.
Louvre. Crime scene photo (Mona Lisa disappeared). 1911
The perpetrator turned out to be Italian Vincenzo Perugia. He was a glazier and an artist. Worked for several weeks at the Louvre on glass protective boxes for paintings.
According to him, patriotic feelings woke up in him. He decided to return to Italy the painting stolen by Napoleon. For some reason, he was sure that all the paintings of the Italian masters of the Louvre were stolen by this dictator.
The story is very suspicious. Why didn't he let me know about himself for 3 years? It is possible that he or his client needed time to make a copy of the Mona Lisa. As soon as the copy was ready, the thief made an announcement which was apparently to lead to his arrest. By the way, they sentenced him to a ridiculous term. Less than a year later, Perugia was already free.
So it may well be that the Louvre got back a very high quality forgery. By that time, they had already learned how to artificially age paintings and pass them off as originals.
Louvre workers do not call the most famous portrait of the world Mona Lisa. Among themselves, they designate her as the “Florentine Lady”. Apparently, many of them are sure that she was hardly the wife of Signor Giocondo. So the real Mona Lisa is somewhere else..?
Read about other titans of painting in the article “
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Plot
This is a portrait of Mrs. Lisa del Giocondo. Her husband, a fabric merchant from Florence, loved his third wife very much, and therefore the portrait was commissioned from Leonardo himself.
"Mona Lisa". (wikimedia.org)
The woman is sitting on the balcony. It is believed that initially the picture could have been wider and accommodated two side columns of the loggia, from which two bases of columns remain at the moment.
One of the mysteries is whether Lisa del Giocondo is really depicted on the canvas. There is no doubt that this woman lived at the turn of the 15th and 16th centuries. However, some researchers believe that Leonardo painted the portrait from several models. Be that as it may, the result was the image of the ideal woman of that era.
How can one not recall the story that was common at one time about what the doctors saw in the portrait. Doctors of various specialties analyzed the picture in their own way. And in the end, they “found” so many illnesses in Gioconda that it’s generally incomprehensible how this woman could live.
By the way, there is a hypothesis that the model was not a woman, but a man. This, of course, adds to the mystery of the history of the Mona Lisa. Especially if you compare the picture with another work by da Vinci - "John the Baptist", in which the young man is endowed with the same smile as the Mona Lisa.
"John the Baptist". (wikimedia.org)
The landscape behind the Mona Lisa seems mystical, like the embodiment of dreams. It does not distract our attention, does not allow our eyes to wander. On the contrary, such a landscape makes us completely immerse ourselves in the contemplation of the Mona Lisa.
Da Vinci painted the portrait for several years. Despite the fee paid in full, the Giocondo family never received the order - the artist simply refused to give the canvas. Why is unknown. And when da Vinci left Italy for France, he took the painting with him, where he sold it for a very large sum of money to King Francis I.
Further, the fate of the canvas was not easy. He was either praised or forgotten. But it became a cult at the beginning of the 20th century. In 1911, a scandal erupted. The Italian stole Leonardo's work from the Louvre, although the motivation is still unclear. During the investigation, even Picasso and Apollinaire were under suspicion.
Salvador Dali. Self-portrait as Mona Lisa, 1954. (wikimedia.org)
The media staged an orgy: every day, this way and that, it was discussed who the thief was and when the police would find the masterpiece. In terms of sensationalism, only the Titanic could compete.
Black PR has done its job. The picture became almost an icon, the image of the Mona Lisa was replicated as mysterious and mystical. People with a particularly fine mental organization sometimes could not withstand the forces of the newly appeared cult and went crazy. As a result, adventures awaited the Mona Lisa - from an assassination attempt with acid to an attack with heavy objects.
The fate of the artist
Painter, philosopher, musician, naturalist, engineer. Man is universal. That was Leonardo. Painting was for him an instrument of universal knowledge of the world. And it was thanks to him that painting began to be understood as a free art, and not just a craft.
"Francis I at the death of Leonardo da Vinci" Ingres, 1818. (wikimedia.org)
Before him, the figures in the paintings looked more like statues. Leonardo was the first to guess that understatement is needed on the canvas - when the form, as if covered with a veil, in some places seems to dissolve into the shadows. This method is called sfumato. It is to him that the Mona Lisa owes its mystery.
The corners of the lips and eyes are covered with soft shadows. This creates a feeling of understatement, the expression of a smile and a glance elude us. And the longer we look at the canvas, the more we are fascinated by this mystery.
culture
"Mona Lisa" - one of the most famous works of art in history hides more than one portrait.
The French scientist Pascal Cotte stated that discovered hidden portraits using light reflection technology.
The scientist said that he had been studying and analyzing the painting for more than 10 years.
"The result debunks many myths and forever changes our understanding of Leonardo's masterpiece.", said Kotte.
The scientist believes that one of the hidden portraits is the real portrait of Lisa de Giocondo, the woman with whom they painted the Mona Lisa.
With the help of reconstruction, you can see the image of the model, which looks to the side.
Instead of the famous direct look, on the image of the model no trace of a mysterious smile that has intrigued art connoisseurs for over 500 years.
Leonardo worked on the painting between 1503 and 1517 in Florence and then in France.
For a long time there were disputes about the identity of the Mona Lisa. For many centuries it was believed that this was Lisa Gherardini, the wife of a Florentine silk merchant.
However, when Mr. Cotte made a reconstruction of Lisa Gerardini, he discovered completely different "Mona Lisa".
In addition, he claims that there are two more images below the surface of the painting - a blurry outline of a portrait with a larger head and nose, larger hands, but smaller lips. The scientist also discovered another image in the style of the Madonna engraved by Leonardo in the form of a pearl rim.
Pascal Cottet used a technique known as layer enhancement method, projecting intense radiation onto a painting and measuring the reflection, allowing what was between layers of paint to be reconstructed. Thanks to this method, the scientist was able to look into the very heart of the famous painting.
The Mona Lisa is considered one of the the greatest treasures of Renaissance art. The painting is also known as "Gioconda" and is considered one of the finest examples of portrait art.
Despite its fame, "Mona Lisa", like all the works of Leonardo da Vinci, was not signed, and there was no date on it. The name was taken from a biography of Leonardo written by the biographer Giorgio Vasari, published in the 1550s, where it was said that the artist agreed to paint a portrait of Lisa Gherardini, the wife of Francesco del Giocondo, a silk merchant.
Leonardo worked on the piece for a long time, especially on the position of the model's hands. The mysterious smile and the secret of the model's identity is a source of constant research and admiration.
The Mona Lisa painting is now in the Louvre in Paris and is considered the most valuable painting in the world, it is insured against inflation for $782 million.
