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.
History of the painting
"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.
Description of the picture
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.
Mona Lisa smile
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”.
Current state
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.
Fame of Mona Lisa
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 today
"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.
The masterpiece is admired by more than eight million visitors annually. However, what we see today only remotely resembles the original creation. We are more than 500 years away from the time of the creation of the picture ...
THE PICTURE CHANGES OVER THE YEARS
Mona Lisa is changing like a real woman… After all, today we have before us the image of a faded, faded face of a woman, yellowed and darkened in those places where the viewer could see brown and green tones before (not for nothing that Leonardo’s contemporaries more than once admired the fresh and bright colors of the canvases of Italian artist).
The portrait has not escaped the ravages of time and damage caused by numerous restorations. And the wooden supports were wrinkled and covered with cracks. Have undergone changes under the influence of chemical reactions and the properties of pigments, binder and varnish over the years.
The honorable right to create a series of images of the "Mona Lisa" in the highest resolution was given to the French engineer Pascal Cotte, the inventor of the multispectral camera. The result of his work was detailed pictures of the painting in the range from ultraviolet to infrared spectrum.
It is worth noting that Pascal spent about three hours creating pictures of the "naked" picture, that is, without a frame and protective glass. In doing so, he used a unique scanner of his own invention. The result of the work was 13 pictures of a masterpiece with a 240-megapixel resolution. The quality of these images is absolutely unique. It took two years to analyze and validate the data.
RECONSTRUCTED BEAUTY
In 2007, 25 secrets of the painting were revealed for the first time at the Da Vinci Genius exhibition. Here, for the first time, visitors were able to enjoy the original color of the Mona Lisa paints (that is, the color of the original pigments used by da Vinci).
The photographs presented the readers with a picture in its original form, similar to what Leonardo's contemporaries saw: the sky is the color of lapis lazuli, the warm pink complexion of the skin, clearly traced mountains, green trees ...
Photographs by Pascal Cotte showed that Leonardo did not finish the painting. We observe changes in the position of the model's hand. It can be seen that at first Mona Lisa supported the veil with her hand. It also became noticeable that the facial expression and smile were somewhat different at first. And the spot in the corner of the eye is water damage to the lacquer, most likely as a result of the painting hanging in Napoleon's bathroom for some time. We can also determine that some parts of the picture have become transparent over time. And to see that contrary to the modern point of view, the Mona Lisa had eyebrows and eyelashes!
WHO IS IN THE PICTURE
“Leonardo undertook to complete a portrait of Mona Lisa, his wife, for Francesco Giocondo, and, after working for four years, left it unfinished. While writing the portrait, he kept people who played the lyre or sang, and there were always jesters who removed from her melancholy and supported her gaiety. That is why her smile is so pleasant.
This is the only evidence of how the picture was created, belongs to a contemporary of da Vinci, the artist and writer Giorgio Vasari (although he was only eight years old when Leonardo died). Based on his words, for several centuries now, a female portrait, on which the master worked in 1503-1506, is considered to be an image of 25-year-old Lisa, the wife of the Florentine magnate Francesco del Giocondo. So Vasari wrote - and everyone believed. But it is likely that this is a mistake, and the portrait is of another woman.
There is a lot of evidence: firstly, the headdress is a widow's mourning veil (meanwhile, Francesco del Giocondo lived a long life), and secondly, if there was a customer, why did Leonardo not give him the job? It is known that the artist kept the painting at home, and in 1516, leaving Italy, he took it to France, King Francis I in 1517 paid 4,000 golden florins for it - fantastic money for those times. However, he did not get the Gioconda either.
The artist did not part with the portrait until his death. In 1925, art historians speculated that half depicted the Duchess Constantia d "Avalos - the widow of Federico del Balzo, the mistress of Giuliano Medici (brother of Pope Leo X). The basis for the hypothesis was the sonnet of the poet Eneo Irpino, which mentions her portrait by Leonardo. In 1957, the Italian Carlo Pedretti put forward a different version: in fact, this is Pacifika Brandano, another mistress of Giuliano Medici. Pachifika, the widow of a Spanish nobleman, had a soft and cheerful disposition, was well educated and could decorate any company. No wonder that such a cheerful person , like Giuliano, became close to her, thanks to which their son Ippolito was born.
In the papal palace, Leonardo was provided with a workshop with movable tables and diffused light so beloved by him. The artist worked slowly, carefully filling out the details, especially the face and eyes. Pacifica (if this is it) in the picture came out as if alive. The audience was amazed, often frightened: it seemed to them that instead of a woman in the picture, a monster was about to appear, some kind of sea siren. Even the landscape behind her contained something mysterious. The famous smile was in no way associated with the idea of righteousness. Rather, there was something from the realm of witchcraft. It is this mysterious smile that stops, disturbs, fascinates and calls the viewer, as if forcing them to enter into a telepathic connection.
Renaissance artists pushed the philosophical and artistic horizons of creativity to the maximum. Man has entered into rivalry with God, he imitates him, he is possessed by a great desire to create. He is captured by that real world, from which the Middle Ages turned away for the sake of the spiritual world.
Leonardo da Vinci dissected corpses. He dreamed of taking over nature by learning to change the direction of rivers and drain swamps, he wanted to steal the art of flight from birds. Painting was an experimental laboratory for him, where he constantly searched for more and more new means of expression. The genius of the artist allowed him to see the true essence of nature behind the living corporeality of forms. And here it is impossible not to say about the finest chiaroscuro (sfumato) beloved by the master, which was a kind of halo for him, replacing the medieval halo: it is equally divine-human and natural sacrament.
The sfumato technique made it possible to enliven landscapes and convey the play of feelings on faces in all its variability and complexity with amazing subtlety. What only Leonardo did not invent, hoping to realize his plans! The master indefatigably mixes various substances, striving to obtain eternal colors. His brush is so light, so transparent that in the twentieth century even X-ray analysis will not reveal traces of her blow. After making a few strokes, he puts the picture aside to let it dry. His eye distinguishes the slightest nuances: sun glare and shadows of some objects on others, a shadow on the pavement and a shadow of sadness or a smile on a face. The general laws of drawing, building perspective only suggest the way. Their own searches reveal that light has the ability to bend and straighten lines: "To immerse objects in a light-air medium means, in fact, to immerse them in infinity."
WORSHIP
According to experts, her name was Mona Lisa Gherardini del Giocondo, ... Although, maybe Isabella Gualando, Isabella d "Este, Filiberta of Savoy, Constance d" Avalos, Pacifica Brandano ... Who knows?
The obscurity of the origin only contributed to its fame. She passed through the ages in the radiance of her mystery. For many years, the portrait of the "court lady in a transparent veil" was an adornment of the royal collections. She was seen either in the bedroom of Madame de Maintenon, or in the chambers of Napoleon in the Tuileries. Louis XIII, who frolicked as a child in the Grand Gallery, where it hung, refused to give it to the Duke of Buckingham, saying: "It is impossible to part with a picture that is considered the best in the world." Everywhere - both in castles and in city houses - they tried to "teach" their daughters the famous smile.
So a beautiful image turned into a fashion stamp. Among professional artists, the popularity of the painting has always been high (more than 200 copies of the Mona Lisa are known). She gave birth to a whole school, inspired such masters as Raphael, Ingres, David, Corot. From the end of the 19th century, "Mona Lisa" began to send letters with a declaration of love. And yet, in the bizarrely developing fate of the picture, there was a lack of some stroke, some stunning event. And it happened!
On August 21, 1911, the newspapers came out under a sensational headline: "La Gioconda" is stolen! "The picture was vigorously searched for. They grieved about it. They feared that it had died, burned by an awkward photographer who shot it with a magnesium flash in the open air. In France, the Gioconda was even mourned street musicians.Raphael's "Baldassare Castiglione", installed in the Louvre in place of the missing one, did not suit anyone - after all, it was just an "ordinary" masterpiece.
"La Gioconda" was found in January 1913 hidden in a cache under the bed. The thief, a poor Italian immigrant, wanted to return the painting to his homeland, Italy.
When the idol of centuries was again in the Louvre, the writer Theophile Gauthier quipped that the smile had become "mocking" and even "triumphant"? especially when addressed to people who are not inclined to trust angelic smiles. The audience was divided into two warring camps. If for some it was just a picture, albeit an excellent one, then for others it was almost a deity. In 1920, in the magazine Dada, the avant-garde artist Marcel Duchamp added a magnificent mustache to the photograph of the "most mysterious of smiles" and accompanied the cartoon with the initial letters of the words "she is unbearable." In this form, the opponents of idolatry poured out their irritation.
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MAIN MYSTERY…
…Hidden, of course, in her smile. As you know, smiles are different: happy, sad, embarrassed, seductive, sour, sarcastic. But none of these definitions is suitable in this case. The archives of the Leonardo da Vinci Museum in France contain a wide variety of interpretations of the riddle of the famous portrait.
A certain "generalist" assures that the person depicted in the picture is pregnant; her smile is an attempt to catch the movement of the fetus. The next one insists that she smiles at her lover ... Leonardo. Someone even thinks: the picture shows a man, because "his smile is very attractive to homosexuals."
According to the British psychologist Digby Questeg, a supporter of the latter version, in this work Leonardo showed his latent (hidden) homosexuality. Gioconda's smile expresses a wide range of feelings: from embarrassment and indecision (what will contemporaries and descendants say?) to hope for understanding and favor.
From the point of view of today's ethics, such an assumption looks quite convincing. Recall, however, that the mores of the Renaissance were much more liberated than the current ones, and Leonardo did not at all make a secret of his sexual orientation. His pupils were always more beautiful than talented; his servant Giacomo Salai enjoyed special favor. Another similar version? "Mona Lisa" - a self-portrait of the artist. A recent computer comparison of the anatomical features of the face of Gioconda and Leonardo da Vinci (based on a self-portrait of the artist made in red pencil) showed that they match perfectly geometrically. Thus, Gioconda can be called the female hypostasis of a genius!.. But then Gioconda's smile is his smile.
Such an enigmatic smile was indeed characteristic of Leonardo; which, for example, is evidenced by Verrocchio's painting "Tobias with a Fish", in which the Archangel Michael is painted with Leonardo da Vinci.
Sigmund Freud also expressed his opinion about the portrait (naturally, in the spirit of Freudianism): "The smile of the Mona Lisa is the smile of the artist's mother." The idea of the founder of psychoanalysis was later supported by Salvador Dali: “In the modern world, there is a real cult of the Gioconda worship. Gioconda was attacked many times, several years ago there were even attempts to throw stones at her - a clear resemblance to aggressive behavior towards her own mother. If you remember what he wrote about Leonardo da Vinci Freud, as well as everything that is said about the subconscious of the artist of his painting, it can be easily concluded that when Leonardo worked on the Mona Lisa, he was in love with his mother... Completely unconsciously, he painted a new creature, endowed with all possible signs of motherhood "At the same time, she smiles somehow ambiguously. The whole world has seen and still sees today in this ambiguous smile quite a certain shade of eroticism. And what happens to the unfortunate poor spectator who is in the grip of the Oedipus complex? He comes to the museum. A museum is a public institution, in its subconscious it is just a brothel or simply a brothel. In the brothel itself, he sees an image that is the prototype of the collective image of all mothers. The tormenting presence of his own mother, casting a gentle glance and bestowing an ambiguous smile, pushes him to crime. He grabs the first thing that comes his way, say, a stone, and tears the painting apart, thus committing an act of matricide.
DOCTORS PUT BY SMILE… DIAGNOSIS
For some reason, Gioconda's smile especially haunts doctors. For them, the portrait of the Mona Lisa is an ideal opportunity to practice making a diagnosis without fear of the consequences of a medical error.
Thus, the famous American otolaryngologist Christopher Adur from Auckland (USA) announced that Gioconda had facial paralysis. In his practice, he even called this paralysis "Mona Lisa's disease", apparently achieving a psychotherapeutic effect by instilling in patients a sense of belonging to high art. One Japanese doctor is absolutely certain that Mona Lisa had high cholesterol. Evidence of this is a nodule on the skin between the left eyelid and the base of the nose, typical for such an ailment. And that means: Mona Lisa ate wrong.
Joseph Borkowski, an American dentist and painting expert, believes that the woman in the painting, judging by the expression on her face, has lost many teeth. While examining enlarged photographs of the masterpiece, Borkowski discovered scars around the Mona Lisa's mouth. "The expression on her face is typical of people who have lost their front teeth," says the expert. Neurophysiologists also contributed to unraveling the mystery. In their opinion, the point is not in the model and not in the artist, but in the audience. Why does it seem to us that Mona Lisa's smile fades away, then reappears? Harvard University neurophysiologist Margaret Livingston believes that the reason for this is not the magic of Leonardo da Vinci's art, but the peculiarities of human vision: the appearance and disappearance of a smile depends on which part of the Gioconda's face the person's gaze is directed to. There are two types of vision: central, focusing on details, and peripheral, less distinct. If you are not focused on the eyes of "nature" or try to cover her entire face with your eyes - Gioconda smiles at you. However, it is worth focusing on the lips, as the smile immediately disappears. Moreover, Mona Lisa's smile is quite possible to reproduce, says Margaret Livinston. Why, in the process of working on a copy, you need to try to "draw a mouth without looking at it." But how to do this, it seems, only the great Leonardo knew.
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Some practicing psychologists say that Mona Lisa's secret is simple: it's a smile to herself. Actually, the advice to modern women follows: think about how wonderful, sweet, kind, unique you are - you are worth it to rejoice and smile at yourself. Carry your smile naturally, let it be honest and open, coming from the depths of your soul. A smile will soften your face, erase from it the traces of fatigue, impregnability, rigidity that scare men so much. It will give your face a mysterious expression. And then you will have as many fans as the Mona Lisa.
THE SECRET OF SHADOWS AND SHADES
The mysteries of immortal creation have haunted scientists from all over the world for many years now. So, earlier scientists used X-rays to understand how Leonardo da Vinci created shadows on the great masterpiece. "Mona Lisa" was one of seven works by Da Vinci studied by scientist Philip Walter and his colleagues. The study showed how ultra-thin layers of glaze and paint were used to achieve a smooth transition from light to dark. X-ray beam allows you to examine the layers without damaging the canvas
The technique used by Da Vinci and other Renaissance artists is known as "sfumato". With its help, it was possible to create smooth transitions of tones or colors on the canvas.
One of the most shocking discoveries of our study is that you will not see a single smear or fingerprint on the canvas, said a member of Walter's group.
Everything is so perfect! That is why Da Vinci's paintings were impossible to analyze - they did not give easy clues, - she continued.
Previous research has already established the main aspects of the sfumato technology, but Walter's group has uncovered new details of how the great master managed to achieve such an effect. The team used an x-ray to determine the thickness of each layer applied to the canvas. As a result, it was possible to find out that Leonardo da Vinci was able to apply layers with a thickness of only a couple of micrometers (a thousandth of a millimeter), the total thickness of the layer did not exceed 30 - 40 micrometers.
SHUTTERED LANDSCAPE
Behind the Mona Lisa, the legendary painting by Leonardo da Vinci depicts not an abstract, but a very specific landscape - the neighborhood of the northern Italian town of Bobbio, says researcher Carla Glori, whose arguments are cited on Monday, January 10, by the Daily Telegraph newspaper.
Glory came to such conclusions after the journalist, writer, discoverer of the tomb of Caravaggio and the head of the Italian National Committee for the Protection of Cultural Heritage, Silvano Vinceti, said that he saw mysterious letters and numbers on Leonardo's canvas. In particular, under the arch of the bridge, located to the left of the Mona Lisa (that is, from the point of view of the viewer, on the right side of the picture), the numbers "72" were found. Vincheti himself considers them a reference to some mystical theories of Leonardo. According to Glory, this is an indication of the year 1472, when the Trebbia river flowing past Bobbio overflowed its banks, demolished the old bridge and forced the Visconti family, who ruled in those parts, to build a new one. She considers the rest of the view to be a landscape from the windows of the local castle.
Previously, Bobbio was known primarily as the place where the huge monastery of San Colombano (San Colombano), which served as one of the prototypes for the "Name of the Rose" by Umberto Eco, is located.
In his conclusions, Carla Glory goes even further: if the scene is not the center of Italy, as scientists believed before, based on the fact that Leonardo began work on the canvas in 1503-1504 in Florence, but the north, then his model is not his wife merchant Lisa del Giocondo (Lisa del Giocondo), and the daughter of the Duke of Milan Bianca Giovanna Sforza (Bianca Giovanna Sforza).
Her father, Lodovico Sforza, was one of Leonardo's main customers and a well-known philanthropist.
Glory believes that the artist and inventor visited him not only in Milan, but also in Bobbio, a town with a famous library at that time, also subject to Milanese rulers. However, skeptical experts claim that both the numbers and letters discovered by Vincheti in pupils of Mona Lisa, nothing more than cracks formed on the canvas over the centuries ... However, no one can exclude them from the fact that they were applied to the canvas on purpose ...
SECRET REVEALED?
Last year, Professor Margaret Livingston of Harvard University said that Mona Lisa's smile is visible only if you look not at the lips of the woman depicted in the portrait, but at other details of her face.
Margaret Livingston presented her theory at the annual meeting of the American Association for the Advancement of Science in Denver, Colorado.
The disappearance of a smile when changing the angle of view is due to how the human eye processes visual information, an American scientist believes.
There are two types of vision: direct and peripheral. Direct well perceives details, worse - shadows.
The elusive nature of Mona Lisa's smile can be explained by the fact that it is almost all located in the low-frequency range of light and is well perceived only by peripheral vision, said Margaret Livingston.
The more you look directly at the face, the less peripheral vision is used.
The same thing happens when looking at a single letter of printed text. At the same time, other letters are perceived worse, even at close range.
Da Vinci used this principle and therefore Mona Lisa's smile is visible only if you look at the eyes or other parts of the face of the woman depicted in the portrait ...
The Mona Lisa by the great Leonardo da Vinci, also known as the Gioconda, is one of the most mysterious works in the history of art. For several centuries now, disputes have not subsided about who is actually depicted in the portrait. According to various versions, this is the wife of a Florentine merchant, a transvestite in women's clothing, the artist's mother, and finally, the artist himself, disguised as a woman ... But this is only part of the secrets associated with the picture.
"Mona Lisa" is not "La Gioconda"?
It is believed that the painting was painted around 1503-1505. The model for her, according to the official version, was a contemporary of the great painter, nee Lisa di Antonio Maria di Noldo Gherardini, whose portrait was allegedly ordered by her husband, the Florentine silk merchant Francesco del Giocondo. The full name of the canvas is “Ritratto di Monna Lisa del Giocondo” - “Portrait of Mrs. Lisa Giocondo”. Gioconda (la Gioconda) also means "cheerful, playing." So maybe it's a nickname, not a surname.
However, there are rumors in the art history community that the famous “Mona Lisa” by Leonardo da Vinci and his “La Gioconda” are two completely different paintings.
The fact is that none of the contemporaries of the great painter saw the portrait completed. Giorgio Vasari, in his book Lives of Artists, claims that Leonardo worked on the painting for four years, but never had time to finish it. However, the portrait now exhibited in the Louvre is fully completed.
Another artist, Raphael, testifies that he saw the La Gioconda in the da Vinci workshop. He sketched a portrait. On it, the model poses between two Greek columns. There are no columns in the well-known portrait. Judging by the sources, the Gioconda was also larger than the original Mona Lisa known to us. In addition, there is evidence that the unfinished canvas was handed over to the customer - the husband of the model, the Florentine merchant Francesco del Giocondo. Then it was inherited from generation to generation.
The portrait, called "Mona Lisa", allegedly depicts the favorite of Duke Giuliano de' Medici, Constance d'Avalos. In 1516, the artist brought this painting with him to France. Until the very death of da Vinci, the painting was in his estate near Amboise. In 1517, she found herself in the collection of the French king Francis I. It is she who can now be seen in the Louvre.
In 1914, a British antiquary for just a few guineas bought an image of the Mona Lisa at the clothing market in Bass, which he considered a successful copy of Leonardo's creation. Subsequently, this portrait became known as the "Iuor Mona Lisa". It looks unfinished, in the background there are two Greek columns, as in the memoirs of Raphael.
Then the canvas came to London, where in 1962 it was bought by a syndicate of Swiss bankers.
Is there such a resemblance between two different women that they were confused? Or is there only one painting, and the second is just a copy made by an unknown artist?
hidden image
By the way, French expert Pascal Cotte recently announced that another image, the real Lisa Gherardini, is hiding under a layer of paint in the picture. He came to this conclusion after spending ten years studying the portrait using a technology he developed based on the reflection of light rays.
According to the scientist, it was possible to "recognize" the second portrait under the "Mona Lisa". It also depicts a woman sitting in exactly the same position as Gioconda, however, unlike the latter, she looks a little to the side and does not smile.
fatal smile
And the famous Mona Lisa smile? What only hypotheses were not put forward about it! It seems to some that Gioconda does not smile at all, to someone that she has no teeth, and to someone something ominous seems to be in her smile ...
Back in the 19th century, the French writer Stendhal noted that after admiring the painting for a long time, he experienced an inexplicable breakdown ... Louvre workers, where the canvas now hangs, say that viewers often faint in front of the Mona Lisa. In addition, museum employees noticed that when the public is not allowed into the hall, the picture seems to fade, but as soon as visitors appear, the colors seem to become brighter, and the mysterious smile comes through more clearly ... Parapsychologists explain the phenomenon by the fact that the Gioconda is a picture -vampire, she drinks the life force of a person ... However, this is just an assumption.
Another attempt to unravel the mystery was made by Nitz Zebe from the University of Amsterdam and his American colleagues from the University of Illinois. They used a special computer program that compared the image of a human face with a database of human emotions. The computer produced sensational results: it turns out that extremely mixed feelings are read on the face of Mona Lisa, and among them only 83% of happiness, 9% belong to disgust, 6% to fear and 2% to anger ...
Meanwhile, Italian historians have discovered that if you look at Mona Lisa's eyes under a microscope, some letters and numbers become visible. So, in the right eye you can see the letters LV, which, however, may represent only the initials of the name Leonardo da Vinci. The symbols in the left eye have not yet been recognized: either these are the letters CE, or B ...
In the arch of the bridge, located in the background of the picture, the number 72 “flaunts”, although there are other versions, for example, that it is 2 or the letter L ... The number 149 (the four is erased) is also visible on the canvas. This may indicate the year the painting was created - 1490 or later ...
But be that as it may, the mysterious smile of the Gioconda will forever remain a model of the highest art. After all, the divine Leonardo was able to create something that will excite descendants for many, many centuries…
Italian researchers are looking for the tomb of Lisa Gherardini del Giocondo, who many believe is the model for Leonardo da Vinci's famous Mona Lisa portrait. They began excavations on the territory of the former Catholic convent of St. Ursula (Sant Orsola) in Florence.Having recreated the appearance of Liza, they want to compare it with the work of a brilliant Renaissance painter.
A group of Italian experts have unearthed an underground burial believed to contain the remains of Lisa Gherardini, who died at the age of 63. Excavations were carried out on the territory of the former Catholic convent of St. Ursula in Florence, in which on July 15, 1542, the wife of the Florentine merchant Francesco del Giocondo reposed in the Bose. This woman entered the history of painting under two names at once - Gioconda or Mona Lisa. By the name of her husband and by his address to her, because Mona ( Mona or Mona comes from the Italian word Madonna- spouse or wife) Lisa posed for the famous portrait by Leonardo da Vinci.
Art critics are determined to recreate the appearance of Lisa del Giocondo (Lisa del Giocondo), to compare it with the famous portrait kept in the Louvre Museum in Paris. The authenticity of the remains will be confirmed after comparing the DNA of the deceased with the genetic code of our contemporaries - the descendants of the Renaissance Mona Lisa. If successful, the tomb of an ordinary wife of a small-time merchant who once traded in silk is planned to be turned into another tourist attraction. See also: Lefty - loser or winner? The irrepressible appetite of archaeologists caused a protest from the actress and the manager of the Tuscan winery Fattoria Cusona Guicciardini Strozzi Natalia Strozzi, who calls herself the 15th generation heiress of the famous model who posed for Leonardo himself. Nowadays, a certain Florentine scholar spends his precious time convincing the cream of society there that Irina Strozzi and her eldest daughter Natalia are the last of the heirs of the Mona Lisa through her father, Prince Gerolamo Strozzi. In both, by the way, part of the Russian blood flows. Russian is spoken in their family; in the past decade, this clan tried to sell its wine products in Russia, and during the Cold War, the family hosted famous Soviet dissidents and émigrés: Academician Sakharov's wife Elena Bonner, the Rostropovich-Vishnevskaya couple. Anatoly Sobchak lived for some time in the Parisian apartment of Natalia's rich uncle Vladimir Ren. “I am sure that this is the place of her final resting place. The desire to dig up the remains is blasphemous and inappropriate. Especially just to compare her facial features with the charm of Leonardo’s painting. The secret of Mona Lisa and her enigmatic smile should remain a secret,” Natalya expressed her opinion Strozzi on the pages of the British Mirror . A few years ago, a specialist from Florence, Giuseppe Pallanti, found in the archives the house where Lisa Gherardini was born, the dates of her life and the fact that she was the third wife of the Florentine merchant Francesco del Giocondo. Lisa was born to Antonio de Gherardini, a wool merchant, and Caterina Rucellai. Her birthday is June 15, 1479. It turned out that the families of Lisa Gherardini and Leonardo da Vinci lived next door. On March 5, 1495, at the age of 15, she was married to Francesco di Bartolomeo di Zanobi del Giocondo. After his death, the elderly woman spent the last years of her life in the monastery of St. Ursula, in the cemetery of which she was buried. For the first time, Lisa was identified with Gioconda in the second half of the 16th century by Giorgio Vasari in his book “Lives of the Most Famous Painters, Sculptors and Architects” translated into many languages of the world: “Leonardo undertook to write for Francesco del Giocondo a portrait of his wife, Mona Lisa, and, having worked on four years old, and left it unfinished." It was Vasari, who highly appreciated the art of Quattrocento, who spoke about one "trick" of the artist, who captured for subsequent generations a smile, often called mysterious: "since the Madonna Lisa was very beautiful, while writing a portrait, he kept singers, musicians and constantly jesters with her who maintained her cheerfulness in order to avoid the dullness that painting usually gives to portraits, while in this portrait of Leonardo there was a smile so pleasant that he seemed to be something more divine than human, and was considered a wonderful work, for life itself is not could be different." Biographer Leonardo wrote that the master created his masterpiece in 1503. Subsequently, art critics and historians found out that the portrait was painted in 1514-1515. Not only the date of creation was questioned, but also the identity of the person depicted in the portrait. For some time now, there have been several versions. Leonardo allegedly painted a portrait of Isabella d'Este, Duchess of Mantua. Others claim that the face was written off from Giuliano Medici's mistress, the Duchess of Constanza d'Avalos. Other names were also mentioned: a certain widow of Federigo del Beltza, and the widow of Giovanni Antonio Brandana, named Pacifica. It was said that this is a self-portrait of the painter in a female form. Not so long ago, a theory was put forward that the portrait depicts a student and assistant, and possibly the lover of the master Gian Giacomo Caprotti, to whom Leonardo left this painting as a legacy. Finally, according to some versions, the portrait depicts the artist's mother or is it just some kind of image of an ideal woman. Japanese engineer Matsumi Suzuki created a model of the Gioconda's skull, on the basis of which the acoustic laboratory specialists managed to record the alleged timbre of Mona Lisa's voice using a computer program. By the way, this should help current researchers, the Japanese calculated her height - 168 cm. Specialists of the Center for Research and Restoration of Museums of France and the European Center for Synchrotron Research found out the secret of the sfumato technique, with which the famous portrait was created. The image created using sfumato consists of the thinnest transparent layers of liquid paint, which the artist applied layer by layer in stages, thus creating a smooth transition from light to shadow, so the outlines and contours are not visible in the picture. X-ray fluorescence spectroscopy made it possible to study the composition of the paint layer without damaging the picture. See also: The Americans drove crazy computer Leonardo da Vinci applied to the picture (presumably with his fingers), about forty thin layers of paint, the thickness of each layer does not exceed two microns, which is fifty times less than a human hair. In different places, the total number of layers varied: in bright places, the layers were the thinnest and in smaller quantities, and in dark areas it was applied repeatedly and its total thickness reached 55 microns. Scientists have stated an interesting feature, the reason for which is not yet clear - Leonardo da Vinci used paints with a very high content of manganese. In August 1911, the painting was stolen from the Louvre, but returned safely to Paris three years later. Since that time, a new era of Mona Lisa begins - this canvas is recognized as the most famous portrait in the history of painting. 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In the Royal Castle of Amboise (France), Leonardo da Vinci completed the famous "La Gioconda" - "Mona Lisa". It is generally accepted that Leonardo is buried in the chapel of St. Hubert of the Amboise castle.
Hidden in Mona Lisa's eyes are tiny numbers and letters that cannot be seen with the naked eye. Perhaps these are the initials of Leonardo da Vinci and the year the painting was created.
"Mona Lisa" is considered the most mysterious painting ever created. Art experts are still unraveling its mysteries. At the same time, the Mona Lisa is one of the most disappointing sights in Paris. The fact is that huge queues line up every day. The Mona Lisa is protected by bulletproof glass.
August 21, 1911 there was a high-profile theft of "Mona Lisa". She was kidnapped by Louvre worker Vincenzo Perugia. There is an assumption that Perugia wanted to return the painting to its historical homeland. The first attempts to find the picture did not lead to anything. The administration of the museum was fired. As part of this case, the poet Guillaume Apollinaire was arrested, later released. Pablo Picasso was also under suspicion. The painting was found two years later in Italy. On January 4, 1914, the painting (after exhibitions in Italian cities) returned to Paris. After these events, the picture gained unprecedented popularity.
There is a large plasticine Mona Lisa in the DIDU cafe. It was sculpted within a month by ordinary cafe visitors. The process was led by the artist Nikas Safronov. Gioconda, which was molded by 1700 Muscovites and guests of the city, got into the Guinness Book of Records. It became the largest plasticine reproduction of the Mona Lisa, molded by people.
During World War II, many works from the Louvre collection were hidden in the Chateau de Chambord. Among them was the Mona Lisa. In the pictures - emergency preparations for sending the painting before the arrival of the Nazis in Paris. The place where the Mona Lisa is hidden was kept in the strictest confidence. The paintings were not hidden in vain: it would later turn out that Hitler planned to create "the world's largest museum" in Linz. And for this he organized a whole campaign under the leadership of the German art connoisseur Hans Posse.
After 100 years without people, the Mona Lisa is eaten by bugs in the History Channel film Life After People.
Most researchers believe that the landscape painted behind the Mona Lisa is fictional. There are versions that this is the Valdarno Valley or the Montefeltro region, but there is no convincing evidence for these versions. It is known that Leonardo painted the painting in his Milan workshop.
