Brief description of the Mona Lisa painting. "Mona Lisa" description of the painting. Mystery shrouded in darkness

Leonardo da Vinci. Portrait of Lisa Gherardini, wife of Francesco Giocondo Day (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 authorship of Leonardo is indisputable

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

Contemporaries of Leonardo described a very different Mona Lisa

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 grow 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.

Where is the real Mona Lisa?

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.

1. Mona Lisa from the Prado

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.

2. Flora from the Hermitage

Francesco Melzi. Flora (Columbine). 1510-1515 , Saint 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.

Crime of the century. Theft of the Mona Lisa from the Louvre

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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Leonardo da Vinci "La Gioconda":
History of the painting

On August 22, 1911, the world-famous painting by Leonardo da Vinci "La Gioconda" disappeared from the Square Hall of the Louvre. At 1 pm, when the museum was opened to visitors, she was not there. Confusion broke out among the Louvre workers. It was announced to visitors that the museum was closed for the whole day due to a water main failure.

The prefect of police appeared with a detachment of inspectors. All exits from the Louvre were closed, the museum began to be searched. But it is impossible to check the ancient palace of the French kings with an area of ​​​​198 square meters in one day. However, by the end of the day, the police still managed to find a glazed case and a frame from the Mona Lisa on the landing of a small service staircase. The very same picture - a rectangle measuring 54x79 centimeters - disappeared without a trace.

“The loss of the Mona Lisa is a national disaster,” wrote the French magazine “Illustration”, “since it is almost certain that the one who committed this abduction cannot profit from it. One must fear that he, in fear of being caught, may destroy this fragile work.

The magazine announced a reward: “40,000 francs to the one who brings the Gioconda to the editorial office of the magazine. 20,000 francs to whoever points out where the painting can be found. 45,000 to those who return the Mona Lisa by September 1." The first of September passed, but there was no picture. Then Illustrasion published a new proposal: “The editors guarantee complete secrecy to those who bring the Mona Lisa. They will give him 45,000 in cash and they won't even ask for his name." But no one came.

Month after month passed. All this time, the portrait of a beautiful Florentine lay hidden in a pile of rubbish on the third floor of the large Parisian house "Cité du Heroes", in which Italian seasonal workers lived.

A few more months passed, a year, two...
One day, the Italian antiquary Alfredo Geri received a letter from Paris. On poor school paper, in clumsy letters, a certain Vincenzo Leopardi offered an antiquary to buy a portrait of Mona Lisa that disappeared from the Louvre. Leopardi wrote that he wanted to return to his homeland one of the best works of Italian art.
This letter was sent in November 1913.
When, after long negotiations, correspondence and meetings, Leopardi delivered the painting to the Uffizi Gallery in Florence, he said:
“This is a good, holy thing! The Louvre is chock-full of treasures that rightfully belong to Italy. I wouldn't be Italian if I looked at it with indifference!"

Fortunately, the two years and three months that the Mona Lisa spent in captivity did not affect the picture. Under the protection of the police, the Gioconda was exhibited in Rome, Florence, Milan, and then, after the farewell ceremony, left for Paris.

The investigation into the case of Perugia (this is the real name of the kidnapper) went on for several months. The arrested man did not hide anything and said that he periodically worked at the Louvre as a glazier. During this time, he studied the halls of the art gallery and met many museum employees. He frankly stated that he had long ago decided to steal the Mona Lisa.

Perugia knew little about the history of painting. He sincerely and naively believed that the Mona Lisa was taken away from Italy during the time of Napoleon.
Meanwhile, Leonardo da Vinci himself brought it to France and sold it to the French king Francis I for 4,000 ecu - a huge amount at that time. For a long time this painting adorned the Golden Cabinet of the royal castle in Fontainebleau, under Louis XIV it was transferred to Versailles, and after the revolution it was transferred to the Louvre.

After a 20-year stay in Milan, Leonardo da Vinci returned to Florence. How everything has changed in his hometown! Those he left behind were already at the height of their fame; and about him, who once enjoyed universal worship, has almost been forgotten. His old friends, captured by a whirlwind of unrest and unrest, have changed a lot ... One of them became a monk; another, in despair at the death of the violent Savonarola, gave up painting and decided to spend the rest of his days in the Santa Maria Novella hospital; the third, aged in spirit and body, could no longer be Leonardo's former comrade.

Only one P. Perugino, already experienced in worldly affairs, talked with Leonardo in the old way and gave him useful advice. His words were true, and Leonardo da Vinci also really needed these tips. In the service of the duke, he did not earn money for a comfortable life and returned to Florence with meager funds. Leonardo did not even think about large and serious works, and no one ordered them from him. To write at his own risk for the love of art, he had neither the money nor the time. The entire Florentine nobility strove for mediocre masters, and the brilliant da Vinci was in poverty, content with the crumbs that fell to him from the orders of his happy brothers.
But in Florence, Leonardo da Vinci created his masterpiece of masterpieces - the famous painting "La Gioconda".

The Soviet art critic I. Dolgopolov noted that writing about this painting “is simply scary, because poets, prose writers, and art critics have written more than one hundred books about it. Do not count the publications in which every inch of this picture is studied in the most thorough way. And although the history of its creation is quite well-known, the name of the painting, the date of its writing, and even the city in which the great Leonardo met his model are being questioned.”

George Vasari in his "Biographies" reports about this picture: "Leonardo undertook to complete for Francesco del Giocondo a portrait of Mona Lisa, his wife."
As some researchers now suggest, Vasari must have been wrong. The latest research shows that the painting depicts not the wife of the Florentine nobleman del Giocondo, but some other high-ranking lady. M.A. Gukovsky, for example, wrote several decades ago that this portrait conveys the features of one of the many ladies of the heart of Giulio Medici and was commissioned by him. This is unequivocally reported by Antonio de Beatis, who saw the portrait in the workshop of Leonardo in France.

In his diary dated October 10, 1517, he reports: “In one of the suburbs, the cardinal went with us sinners to see Mr. Luonardo Vinci, a Florentine ... an excellent painter of our time. The latter showed his lordship three paintings - one of some Florentine lady, painted from nature, at the request of the late Magnificent Giulio Medici.

Many researchers were amazed why the merchant del Giocondo did not keep a portrait of his wife. Indeed, the portrait became the property of the artist. And this fact is also perceived by some as an argument in favor of the fact that Leonardo did not depict the Mona Lisa. But, perhaps, the Florentine was a little surprised and surprised? Maybe he simply did not recognize his young wife Mona Lisa Gherardini in the depicted goddess? And Leonardo himself, who painted the portrait for four years and invested so much in it, could not part with it and took the picture from Florence?

Be that as it may, in fact, thanks to D. Vasari, this female image entered the history of world culture under the name of "Mona Lisa", or "Gioconda". Was she beautiful? Probably, but there were many women in Florence and more beautiful than her.
However, Mona Lisa was surprisingly attractive, although the features of her face were not harmonious. A small smiling mouth, soft hair flowing over her shoulders...
“But her fully developed figure,” writes M. Alpatov, “was perfect, and her well-groomed hands were especially perfect. But what was remarkable about her, despite her wealth, her eyebrows plucked in fashion, her blush and a lot of jewelry on her arms and neck, was the simplicity and naturalness poured into her whole appearance ...
And then her face lit up with a smile and became unusually attractive for the artist - embarrassed and a little sly, as if the lost playfulness of youth and something hidden in the depths of the soul, unsolved, had returned to him.

Whatever tricks Leonardo resorted to, if only his model did not get bored during the sessions. In a beautifully decorated room, among flowers and luxurious furniture, musicians were placed, delighting the ear with singing and music, and a beautiful, refined artist lay in wait for a wondrous smile on Mona Lisa's face.
He invited jesters and clowns, but the music did not quite satisfy the Mona Lisa. She listened to well-known motives with a bored face, and the magician-juggler did not really revive her. And then Leonardo told her a story.

Once upon a time there was a poor man, and he had four sons; three smart, and one this way and that. - no mind, no stupidity. Yes, however, they could not properly judge his mind: he was more silent and liked to walk in the field, to the sea, listen and think to himself; He also loved to look at the stars at night.

And then death came for the father. Before parting with his life, he called his children to him and said to them:
“My sons, soon I will die. As soon as you bury me, lock up the hut and go to the ends of the world to get your own happiness. Let everyone learn something so that he can feed himself.”

The father died, and the sons, having buried him, went to the ends of the world to seek their happiness and agreed that in three years they would return to the clearing of their native grove, where they went for deadwood, and tell each other who had learned what during these three years.
Three years passed, and, remembering the agreement, the brothers returned from the end of the world to the clearing of their native grove. The first brother came to learn carpentry. Out of boredom, he cut down a tree and hewed it, made a woman out of it. Walk away a bit and wait.
The second brother returned, saw a wooden woman, and since he was a tailor, he decided to dress her and at the same moment, like a skilled craftsman, made her beautiful silk clothes.
The third son came, adorned the wooden girl with gold and precious stones, because he was a jeweler and managed to accumulate great wealth.

And the fourth brother came. He did not know how to carpentry or sewing - he could only listen to what the earth was saying, trees, herbs, animals and birds were saying, he knew the course of the heavenly planets and also knew how to sing wonderful songs. He saw a wooden girl in luxurious clothes, in gold and precious stones. But she was deaf and dumb and did not move. Then he gathered all his art - after all, he learned to talk with everything that is on earth, he learned to revive stones with his song ... And he sang a beautiful song, from which the brothers hiding behind the bushes cried, and with this song he breathed soul into a wooden woman . And she smiled and sighed...

Then the brothers rushed to her and shouted:
- I created you, you must be my wife!
- You should be my wife, I dressed you, naked and unhappy!
- And I made you rich, you should be my wife!

But the girl answered:
- You created me - be my father. You dressed me, and you decorated me - be my brothers. And you, who breathed my soul into me and taught me to enjoy life, you alone will be my husband for life ...
And the trees, and the flowers, and the whole earth, together with the birds, sang to them the hymn of love...

After finishing the story, Leonardo looked at the Mona Lisa. God, what happened to her face! It seemed to be lit up with light, its eyes shone. The smile of bliss, slowly disappearing from her face, remained in the corners of her mouth and trembled, giving it an amazing, mysterious and slightly sly expression.

For a long time Leonardo da Vinci did not experience such a huge surge of creative forces. Everything that was in him most cheerful, bright and clear, he put into his work.
To enhance the impression of the face, Leonardo dressed the Mona Lisa in a simple, unadorned dress, modest and dark. The impression of simplicity and naturalness is enhanced by the skillfully painted folds of the dress and light scarf.

Artists and art lovers who sometimes visited Leonardo saw the Mona Lisa and were delighted:
- What magical skill Messer Leonardo possesses, depicting this lively brilliance, this wetness of the eyes!
She's definitely breathing!
She's laughing now!
- After all, you can almost feel the living skin of this lovely face ... It seems that in the deepening of the neck you can see the beating of the pulse.
What a weird smile she has. It's as if she's thinking about something and doesn't finish it...

Indeed, in the eyes of the "La Gioconda" there is light and a wet sheen, as in living eyes, and the thinnest lilac veins are visible in the eyelids. but the great artist did something unprecedented: he also painted the air, permeated with moist vapors and enveloping the figure with a transparent haze.

The most famous, many times studied and described in all languages ​​of the world, "La Gioconda" is still the most mysterious painting of the great da Vinci. It still remains incomprehensible and continues to disturb the imagination for several centuries, perhaps precisely because it is not a portrait in the usual sense of the word. Leonardo da Vinci painted it contrary to the very concept of "portrait", which implies the image of a real person, similar to the original and with the attributes that characterize him (at least indirectly).
What the artist wrote goes far beyond the scope of a simple portrait. Every shade of the skin, every fold of clothing, the warm sparkle of the eyes, the life of the arteries and veins - the artist supplied his picture with all this. But before the viewer in the background there is also a steep chain of rocks with ice peaks at the foot of the mountains, a water surface with a wide and winding river flowing out of it, which, narrowing under a small bridge, turns into a miniature waterfall that disappears outside the picture.

The golden warm light of the Italian evening and the magical charm of Leonardo da Vinci's painting pour on the viewer. Intently, understanding everything, looks at the world and the people of the Gioconda. More than one century has passed since the artist created it, and with the last touch of Leonardo's brush, it became eternally alive. He himself had long felt that Mona Lisa lives against his will.

As art critic V. Lipatov writes:
"La Gioconda" was copied many times and always unsuccessfully: it was elusive, it did not even appear on someone else's canvas, it remained true to its creator.
They tried to tear it apart, to select and repeat at least an eternal smile, but in the pictures of students and followers, the smile faded, became false, died, like a creature imprisoned in captivity.
Indeed, not a single reproduction will convey even a thousandth of the charm that flows from the portrait.

The Spanish philosopher Ortega y Gasset wrote that in La Gioconda there is a desire for inner liberation:
“Look at how tense her temples and smoothly shaved eyebrows are, how tightly her lips are compressed, with what hidden effort she tries to lift the heavy load of melancholic sadness. However, this tension is so imperceptible, her whole figure breathes with such graceful calmness, and her whole being is full of such immobility, that this inner effort is more likely to be guessed by the viewer than consciously expressed by the master. It wriggles, bites its tail like a snake, and, closing the movement in a circle, finally giving vent to despair, manifests itself in the famous Mona Lisa smile.

The unique "La Gioconda" by Leonardo da Vinci was ahead of the development of painting for many centuries to come. The most incredible assumptions were made (that the Gioconda is pregnant, that she is oblique, that this is a man in disguise, that this is a self-portrait of the artist himself), but it is unlikely that it will ever be possible to fully explain why this work, created by Leonardo in his declining years, has such amazing and attractive power For this canvas is a creation of a truly divine, and not a human hand.
"One Hundred Great Paintings" by N.A. Ionina, publishing house "Veche", 2002

The history of the painting "Mona Lisa" excites more than one human generation. Leonardo da Vinci began work on his immortal masterpiece around 1503. The artist painted a portrait of the wife of a wealthy Florentine named Francesco Giocondo. The girl's name was Mona Lisa. The second name of the canvas - "La Gioconda" - is somehow closer to a wide audience.

Already the contemporaries of the master appreciated the portrait to the highest degree. The popularity of the image was so huge that in the future legends were composed about its writing and various theories were put forward.

How she looks like

What does the Mona Lisa look like? The description is as follows: the immortal creation has dimensions of 77 by 53 cm. The picture is painted in oil on a poplar board. It depicts a woman sitting in a chair. She sits in the background of the landscape. In her portrait, the viewer is attracted by the appearance - her unusual, as if constantly following the contemplator's gaze, which radiates reason and will. But even more mysterious is the world-famous Mona Lisa smile. It is barely perceptible, and its meaning seems to elude the person looking at the picture. It is this elusiveness that brings to the image something that gives rise to the desire to peer into it again and again.

There are very few portraits in world art that can compare with the Mona Lisa in the power of expressing human individuality, conveyed in the unity of intellect and character. Where the painting "Mona Lisa" is located, the spirit of mystery and mystery hovers. The famous portrait of da Vinci differs from all other captured images of the Quattrocento period by an unusual intellectual charge.

From the Gioconda comes a sense of strength, which is an organic combination of a sense of personal freedom and inner composure. A woman's smile in no way betrays disdain or superiority. It is perceived as the result of complete self-control and calm self-confidence.

worldwide fame

“Mona Lisa” (original) would have been known only to a sophisticated and subtle connoisseur of fine art for a long time, if one amazing story had not happened to her, which brought world-famous popularity to the canvas.

From the very beginning of the 16th century, the masterpiece was kept in the royal collection. He got here thanks to who bought him after the death of Leonardo. In 1793, the image was placed in the Louvre. Most people know this museum as the place where the Mona Lisa painting is located. But it's not about that now.

So, "Gioconda" became a masterpiece of national importance and was constantly only in the Louvre. In 1911 (August 21), Vincenzo Peruggia, a mirror master from Italy, stole the portrait. Definitely no one has managed to find out the true purpose of the crime committed. Perhaps Vincenzo intended to return the painting to its historical homeland. Two years later, the painting was found in Italy. Perugia himself helped discover the image: he responded to a newspaper ad and decided to sell the Mona Lisa. In early January 1914, the La Gioconda returned to the Louvre.

Mystery of identity

It is difficult to identify the person depicted on the canvas. There are many controversial hypotheses on this subject. Researchers disagree. Adherents of various theories put forward the following statements regarding the identity of Mona Lisa: some of them are sure that this is Isabella of Este. The second - that in the picture a young man in the clothes of a woman. Still others are inclined to believe that this is the wife of the noble Florentine del Giocondo. They also say that this is an ordinary or da Vinci's own self-portrait.

The mystery of the "Mona Lisa" remains unknown today. In 1517, Cardinal Louis of Aragon visited the great master. The monsignor's secretary described this meeting. He recorded that Leonardo da Vinci showed Louis three of his paintings. One depicted a Florentine lady painted from life at the request of Giuliano de' Medici. The second depicted the face of a young one. And the third canvas turned out to be a portrait of Mary with the newborn Jesus.

Some historians claim that the Mona Lisa was the Florentine lady. But, perhaps, it was some other portrait, from which there are no copies and even no evidence of him remains. Therefore, the Medici could not have anything to do with the Mona Lisa.

How to find a painting

Where the painting "Mona Lisa" is located is known to all the inhabitants of our planet. She is kept in the Louvre. Each of the museum signs leads exactly to this canvas. Japanese television in the royal palace bought a whole hall for the portrait. And the image itself is covered with thick armor. There are a couple of guards near the portrait at all times, and an uncountable number of visitors flock here. "La Gioconda" you can see only in the Louvre, and nowhere else. In the middle of the last century, the masterpiece was taken out of the museum twice, but the management of the institution decided never to transport the Mona Lisa outside of it again. The part of the Louvre that bears the name Denon, the seventh hall of painting in Italy, boasts that the face of the most famous woman in the history of art hangs on its wall.

Shades and shadows

Scientists all over the planet cannot calm down, trying to unravel the mysteries of the Mona Lisa portrait (the museum where it is located is indicated above). A few years ago, they resorted to using it in order to understand how the master created shadows on his canvas. Philip Walter and his colleagues examined seven paintings by da Vinci, among which was the Mona Lisa. X-rays make it possible to study the portrait without damaging the layers of paint.

In the course of research, it was found that Leonardo used the sfumato technique popular in his time. She made possible soft transitions of color or shades on the canvas.

Walter's most shocking discovery was that not a single fingerprint or smear could be seen in the painting. Everything is done just perfectly, and therefore it is incredibly difficult to analyze the Mona Lisa.

Scientists have found that Leonardo had the ability to apply layers, the thickness of which was only two micrometers, and the total step thickness was not more than 30-40 microns.

An invaluable masterpiece

How much is the Mona Lisa worth now? Its price is not determined in monetary terms. But the legendary "La Gioconda" is included in the Guinness Book of Records as the canvas insured for the largest amount. In 1962, it was one hundred million dollars. But today the Louvre spends this money not on insurance, but on security. Taking into account the current inflation, in 2006 this amount would have been equal to 670 million US dollars. Thus, the image of Mona Lisa is the most expensive portrait on Earth.

Mystery shrouded in darkness

"La Gioconda" raises a lot of questions. One of them is why a woman has no eyebrows. The end of the XV - the beginning of the next century are known for the fact that completely removed eyebrows were then in fashion. So, we can conclude that the lady depicted on the canvas followed all the style trends, and therefore her eyebrows were plucked. But an engineer from France, Pascal Cote, claims that there were eyebrows after all.

Using a state-of-the-art scanner, the researcher made a copy of the canvas, which showed traces of eyebrows. Pascal is sure that these touches were there from the beginning, but were subsequently erased.

The reasons for this could be overly zealous intentions to preserve the masterpiece. For five centuries, the canvas was often cleaned, and therefore small elements on it could well be erased.

Cote also refers to the unsuccessful attempt to restore the Mona Lisa as the "loss" of the eyebrows. But it is not clear how they could have completely disappeared.

At least one eye

Where is the painting "Mona Lisa" the reader already knows. And, probably, every person wants at least once in his life, from afar, but to see the original that conquered the world. This portrait holds so many secrets and mysteries that it is simply impossible not to try to unravel at least one of them. But no one has succeeded yet. All of them are known only to Leonardo, who took them with him, leaving future generations only riddles and his priceless, immortal masterpiece.

Ritratto di Monna Lisa del Giocondo- "Portrait of Mrs. Lisa Giocondo." In Italian ma donna means "my mistress" (cf. English. milady and fr. "madam"), in an abbreviated version, this expression was transformed into monna or mona. The second part of the model's name, which is considered the name of her husband - del Giocondo, in Italian also has a direct meaning and is translated as “joyful, playing” and, accordingly la Gioconda- “cheerful, playing” (cf. with English joking).

The name "La Joconda" was first mentioned in 1525 in the list of the legacy of the artist Salai, heir and student of da Vinci, who left the painting to his sisters in Milan. The inscription describes it as a portrait of a lady named La Gioconda.

History of the painting

Even the first Italian biographers of Leonardo da Vinci wrote about the place that this painting occupied in the artist's work. Leonardo did not shy away from working on the Mona Lisa - as was the case with many other orders, but, on the contrary, gave herself to her with some kind of passion. All the time that remained with him from work on the Battle of Anghiari was devoted to her. He spent considerable time on it and, leaving Italy in adulthood, he took with him to France, among some other selected paintings. Da Vinci had a special attachment to this portrait, and also thought a lot during the process of its creation, in the "Treatise on Painting" and in those notes on painting techniques that were not included in it, one can find many indications that undoubtedly refer to the "Gioconda » .

Vasari's message

Most likely, Vasari simply added a story about jesters for the entertainment of readers. Vasari's text 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. Aleksey Dzhivelegov writes that Vasari’s indication that “work on the portrait lasted four years is clearly exaggerated: Leonardo did not stay in Florence for so long after returning from Caesar Borgia, and if he had begun to paint a portrait before leaving for Caesar, Vasari would probably , I would say that he wrote it for five years. The scientist also writes about the erroneous indication of the incompleteness of the portrait - “the portrait, undoubtedly, was painted for a long time and was brought to the end, no matter what Vasari said, who in his biography of Leonardo stylized him as an artist who, in principle, could not finish any major work. And not only was it finished, but it is one of the most carefully finished things of Leonardo.

An interesting fact is that in his description, Vasari admires Leonardo's talent to convey physical phenomena, and not the similarity between model and painting. It seems that this "physical" feature of the masterpiece left a deep impression on the visitors of the artist's studio and reached Vasari almost fifty years later.

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.

Other

Perhaps the artist really did not finish the painting in Florence, but took it with him when he left in 1516 and applied the last stroke in the absence of witnesses who could tell Vasari about this. If so, he completed it shortly before his death in 1519. (In France, he lived in Clos-Luce near the royal castle of Amboise).

Although information about the identity of the woman is given by Vasari, there has still been uncertainty about her for a long time and many versions have been expressed:

However, the version about the correspondence of the generally accepted name of the painting to the personality of the model in 2005 is considered to have found final confirmation. Scientists from the University of Heidelberg studied the notes on the margins of a tome owned by a Florentine official, a personal acquaintance of the artist Agostino Vespucci. In notes on the margins of the book, he compares Leonardo with the famous ancient Greek painter Apelles and notes that "da Vinci is currently working on three paintings, one of which is a portrait of Lisa Gherardini". Thus, Mona Lisa really turned out to be the wife of the Florentine merchant Francesco del Giocondo - Lisa Gherardini. The painting, as scientists prove in this case, was commissioned by Leonardo for the young family's new home and to commemorate the birth of their second son, named Andrea.

• The lower edge of the painting cuts off the second half of her body, so the portrait is almost half-length. The armchair in which the model sits stands on a balcony or on a loggia, the parapet line of which is visible behind her elbows. It is believed that earlier the picture could have been wider and accommodated two side columns of the loggia, from which at the moment there are two bases of columns, whose fragments are visible along the edges of the parapet.

  The loggia overlooks a desolate wilderness of meandering streams and a lake surrounded by snowy mountains that extends to a high skyline behind the figure. “Mona Lisa is represented sitting in an armchair against the backdrop of a landscape, and the very comparison of her figure, which is very close to the viewer, with a landscape visible from afar, like a huge mountain, gives the image extraordinary grandeur. The same impression is facilitated by the contrast of the increased plastic tangibility of the figure and its smooth, generalized silhouette with a landscape receding into a foggy distance, like a vision, with bizarre rocks and water channels winding among them.

  Composition

  Boris Vipper writes that, despite the traces of the Quattrocento, “with her clothes with a small cutout on the chest and with sleeves in free folds, just like with a straight posture, a slight turn of the body and a gentle gesture of the hands, the Mona Lisa belongs entirely to the era of classical style” . Mikhail Alpatov points out that “La Gioconda is perfectly inscribed in a strictly proportional rectangle, its half-figure forms something whole, folded hands complete its image. Now, of course, there could be no question of the whimsical curls of the early Annunciation. However, no matter how softened all the contours, the wavy strand of the Gioconda's hair is in tune with the transparent veil, and the hanging fabric thrown over the shoulder finds an echo in the smooth windings of the distant road. In all this, Leonardo shows his ability to create according to the laws of rhythm and harmony.

  Current state

  "Mona Lisa" has become very dark, which is considered the result of its author's tendency to experiment with paints, because of which the fresco " The Last Supper"In general, almost died. The artist's contemporaries, however, managed to express their enthusiasm not only about the composition, drawing and play of chiaroscuro - but also about the color of the work. It is assumed, for example, that initially the sleeves of her dress could be red - as can be seen from a copy of the painting from the Prado.

  The current state of the painting is quite bad, which is why the Louvre staff announced that they would no longer give it to exhibitions: “Cracks have formed on the painting, and one of them stops a few millimeters above Mona Lisa’s head.”

  Analysis

  Technics

  As Dzhivelegov notes, by the time of the creation of the Mona Lisa, Leonardo’s skill “has already entered a phase of such maturity, when all formal tasks of a compositional and other nature have been set and solved, when Leonardo began to think that only the last, most difficult tasks of artistic technique deserve to be to take care of them. And when he found in the face of Mona Lisa a model that satisfied his needs, he tried to solve some of the highest and most difficult tasks of painting technique that he had not yet solved. He wanted, with the help of techniques already developed and tested by him before, especially with the help of his famous sfumato, which gave extraordinary effects before, to do more than he did before: to create a living face of a living person and reproduce the features and expression of this face in such a way that they reveal to the end the inner world of a person. Boris Whipper asks the question, “by what means is this spirituality achieved, this undying spark of consciousness in the image of Mona Lisa, then two main means should be named. One is the marvelous Leonard's sfumato. No wonder Leonardo liked to say that "modeling is the soul of painting." It is sfumato that creates the Gioconda's wet look, her smile, light as the wind, and the incomparable caressing softness of the touch of her hands. Sfumato is a subtle haze that envelops the face and figure, softening contours and shadows. Leonardo recommended for this purpose to place between the source of light and the bodies, as he puts it, "a kind of fog."

  Alpatov adds that “in a softly melting haze enveloping the face and figure, Leonardo managed to make one feel the boundless variability of human facial expressions. Although the eyes of the Gioconda look attentively and calmly at the viewer, due to the shading of her eye sockets, one might think that they are slightly frowning; her lips are compressed, but barely perceptible shadows are outlined near their corners, which make you believe that every minute they will open, smile, speak. The very contrast between her gaze and the half-smile on her lips gives an idea of ​​the inconsistency of her experiences. (...) Leonardo worked on it for several years, ensuring that not a single sharp stroke, not a single angular contour remained in the picture; and although the edges of objects in it are clearly perceptible, they all dissolve in the subtlest transitions from penumbra to half-light.

  Landscape

  Art critics emphasize the naturalness with which the artist combined the portrait characteristics of a person with a landscape full of special mood, and how much this increased the dignity of the portrait.

  Vipper considers the landscape the second means that creates the spirituality of the picture: “The second means is the relationship between the figure and the background. The fantastic, rocky, as if seen through the sea water landscape in the portrait of Mona Lisa has some other reality than her figure itself. The Mona Lisa has the reality of life, the landscape has the reality of a dream. Thanks to this contrast, Mona Lisa seems so incredibly close and tangible, and we perceive the landscape as the radiation of her own dream.

  Renaissance art researcher Viktor Grashchenkov writes that Leonardo, also thanks to the landscape, managed to create not a portrait of a specific person, but a universal image: “In this mysterious picture, he created something more than a portrait image of an unknown Florentine Mona Lisa, the third wife of Francesco del Giocondo. The appearance and mental structure of a particular person are conveyed to them with unprecedented syntheticity. This impersonal psychologism corresponds to the cosmic abstraction of the landscape, almost completely devoid of any signs of human presence. In smoky chiaroscuro, not only all the outlines of the figure and landscape and all color tones are softened. In the subtlest transitions from light to shadow, almost imperceptible to the eye, in the vibration of Leonard's “sfumato”, all definiteness of individuality and its psychological state is softened to the limit, melts and is ready to disappear. (...) "La Gioconda" is not a portrait. This is a visible symbol of the very life of man and nature, united into one whole and presented abstractly from their individual concrete form. But behind the barely noticeable movement, which, like light ripples, runs through the motionless surface of this harmonious world, one can guess all the richness of the possibilities of physical and spiritual existence.

  "Mona Lisa" is sustained in golden brown and reddish tones of the foreground and emerald green tones of the distance. “Transparent, like glass, paints form an alloy, as if created not by a human hand, but by that inner force of matter, which from a solution gives rise to crystals perfect in shape.” Like many of Leonardo's works, this work has darkened with time, and its color ratios have changed somewhat, however, even now, thoughtful comparisons in the tones of carnation and clothes and their general contrast with bluish-green are clearly perceived. "underwater" tone of the landscape .

  Gioconda's smile

  Art critic Rotenberg believes that “there are few portraits in the world art that are equal to the Mona Lisa in terms of the power of expressing the human personality, embodied in the unity of character and intellect. It is the extraordinary intellectual intensity of Leonard's portrait that distinguishes it from the portrait images of the Quattrocento. This feature of his is perceived all the more acutely because it refers to a female portrait, in which the character of the model was previously revealed in a completely different, predominantly lyrical figurative tone. The feeling of strength emanating from the "Mona Lisa" is an organic combination of inner composure and a sense of personal freedom, the spiritual harmony of a person based on his consciousness of his own significance. And her smile itself does not at all express superiority or disdain; it is perceived as the result of calm self-confidence and complete self-control.

  Boris Whipper points out that the above-mentioned absence of eyebrows and a shaved forehead, perhaps unwittingly enhances the strange mystery in her expression. Further, he writes about the power of the picture’s influence: “If we ask ourselves what is the great attractive power of the Mona Lisa, its truly incomparable hypnotic effect, then there can be only one answer - in its spirituality. The most ingenious and most opposite interpretations were put into the smile of the Mona Lisa. They wanted to read pride and tenderness, sensuality and coquetry, cruelty and modesty in it. The mistake was, firstly, that they were looking for individual, subjective spiritual properties at all costs in the image of Mona Lisa, while there is no doubt that Leonardo achieved precisely typical spirituality. Secondly, and this is perhaps even more important, they tried to attribute emotional content to Mona Lisa's spirituality, while in fact she has intellectual roots. The miracle of the Mona Lisa lies precisely in the fact that she thinks; that, being in front of a yellowed, cracked board, we irresistibly feel the presence of a being endowed with reason, a being with whom one can speak and from whom one can expect an answer.

  Lazarev analyzed it as an art historian: “This smile is not so much an individual feature of Mona Lisa, but a typical formula of psychological revival, a formula that runs like a red thread through all the youthful images of Leonardo, a formula that later turned, in the hands of his students and followers, into traditional stamp. Like the proportions of Leonard's figures, it is built on the finest mathematical measurements, on strict consideration of the expressive values ​​of individual parts of the face. And for all that, this smile is absolutely natural, and this is precisely the strength of its charm. It takes everything hard, tense, frozen from the face, it turns it into a mirror of vague, indefinite emotional experiences, in its elusive lightness it can only be compared with a swell running through the water.

  Her analysis attracted the attention of not only art critics, but also psychologists. Sigmund Freud writes: “Whoever presents the paintings of Leonardo, the memory of a strange, captivating and mysterious smile that lurks on the lips of his female images emerges in him. The smile, frozen on elongated, quivering lips, became characteristic of him and is most often called "Leonard's". In the peculiarly beautiful appearance of the Florentine Mona Lisa del Gioconda, she most of all captures and confuses the viewer. This smile demanded one interpretation, but found the most diverse, of which none satisfies. (...) The conjecture that Mona Lisa's smile combined two different elements was born by many critics. Therefore, in the expression of the face of the beautiful Florentine, they saw the most perfect image of the antagonism that governs the love life of a woman, restraint and seduction, sacrificial tenderness and recklessly demanding sensuality, absorbing a man as something extraneous. (...) Leonardo in the face of Mona Lisa managed to reproduce the double meaning of her smile, the promise of boundless tenderness and an ominous threat.

  The demonic charm of this smile especially fascinates the viewer. Hundreds of poets and writers wrote about this woman, who seems to be seductively smiling, then frozen, coldly and soullessly looking into space, and no one guessed her smile, no one interpreted her thoughts. Everything, even the landscape, is mysterious, like a dream, tremulous, like a pre-storm haze of sensuality (Muter).

  Place in the development of the genre

  "Mona Lisa" is considered one of the best works in the portrait genre that influenced the works of the High Renaissance and indirectly through them - on the entire subsequent development of the portrait genre, which was "should always return to the Mona Lisa as an unattainable, but obligatory model" .

  Art historians note that the Mona Lisa portrait was a decisive step in the development of Renaissance portrait art. Rotenberg writes: “although the Quattrocento painters left a number of significant works of this genre, their achievements in portraiture were, so to speak, disproportionate to the achievements in the main pictorial genres - in compositions on religious and mythological themes. The inequality of the portrait genre was already evident in the very "iconography" of portrait images. Actually, the portrait works of the 15th century, with all their indisputable physiognomic similarity and the feeling of inner strength they radiated, were still distinguished by their external and internal constraint. All that richness of human feelings and experiences that characterizes the biblical and mythological images of painters of the 15th century was usually not the property of their portrait works. Echoes of this can be seen in earlier portraits of Leonardo himself, created by him in the first years of his stay in Milan. (...) In comparison with them, the portrait of Mona Lisa is perceived as the result of a gigantic qualitative shift. For the first time, the portrait image in its significance has become on a par with the most vivid images of other pictorial genres.

  In his pioneering work, Leonardo transferred the main center of gravity to the face of the portrait. At the same time, he used his hands as a powerful means of psychological characterization. Having made the portrait generational in format, the artist was able to demonstrate a wider range of pictorial techniques. And the most important thing in the figurative structure of the portrait is the subordination of all particulars to the guiding idea. “The head and hands are the undoubted center of the picture, to which the rest of its elements are sacrificed. The fairy-tale landscape, as it were, shines through the sea waters, it seems so distant and intangible. Its main purpose is not to draw the viewer's attention away from the face. And the same role is called upon to fulfill the robe, which breaks up into the smallest folds. Leonardo consciously avoids heavy draperies that could obscure the expressiveness of the hands and face. Thus, he makes the latter perform with special force, the more, the more modest and neutral the landscape and attire, assimilated to a quiet, barely noticeable accompaniment.

  Leonardo's students and followers created numerous replicas of the Mona Lisa. Some of them (from the Vernon collection, USA; from the Walter collection, Baltimore, USA; and for some time the Isleworth Mona Lisa, Switzerland) are considered authentic by their owners, and the painting in the Louvre is a copy. There is also an iconography of the “Nude Mona Lisa”, represented by several options (“Beautiful Gabrielle”, “Monna Vanna”, the Hermitage “Donna Nuda”), apparently made by the artist’s own students. A large number of them gave rise to an unprovable version that there was a version of the nude Mona Lisa, written by the master himself.

  • After the Mona Lisa gained incredible popularity due to its theft in 1911 (see section below), artists took notice of it, making it an object of experimentation and giving an additional impetus to its popularity. “Malevich and Duchamp opposed their anti-art of experiment to traditional art with all its “bourgeois” values. The public was offended to the core, and the Mona Lisa became even more famous.

    • Kazimir Malevich in 1914 made a collage "Composition with Mona Lisa", where he crossed out the image of her reproduction twice and wrote "Partial Eclipse" at the top.
    • The Dadaist Marcel Duchamp in 1919 created the L.H.O.O.Q. , which was a reproduction of the famous mustache painting. The name hid the smut: if you quickly say “L.H.O.O.Q.”, then in French you get the phrase "Elle a chaud au cul"(“she has a hot ass”, that is, “the girl is very aroused”).
    • Fernand Léger in 1930 painted Mona Lisa with the keys.
    • Rene Magritte in 1960 created the painting "La Gioconda", where there is no Mona Lisa, but there is a window.
    • Salvador Dali in 1964 painted "Self-portrait" as Mona Lisa.

    The Mona Lisa's world exhibition tour in the 1960s contributed to the globalization of its fame (see below). This was reflected in art: “American avant-garde artists did not overthrow the Mona Lisa from the pedestal, as their European counterparts once did. On the contrary, Andy Warhol, Jasper Johns, Robert Rauschenberg and other stars of pop art began to exploit the image of the Mona Lisa in the same way as other products of popular culture - from a can of Campbell's soup to Marilyn Monroe.

    • Andy Warhol in 1963 and 1978 made the composition "Four Mona Lisa" and "Thirty Are Better Than One Andy Warhol" (1963), "Mona Lisa (Two Times)" ().
    • The representative of figurative art Fernando Botero in 1959 wrote “Mona Lisa, Age Twelve”, and in 1963 he created an image of Mona Lisa in his usual manner, exaggerating her weight.
    • Jasper Johns used her likeness for Figure 7 in 1968.
    • Robert Rauschenberg created Pneumonia Lisa in 1982.
    • The famous graffiti artist Banksy created a drawing of Mona Lisa, depicted in full growth, turning her back to the viewer, raising her hem and showing her naked ass. He also owns "Mona Lisa Mujaheddin" - Gioconda with a grenade launcher.
    See also en:Mona Lisa replicas and reinterpretations

    In the new time

    Location

    By the day of his death in 1525, Leonardo's assistant (and possibly lover) named Salai owned, judging by references in his personal papers, a portrait of a woman called "Gioconda" ( quadro de una dona aretata), which was bequeathed to him by his teacher. Salai left the painting to his sisters who lived in Milan. It remains a mystery how, in this case, the portrait got from Milan back to France. It is also not known who and when exactly cut off the edges of the painting with columns, which, according to most researchers, based on comparison with other portraits, existed in the original version. Unlike another cropped work by Leonardo - “Portrait Ginevra Benchi”, the lower part of which was cut off, as it suffered from water or fire, in this case the reasons were most likely of a compositional nature. There is a version that this was done by Leonardo da Vinci himself.

    King Francis I is believed to have bought the painting from Salai's heirs (for 4,000 écus) and kept it in his Château de Fontainebleau, where it remained until the time of Louis XIV. The latter moved her to the Palace of Versailles, and after the French Revolution she ended up in the Louvre in 1793. Napoleon hung the portrait in his bedroom of the Tuileries Palace, then she returned back to the museum. During the Second World War, the painting was transported for security reasons from the Louvre to the Amboise castle (the place of death and burial of Leonardo), then to the Abbey of Loc-Dieu, and finally to the Ingres Museum in Montauban, from where, after the victory, it returned safely to its place.

    One of the mysteries is related to the deep affection that the author had for this work. Various explanations were offered, for example, romantic: Leonardo fell in love with Mona Lisa and deliberately delayed the work in order to stay longer with her, and she teased him with her mysterious smile and brought him to the greatest creative ecstasies. This version is considered mere speculation. Dzhivelegov believes that this attachment is due to the fact that he found in it the point of application of many of his creative searches (see the Technique section). Despite the fact that the "Mona Lisa" was highly appreciated by the artist's contemporaries, in the future her fame faded. The painting was not particularly remembered until the middle of the 19th century, when artists close to the Symbolist movement began to praise it, associating it with their ideas regarding feminine mystery. The critic Walter Pater expressed his opinion in his 1867 essay on da Vinci, describing the figure in the painting as a kind of mythical embodiment of the eternal feminine, who is "older than the rocks between which she sits" and who "died many times and learned the secrets of the afterlife" .

    The further rise of the painting's fame is associated with its mysterious disappearance at the beginning of the 20th century and a happy return to the museum a few years later, thanks to which it did not leave the pages of newspapers. Art critic Grigory Kozlov in his study "Attempt on Art" in the chapter "La Gioconda. How to Become a Star details her path to fame through the ages. He compares her fame to the spread of circles on the water from a fallen stone, and points out that over the centuries this glory has gone through several stages:

    • 1st circle: artists and critics (XVI century). Contemporaries of Leonardo, who were engaged in art, highly appreciated this work. Among the admirers of the "Mona Lisa" were Raphael, Vasari and others.
    • 2nd circle: kings (XVI-XVIII centuries). Location in the collection of Francis I of France (who hung it in his favorite room - the bath), then her journey through the royal palaces (Fontainebleau, Louvre, Versailles, Tuileries). However, by the 18th century, it darkened and was completely forgotten, but the French Revolution changed everything - the painting was confiscated for the world's first public museum in the Louvre, where Fragonard saw it and appreciated it, including it among the most valuable paintings of the museum. Napoleon, having come to power, took her to his bedroom, which became for her a "springboard to glory", but after becoming emperor, after 3 years he returned her to the Louvre Museum, which was named after him. However, the picture was well known only to connoisseurs and was by no means considered the best work of the artist.
    • 3rd circle: intelligentsia (19th century). In the Louvre, the "Mona Lisa" did not immediately take the leading place - the "prima donna" of the museum was the "Ascension of the Virgin Mary" by Murillo (now in the Prado). For the first time in a picture depicting the interior of the Louvre, she appeared in 1833 (art. S. Morse). The decisive role at this stage was played by romantic writers who found in her the ideal of a femme fatale, created by Leonardo, whom they worshiped (Walter Pater, Theophile Gaultier - who “invented” a smile, Jules Verne - who invented the author’s love story for the model and a love triangle with her husband ). The “discovery” of the smile became the “discovery” of the picture for intellectuals. The invention of photography contributed to the spread of reproductions. “Intellectuals of the Victorian era became a cult that worshiped a mysterious and fatal woman, whose photo they kept on their desk. The words of Walter Pater: "She, who is older than the rocks ..." - became their password. Merezhkovsky's European bestseller The Resurrected Gods about Leonardo picked up the theme.
    • 4th circle: crowd (since 1911). A qualitative leap in the painting's fame is associated with its theft and return (see section below). Then the avant-garde artists took a step, choosing her as the object of their experiments.
    • 5th circle: the age of globalization (2nd half of the 20th century). De Gaulle, having sent the picture in 1962 as a "diplomat" to the United States, contributed to further fame. Jacqueline Kennedy was the personal patron of the famous work of Leonardo during the visit of the "Mona Lisa", and the media compared both ladies - Gioconda and Jacqueline, calling the second modern American-French Mona Lisa. America was embraced by Giocondomania, after which the picture appeared in advertising and became a trademark. And American artists (Warhol, Rauschenberg, etc.) introduced her to pop art, like Marilyn Monroe. During the further tour of the picture, which was covered in detail by the press, millions saw it, for example, in the USSR, 4,600 people watched it a day. She was repeatedly attempted (see the Vandalism section below), and each incident spun the flywheel of fame even more.

    Theft

    Mona Lisa would have long been known only to connoisseurs of fine art, if not for her exceptional history, which ensured her worldwide fame.

    A contemporary of her adventures, the critic Abram Efros wrote: “... the museum watchman, who now does not leave a single step from the picture, since its return to the Louvre after the abduction in 1911, is guarding not a portrait of Francesco del Giocondo’s wife, but an image of some kind of half-human, half-snake creature, either smiling or gloomy, dominating the chilled, bare, rocky space that stretched out behind him.

    Vandalism

    • In 1956, the lower part of the painting was damaged when a visitor poured acid over it.
    • On December 30 of the same year, the young Bolivian Hugo Ungaza Villegas threw a stone at her and damaged the paint layer at the elbow (the loss was later recorded). After that, the Mona Lisa was protected by bulletproof glass, which protected her from further serious attacks.
    • In April 1974, at an exhibition in Tokyo, a woman, frustrated by the museum's policy regarding the disabled (who were not allowed into the exhibition in order to increase the capacity of the hall), tried to spray red paint from a spray can.
    • On April 2, 2009, a Russian woman who did not receive French citizenship threw a clay cup at the glass. Both of these cases did not harm the picture.

    In culture

    • The crater Mona Lisa on Venus is named after her.
    Literature:
    • The theft of the Mona Lisa is dedicated to the short story by Georg Game "The Thief" (), which gave the name to the collection of short stories of the same name.

Jean Franck, a French researcher and consultant at the Leonardo da Vinci Center in Los Angeles, recently announced that he was able to repeat the unique technique of the great master, thanks to which the Gioconda seems to be alive.

"In terms of technique, the Mona Lisa has always been considered something inexplicable. Now I think I have an answer to this question," says Frank.

Reference: sfumato technique is a painting technique invented by Leonardo da Vinci. It consists in the fact that objects in the paintings should not have clear boundaries. Everything should be like in life: blurry, penetrate one into another, breathe. Da Vinci practiced this technique by looking at damp stains on walls, ash, clouds, or dirt. He deliberately smoked the room where he worked in order to look for images in clubs.

According to Jean Franck, the main difficulty of this technique lies in the smallest strokes (about a quarter of a millimeter) that are not accessible for recognition either under a microscope or using X-rays. Thus, it took several hundred sessions to paint a da Vinci painting. The image of the Mona Lisa consists of about 30 layers of liquid, almost transparent oil paint. For such jewelry work, da Vinci, apparently, had to use a magnifying glass at the same time as a brush.
According to the researcher, he managed to reach only the level of the early works of the master. However, even now his research has been honored to be next to the canvases of the great Leonardo da Vinci. The Uffizi Museum in Florence placed next to the masterpieces of the master 6 tables of Frank, which describe in stages how da Vinci painted the eye of Mona Lisa, and two paintings by Leonardo recreated by him.

It is known that the composition of "Mona Lisa" is built on "golden triangles". These triangles, in turn, are pieces of a regular stellated pentagon. But the researchers do not see any secret meanings in this, they are rather inclined to explain the expressiveness of the Mona Lisa with the technique of spatial perspective.

Da Vinci was one of the first to use this technique, he made the background of the picture unclear, slightly blurred, thereby increasing the emphasis on the outlines of the foreground.

Riddles of the Mona Lisa

Unique techniques allowed da Vinci to create such a lively portrait of a woman that people, looking at him, perceive her feelings differently. Is she sad or smiling? Scientists have solved this riddle. The Urbana-Champaign computer program, created by scientists from the Netherlands and the USA, made it possible to calculate that Mona Lisa's smile is 83% happy, 9% disgusted, 6% full of fear and 2% angry. The program analyzed the main features of the face, the curve of the lips and wrinkles around the eyes, and then ranked the face in six main groups of emotions.