The history of the Mona Lisa painting by Leonardo da Vinci. The main secret of Mona Lisa - her smile - still haunts scientists
The Mona Lisa painting has always been an amazing creation of Leonardo da Vinci. Very much interesting stories related to this work. In this article we will tell you several educational facts about the painting Mona Lisa
Mona Lisa painting. Facts that will impress you:
Mona Lisa's eyebrows and eyelashes
In the painting, the Mona Lisa has neither eyelashes nor eyebrows. However, in 2007, a French engineer used a high-resolution camera to discover fine brush strokes in the area of the eyebrows and eyelashes that had disappeared over time, likely as a result of careless restoration or simply faded.
There is another "Mona Lisa"
The Prado Museum in Spain houses a second Mona Lisa, which was probably painted by one of da Vinci's students. If you superimpose two Mona Lisa paintings, a 3-D effect appears, which, in fact, makes this painting the first stereoscopic image in history.
Pablo Picasso was suspected...
When the Mona Lisa was stolen in 1911, Pablo Picasso was questioned as a suspect.
Delicate work..
When painting the image of La Gioconda, Leonardo da Vinci created about 30 layers, many of which are thinner than a human hair.
Relaxed atmosphere
While painting the Mona Lisa, the artist made sure that the sitter was in a great mood and that she was not bored. For this purpose, six musicians were invited to play especially for the Mona Lisa, and a musical fountain, invented by da Vinci himself, was installed.
Various great works were also read aloud and a Persian cat and a greyhound were present in case the sitter wanted to play with them.
The painting was not painted on canvas
"Mona Lisa" was painted not on canvas, but on three types wood, about an inch and a half thick.
12 long years...
Leonardo da Vinci invented scissors, played the viola, and spent 12 years painting the lips of the Mona Lisa.
Mona Lisa and Napoleon
The Mona Lisa painting hung in Napoleon's bedroom.
An attempt at cubism...
A Swedish designer has created a replica of the Mona Lisa from fifty translucent polygons.
Scam of the century...
As you know, in 1911 the painting “Mona Lisa” was stolen from the Louvre. The theft was led by Argentine fraudster Eduardo de Valfierno, all in order to sell six counterfeits to six different collectors around the world. No charges were brought against him, since he was not formally involved in the kidnapping.
I just took it out of the museum...
In 1911, Vincenzo Perugia (an employee of the Louvre and a mirror maker) wished to return the Mona Lisa back to Italy after the painting "was captured by Napoleon." Perugia entered the Louvre, removed the painting from the wall, carried it to the nearest service staircase, took the painting out of the frame, put it under his work coat and left the museum as if nothing had happened.
Insolent...
In 1956, a Bolivian tourist threw a rock at the Mona Lisa and damaged the painting.
What is the price of the Mona Lisa?
The cost of the Mona Lisa painting is estimated at approximately $782 million.
Mona Lisa from toast..
In 1983, Tadahiko Ogawa created a copy of the Mona Lisa consisting entirely of t O stov.
Save from the Nazis
During World War II, the Mona Lisa was moved from the Louvre twice. And all in order to prevent it from falling into the hands of the Nazis.
Mona Lisa with mustache
“Mona Lisa with a Mustache” is a work owned by surrealist artist Marcel Duchamp. He called the painting “L.H.O.O.Q.” , which means “I have a hot ass” in French.
Painting of Mona Lisa with mustache
You can love forever...
In 1963, the Mona Lisa was exhibited for a month in National Gallery art. The painting was under 24-hour guard by American Marines and, despite the fact that the gallery's visiting hours were extended, people often stood in line for about two hours just to catch a glimpse of the painting.
The tiniest copy of the Mona Lisa
The most microscopic copy of the Mona Lisa is only 30 microns in size.
Self-portrait
There is a version that the portrait of the Mona Lisa is actually a self-portrait of da Vinci in women's clothing.
May 6th, 2017
Her mysterious smile mesmerizing. Some see in her divine beauty, other - secret signs, third - a challenge to norms and society. But everyone agrees on one thing - there is something mysterious and attractive about her.
What is the secret of Mona Lisa? There are countless versions. Here are the most common and intriguing ones.
This mysterious masterpiece has puzzled researchers and art historians for centuries. Now Italian scientists have added another layer of intrigue, claiming that da Vinci left a series of very small letters and numbers in the painting. When viewed under a microscope, the letters LV can be seen in the Mona Lisa's right eye.
And in the left eye there are also some symbols, but not as noticeable as the others. They resemble the letters CE, or the letter B.
On the arch of the bridge in the background of the painting there is an inscription either “72” or “L2” or the letter L, and the number 2. Also in the painting there is the number 149 and the fourth erased number after them.
Today this painting, measuring 77x53 cm, is kept in the Louvre behind thick bulletproof glass. The image, made on a poplar board, is covered with a network of craquelures. It has gone through a number of not very successful restorations and has noticeably darkened over five centuries. However, the older the painting becomes, the more people attracts: the Louvre is visited annually by 8-9 million people.
And Leonardo himself did not want to part with the Mona Lisa, and perhaps this is the first time in history when the author did not give the work to the customer, despite the fact that he took the fee. The first owner of the painting - after the author - King Francis I of France was also delighted with the portrait. He bought it from da Vinci for incredible money at that time - 4,000 gold coins and placed it in Fontainebleau.
Napoleon was also fascinated by Madame Lisa (as he called Gioconda) and took her to his chambers in the Tuileries Palace. And the Italian Vincenzo Perugia stole a masterpiece from the Louvre in 1911, took it home and hid with her for two whole years until he was detained while trying to hand over the painting to the director of the Uffizi Gallery... In a word, at all times the portrait of a Florentine lady attracted, hypnotized, and delighted. ..
What is the secret of her attractiveness?
Version No. 1: classic
We find the first mention of the Mona Lisa in the author of the famous Lives, Giorgio Vasari. From his work we learn that Leonardo undertook to “make for Francesco del Giocondo a portrait of Mona Lisa, his wife, and, after working on it for four years, left it unfinished.”
The writer admires the artist’s skill, his ability to show “the smallest details that the subtlety of painting can convey,” and most importantly, his smile, which “is given so pleasant that it seems as if one is contemplating a divine rather than a human being.” The art historian explains the secret of her charm by saying that “while painting the portrait, he (Leonardo) held people who were playing the lyre or singing, and there were always jesters who kept her cheerful and removed the melancholy that painting usually imparts to the portraits being painted.” There is no doubt: Leonardo is an unsurpassed master, and the crown of his mastery is this divine portrait. In the image of his heroine there is a duality inherent in life itself: the modesty of the pose is combined with a bold smile, which becomes a kind of challenge to society, canons, art...
But is this really the wife of the silk merchant Francesco del Giocondo, whose surname became the middle name of this mysterious lady? Is it true that the story about the musicians who created the right mood for our heroine? Skeptics dispute all this, citing the fact that Vasari was an 8-year-old boy when Leonardo died. He could not personally know the artist or his model, so he presented only information given by the anonymous author of the first biography of Leonardo. Meanwhile, the writer also encounters controversial passages in other biographies. Take, for example, the story of Michelangelo's broken nose. Vasari writes that Pietro Torrigiani hit a classmate because he was attracted to his talent, and Benvenuto Cellini explains the injury by his arrogance and impudence: while copying Masaccio’s frescoes, during the lesson he ridiculed every image, for which he received a punch in the nose from Torrigiani. Cellini speaks in favor of the version complex character Buonarroti, about whom there were legends.
Version No. 2: Chinese mother
Lisa del Giocondo (nee Gherardini) really existed. Italian archaeologists even claim to have found her tomb in the monastery of St. Ursula in Florence. But is she in the picture? A number of researchers claim that Leonardo painted the portrait from several models, because when he refused to give the painting to the fabric merchant Giocondo, it remained unfinished. The master spent his whole life improving his work, adding features of other models - thereby obtaining a collective portrait ideal woman of his era.
Italian scientist Angelo Paratico went further. He is sure that Mona Lisa is Leonardo's mother, who was actually...Chinese. The researcher spent 20 years in the East studying communications local traditions With Italian era Renaissance, and discovered documents showing that Leonardo's father, the notary Piero, had a wealthy client, and he had a slave whom he brought from China. Her name was Katerina - she became the mother of the Renaissance genius. It is precisely by the fact that eastern blood flowed in Leonardo’s veins that the researcher explains the famous “Leonardo’s handwriting” - the master’s ability to write from right to left (this is how entries were made in his diaries). The researcher saw and oriental features in the face of the model, and in the landscape behind her. Paratico suggests exhuming Leonardo's remains and testing his DNA to confirm his theory.
The official version says that Leonardo was the son of the notary Piero and the “local peasant woman” Katerina. He could not marry a rootless woman, but took as his wife a girl from a noble family with a dowry, but she turned out to be barren. Katerina raised the child for the first few years of his life, and then the father took his son into his home. Almost nothing is known about Leonardo's mother. But, indeed, there is an opinion that the artist, separated from his mother in early childhood, tried all his life to recreate the image and smile of his mother in his paintings. This assumption was made by Sigmund Freud in his book “Memories of Childhood. Leonardo da Vinci" and it gained many supporters among art historians.
Version No. 3: Mona Lisa is a man
Viewers often note that in the image of Mona Lisa, despite all the tenderness and modesty, there is some kind of masculinity, and the face of the young model, almost devoid of eyebrows and eyelashes, seems boyish. Famous explorer Mona Lisa Silvano Vincenti believes that this is no accident. He is sure that Leonardo posed ... as a young man in a woman's dress. And this is none other than Salai - a student of da Vinci, who was painted by him in the paintings “John the Baptist” and “Angel in the Flesh”, where the young man is endowed with the same smile as the Mona Lisa. The art historian, however, made this conclusion not only because of the external similarity of the models, but after studying high-resolution photographs that made it possible to see Vincenti in the eyes of the model L and S - the first letters of the names of the author of the picture and the young man depicted in it, according to the expert .
"John the Baptist" by Leonardo Da Vinci (Louvre)
This version is also supported by a special relationship - Vasari also hinted at it - between the model and the artist, which may have connected Leonardo and Salai. Da Vinci was not married and had no children. At the same time, there is a denunciation document in which an anonymous person accuses the artist of sodomy of a certain 17-year-old boy Jacopo Saltarelli.
Leonardo had several students, with some of whom he was more than close, according to a number of researchers. Freud also discusses Leonardo's homosexuality, and he supports this version with a psychiatric analysis of his biography and the diary of the Renaissance genius. Da Vinci's notes about Salai are also considered as an argument in favor. There is even a version that da Vinci left a portrait of Salai (since the painting is mentioned in the will of the master’s student), and from him the painting came to Francis I.
By the way, the same Silvano Vincenti put forward another assumption: that the painting depicts a certain woman from the retinue of Louis Sforza, at whose court in Milan Leonardo worked as an architect and engineer in 1482-1499. This version appeared after Vincenti saw the numbers 149 on the back of the canvas. This, according to the researcher, is the date the painting was painted, only the last number has been erased. It is traditionally believed that the master began painting Gioconda in 1503.
However, there are many other candidates for the title of Mona Lisa who compete with Salai: these are Isabella Gualandi, Ginevra Benci, Constanza d'Avalos, the libertine Caterina Sforza, a certain secret lover Lorenzo de' Medici and even Leonardo's nurse.
Version No. 4: Gioconda is Leonardo
Another unexpected theory, which Freud hinted at, was confirmed in the research of the American Lillian Schwartz. The Mona Lisa is a self-portrait, Lilian is sure. Artist and Graphic Consultant at the School visual arts in New York in the 1980s, she compared the famous “Turin Self-Portrait” by a very middle-aged artist and a portrait of Mona Lisa and discovered that the proportions of faces (head shape, distance between the eyes, forehead height) were the same.
And in 2009, Lilian, together with amateur historian Lynn Picknett, presented the public with another incredible sensation: she claims that the Shroud of Turin is nothing more than an imprint of Leonardo’s face, made using silver sulfate using the camera obscura principle.
However, not many supported Lilian in her research - these theories are not among the most popular, unlike the following assumption.
Version No. 5: a masterpiece with Down syndrome
Gioconda suffered from Down's disease - this was the conclusion that English photographer Leo Vala came to in the 1970s after he came up with a method to “turn” the Mona Lisa in profile.
At the same time, the Danish doctor Finn Becker-Christiansson diagnosed Gioconda with congenital facial paralysis. An asymmetrical smile, in his opinion, speaks of mental deviations up to and including idiocy.
In 1991 French sculptor Alain Roche decided to embody the Mona Lisa in marble, but it didn’t work out. It turned out that from a physiological point of view, everything in the model is wrong: the face, the arms, and the shoulders. Then the sculptor turned to the physiologist, Professor Henri Greppo, and he attracted a specialist in hand microsurgery, Jean-Jacques Conte. Together, they came to the conclusion that the mysterious woman’s right hand did not rest on her left because it was possibly shorter and could be prone to cramps. Conclusion: the right half of the model’s body is paralyzed, which means mysterious smile- also just a cramp.
The complete “medical record” of Gioconda was collected by gynecologist Julio Cruz y Hermida in his book “A Look at Gioconda Through the Eyes of a Doctor.” The result was so scary picture that it is not clear how this woman even lived. According to various researchers, she suffered from alopecia (hair loss), high cholesterol in the blood, exposure of the neck of the teeth, their loosening and loss, and even alcoholism. She had Parkinson's disease, a lipoma (benign fatty tumor on right hand), strabismus, cataracts and heterochromia of the iris ( different color eye) and asthma.
However, who said that Leonardo was anatomically accurate - what if the secret of genius lies precisely in this disproportion?
Version No. 6: a child under the heart
There is another polar “medical” version - pregnancy. American gynecologist Kenneth D. Keel is sure that Mona Lisa crossed her arms over her stomach reflexively trying to protect her unborn baby. The probability is high, because Lisa Gherardini had five children (the first-born, by the way, was named Pierrot). A hint of the legitimacy of this version can be found in the title of the portrait: Ritratto di Monna Lisa del Giocondo (Italian) - “Portrait of Mrs. Lisa Giocondo.” Monna is short for ma donna - Madonna, Mother of God (although it also means “my mistress”, lady). Art critics often explain the genius of the painting precisely by the fact that it depicts an earthly woman in the image of the Mother of God.
Version No. 7: iconographic
However, the theory that the Mona Lisa is an icon has no place Mother of God occupied by an earthly woman, popular in her own right. This is the genius of the work and that is why it has become a symbol of the beginning new era in art. Used to be art served the church, government and nobility. Leonardo proves that the artist stands above all this, what is most valuable creative idea masters And the great idea is to show the duality of the world, and the means for this is the image of the Mona Lisa, which combines divine and earthly beauty.
Version No. 8: Leonardo - creator of 3D
This combination was achieved using a special technique invented by Leonardo - sfumato (from Italian - “disappearing like smoke”). It was this painting technique, when paints are applied layer by layer, that allowed Leonardo to create aerial perspective in the picture. The artist applied countless layers of these, and each one was almost transparent. Thanks to this technique, light is reflected and scattered differently across the canvas, depending on the viewing angle and the angle of incidence of the light. That’s why the model’s facial expression is constantly changing.
The Mona Lisa is the first 3D painting in history, researchers conclude. Another technical breakthrough of a genius who foresaw and tried to implement many inventions that were implemented centuries later (aircraft, tank, diving suit, etc.). This is evidenced by the version of the portrait stored in the Prado Museum in Madrid, painted either by da Vinci himself or by his student. It depicts the same model - only the angle is shifted by 69 cm. Thus, experts believe, there was a search for the desired point in the image, which will give the 3D effect.
Version No. 9: secret signs
Secret signs are a favorite topic of Mona Lisa researchers. Leonardo is not just an artist, he is an engineer, inventor, scientist, writer, and probably encrypted some universal secrets in his best painting. The most daring and incredible version was voiced in the book and then in the film “The Da Vinci Code”. This is of course fiction novel. However, researchers are constantly making equally fantastic assumptions based on certain symbols found in the painting.
Many speculations stem from the fact that there is another hidden image of the Mona Lisa. For example, the figure of an angel, or a feather in the hands of a model. There is also an interesting version by Valery Chudinov, who discovered in the Mona Lisa the words Yara Mara - the name of the Russian pagan goddess.
Version No. 10: cropped landscape
Many versions are also related to the landscape against which the Mona Lisa is depicted. Researcher Igor Ladov discovered a cyclical nature in it: it seems worth drawing several lines to connect the edges of the landscape. Just a couple of centimeters are missing for everything to come together. But in the version of the painting from the Prado Museum there are columns, which, apparently, were also in the original. Nobody knows who cropped the picture. If you return them, the image develops into a cyclical landscape, which symbolizes what human life(in a global sense) enchanted just like everything in nature...
It seems that there are as many versions of the solution to the mystery of the Mona Lisa as there are people trying to explore the masterpiece. There was a place for everything: from admiration unearthly beauty- until complete pathology is recognized. Everyone finds something of their own in Mona Lisa and, perhaps, this is where the multidimensionality and semantic multi-layeredness of the canvas is manifested, which gives everyone the opportunity to turn on their imagination. Meanwhile, the secret of Mona Lisa remains the property of this mysterious lady, with a slight smile on her lips...
Today, experts say that the elusive half-smile of Gioconda is a deliberately created effect that Leonardo da Vinci used more than once. This version arose after it was recently discovered early work"La Bella Principessa" ("The Beautiful Princess"), in which the artist uses a similar optical illusion.
The mystery of Mona Lisa's smile is that it is noticeable only when the viewer looks above the woman's mouth in the portrait, but as soon as one looks at the smile itself, it disappears. Scientists explain this by an optical illusion, which is created by a complex combination of colors and shades. This is facilitated by the characteristics of human peripheral vision.
Da Vinci created the effect of an elusive smile using the so-called "sfumato" technique ("vague", "indefinite") - blurred outlines and specially applied shadows around the lips and eyes visually change depending on the angle at which a person looks at the picture. Therefore, the smile appears and disappears.
For a long time, scientists debated whether this effect was created consciously and intentionally. The portrait “La Bella Principessa” discovered in 2009 allows us to prove that da Vinci practiced this technique long before the creation of “La Gioconda”. On the girl's face there is the same barely noticeable half-smile, like the Mona Lisa.
Comparing the two paintings, scientists came to the conclusion that da Vinci also used the effect of peripheral vision there: the shape of the lips visually changes depending on the viewing angle. If you look directly at the lips, the smile is not noticeable, but if you look higher, the corners of the mouth seem to rise up, and the smile appears again.
Professor of psychology and expert in the field of visual perception Alessandro Soranzo (UK) writes: “A smile disappears as soon as the viewer tries to catch it.” Under his leadership, scientists conducted a number of experiments.
To demonstrate the optical illusion in action, volunteers were asked to look at da Vinci's paintings from different distances and, for comparison, at the painting "Portrait of a Girl" by his contemporary Pollaiuolo. The smile was only visible in Da Vinci's paintings, depending on a certain angle of view. When blurring images, the same effect was observed. Professor Soranzo has no doubt that this is an optical illusion deliberately created by da Vinci, a technique he developed over several years.
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The masterpiece is admired by more than eight million visitors every year. However, what we see today only vaguely resembles the original creation. More than 500 years separate us from the time the painting was created...
THE PICTURE CHANGES OVER THE YEARS
Mona Lisa changes like real woman... After all, today we have before us an image of a faded, faded woman’s face, yellowed and darkened in those places where previously the viewer could see brown and green tones (it’s not for nothing that Leonardo’s contemporaries more than once admired the fresh and bright colors paintings by an Italian artist).
The portrait did not escape the ravages of time and damage caused by numerous restorations. And the wooden supports became wrinkled and covered with cracks. Changed under the influence chemical reactions and the properties of pigments, binders and varnish over the years.
The honorary right to create a series of photographs of the "Mona Lisa" in highest resolution was given to the French engineer Pascal Cotte, inventor of the multispectral camera. The result of his work was detailed photographs of the painting in the range from ultraviolet to infrared spectrum.
It is worth noting that Pascal spent about three hours creating photographs of the “naked” painting, that is, without a frame or protective glass. At the same time, he used a unique scanner of his own invention. The result of the work was 13 photographs of a masterpiece with 240-megapixel resolution. The quality of these images is absolutely unique. It took two years to analyze and verify the data obtained.
RECONSTRUCTED BEAUTY
In 2007, at the exhibition “The Genius of Da Vinci,” 25 secrets of the painting were revealed for the first time. Here, for the first time, visitors were able to enjoy the original color of the Mona Lisa's paints (that is, the color of the original pigments that da Vinci used).
The photographs presented the picture to readers in its original form, similar to how Leonardo’s contemporaries saw it: a sky the color of lapis lazuli, a warm pink complexion, clearly drawn mountains, green trees...
Photographs by Pascal Cottet showed that Leonardo had not completed the painting. We observe changes in the position of the model's hand. It can be seen that at first Mona Lisa supported the bedspread with her hand. It also became noticeable that the facial expression and smile were somewhat different at first. And the stain in the corner of the eye is water damage in the varnish coating, most likely as a result of the painting hanging for some time in Napoleon's bathroom. We can also determine that some parts of the painting have become transparent over time. And see that, contrary to modern opinion, Mona Lisa had eyebrows and eyelashes!
WHO IS IN THE PICTURE
“Leonardo undertook to make a portrait of Mona Lisa, his wife, for Francesco Giocondo, and, having worked for four years, left it unfinished. While painting the portrait, he kept people playing the lyre or singing, and there were always jesters who moved away from her melancholy and kept her cheerful. That’s why her smile is so pleasant.”
This is the only evidence of how the painting was created belongs to da Vinci's contemporary, the artist and writer Giorgio Vasari (though he was only eight years old when Leonardo died). Based on his words for several centuries now woman 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. This is what Vasari wrote - and everyone believed it. But most likely, this is a mistake, and there is another woman in the portrait.
There is a lot of evidence: firstly, the headdress is a widow’s mourning veil (meanwhile Francesco del Giocondo lived long life), secondly, if there was a customer, why didn’t Leonardo give him the work? It is known that the artist kept the painting in his possession, and in 1516, leaving Italy, he took it to France; King Francis I paid 4,000 gold florins for it in 1517 - fantastic money at that time. However, he didn’t get “La Gioconda” either.
The artist did not part with the portrait until his death. In 1925, art historians suggested that the half depicts Duchess Constance d'Avalos - the widow of Federico del Balzo, the mistress of Giuliano Medici (brother of Pope Leo X). The basis for the hypothesis was a sonnet by the poet Eneo Irpino, which mentions her portrait by Leonardo. In 1957, the Italian Carlo Pedretti put forward a different version: in fact, it was Pacifica Brandano, another mistress of Giuliano Medici, the widow of a Spanish nobleman, who had a gentle and cheerful disposition, was well educated and could brighten up any company. It is 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 the diffused light he so loved. The artist worked slowly, carefully detailing the details, especially the face and eyes. Pacifica (if that's her) came out as if alive in the picture. The spectators were amazed and often frightened: it seemed to them that instead of the woman in the picture, a monster, some kind of sea siren, was about to appear. 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 in the realm of witchcraft here. It is this mysterious smile that stops, alarms, fascinates and calls the viewer, as if forcing him to enter into a telepathic connection.
Renaissance artists expanded the philosophical and artistic horizons of creativity to the maximum. Man has entered into competition with God, he imitates him, he is obsessed with a great desire to create. He is captured by that one 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 new and new means of expression. The artist's genius allowed him to see the true essence of nature behind the living physicality of forms. And here we cannot help but mention the master’s favorite subtle chiaroscuro (sfumato), which was a kind of halo for him, replacing the medieval halo: this is equally a divine-human and natural sacrament.
The sfumato technique made it possible to enliven landscapes and surprisingly subtly convey the play of feelings on faces in all its variability and complexity. What Leonardo didn’t invent, hoping to realize his plans! The master mixes tirelessly various substances, striving to obtain eternal colors. His brush is so light, so transparent that in the 20th century even X-ray analysis would not reveal traces of its impact. After making a few strokes, he puts the painting 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 his face. General laws drawing, constructing perspective only suggest the path. Our own searches reveal that light has the ability to bend and straighten lines: “Immersing objects in a light-air environment means, in essence, immersing 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 ambiguity of its origins only contributed to its fame. She passed through the centuries in the radiance of her mystery. For many years the portrait of a “court lady in a transparent veil” was a decoration of royal collections. She was seen either in Madame de Maintenon's bedroom or in Napoleon's chambers in the Tuileries. Louis XIII, who frolicked as a child in the Grand Gallery where it hung, refused to give it up to the Duke of Buckingham, saying: “It is impossible to part with a painting 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 beautiful image turned into a fashionable stamp. U professional artists The popularity of the painting has always been high (more than 200 copies of La Gioconda are known). She gave birth to a whole school, inspired such masters as Raphael, Ingres, David, Corot. WITH late XIX century, letters began to be sent to “Mona Lisa” with declarations of love. And yet, in the bizarrely unfolding fate of the picture, some touch, some stunning event was missing. And it happened!
On August 21, 1911, newspapers published a sensational headline: "La Gioconda" has been stolen!" The painting was energetically searched for. They mourned over it. They feared that it had died, burned by an awkward photographer who was photographing it with a magnesium flash under open air. In France, "La Gioconda" was even mourned street musicians. “Baldassare Castiglione” by Raphael, installed in the Louvre on the site 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 hiding place under the bed. The thief, a poor Italian emigrant, wanted to return the painting to his homeland, Italy.
When the idol of centuries returned to the Louvre, the writer Théophile Gautier sarcastically remarked that the smile had become “mocking” and even “triumphant”? especially in cases where it was addressed to people who are not inclined to trust angelic smiles. The public 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 Dada magazine, avant-garde artist Marcel Duchamp added a bushy mustache to a photograph of “the most mysterious of smiles” and accompanied the cartoon with the initial letters of the words “she can’t stand it.” In this form the opponents of idolatry expressed their irritation.
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MAIN SECRET...
...Hidden, of course, in her smile. As you know, there are different smiles: happy, sad, embarrassed, seductive, sour, sarcastic. But none of these definitions in this case no good. The archives of the Leonardo da Vinci Museum in France contain many different interpretations of the riddle of the famous portrait.
A certain “general specialist” 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 is smiling at her lover... Leonardo. Some even think that the painting depicts a man because “his smile is very attractive to homosexuals.”
According to British psychologist Digby Questeg, a proponent latest version, in this work Leonardo showed his latent (hidden) homosexuality. The smile of “La Gioconda” 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, this assumption looks quite convincing. Let us remember, however, that the morals of the Renaissance were much more liberated than today, and Leonardo did not make a secret of his sexual orientation. His students were always more beautiful than talented; His servant Giacomo Salai enjoyed special favor. Another similar version? "Mona Lisa" is a self-portrait of the artist. A recent computer comparison of the anatomical features of the faces of Gioconda and Leonardo da Vinci (based on the artist’s self-portrait made in red pencil) showed that geometrically they match perfectly. Thus, Gioconda can be called the female form of a genius!.. But then Gioconda’s smile is his smile.
Such a mysterious smile was indeed characteristic of Leonardo; as evidenced, for example, by Verrocchio’s painting “Tobias with the 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 Gioconda is the smile of the artist’s mother.” The idea of the founder of psychoanalysis was later supported by Salvador Dali: “In modern world There is a real cult of Giocondo worship. There were many attempts on La Gioconda's life; several years ago there were even attempts to throw stones at her - a clear resemblance to aggressive behavior in relation to his own mother. If we remember what Freud wrote about Leonardo da Vinci, as well as everything that his paintings say about the artist’s subconscious, then we can easily conclude that when Leonardo was working on La Gioconda, he was in love with his mother. Completely unconsciously, he wrote a new creature, endowed with all possible signs of motherhood. At the same time, she smiles somehow ambiguously. The whole world saw and still sees today in this ambiguous smile a very definite 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 his subconscious - just brothel or simply a brothel. And in that very brothel he sees an image that represents a prototype collective image all mothers. The painful presence of his own mother, casting a gentle glance and giving an ambiguous smile, pushes him to commit a crime. He grabs the first thing he can get his hands on, say a stone, and tears the picture apart, thus committing an act of matricide.”
DOCTORS MAKE A DIAGNOSIS BY SMILE...
For some reason, Gioconda’s smile especially haunts doctors. For them, the portrait of 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 Oakland (USA) announced that Gioconda has facial paralysis. In his practice, he even called this paralysis “Mona Lisa disease,” apparently achieving a psychotherapeutic effect by instilling in patients a sense of involvement in high art. One Japanese doctor is absolutely sure that Mona Lisa had high cholesterol. Evidence of this is a typical nodule on the skin between the left eyelid and the base of the nose, typical for such a disease. Which means: Mona Lisa didn't eat well.
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 studying enlarged photographs of the masterpiece, Borkowski discovered scars around the Mona Lisa's mouth. “Her facial expression is typical of people who have lost their front teeth,” says the expert. Neurophysiologists also contributed to solving the mystery. In their opinion, it’s not about the model or the artist, but about the audience. Why does it seem to us that Mona Lisa's smile fades away and then appears again? 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 Mona Lisa’s face a person’s gaze is directed at. There are two types of vision: central, detail-oriented, and peripheral, less clear. If you are not focused on the eyes of “nature” or are trying to take in her entire face with your gaze, Gioconda smiles at you. However, as soon as you focus your gaze on your lips, the smile immediately disappears. Moreover, the smile of Mona Lisa can be reproduced, says Margaret Livingston. Why, when working on a copy, you need to try to “draw a mouth without looking at it.” But only the great Leonardo seemed to know how to do this.
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Some practicing psychologists say that the Secret of Mona Lisa is simple: it is smiling to yourself. Actually, this is the advice given to modern women: think about how wonderful, sweet, kind, unique you are - you are worth rejoicing and smiling 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 traces of fatigue, inaccessibility, rigidity that so scare men away. 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 TINTS
The mysteries of the immortal creation have haunted scientists from all over the world for many years. Scientists previously used X-rays to understand how Leonardo da Vinci created the shadows on his great masterpiece. The 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. An X-ray beam allows you to examine 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 tones or colors on the canvas.
One of the most shocking discoveries of our research is that you will not see a single stroke or fingerprint on the canvas,” said Walter’s group member.
Everything is so perfect! That’s why Da Vinci’s paintings were impossible to analyze—they didn’t provide easy clues,” she continued.
Previous research had already established the basic aspects of the sfumato technology, but Walter's team has uncovered new details about how the great master was able to achieve this effect. The group used 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 (thousandth of a millimeter), the total layer thickness did not exceed 30 - 40 micrometers.
A MYSTERIOUS LANDSCAPE
Behind Mona Lisa, the legendary canvas by Leonardo da Vinci depicts not an abstract, but a very concrete landscape - the outskirts 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 Caravaggio’s grave and head of the National Italian Committee for the Protection cultural heritage Silvano Vinceti reported that he saw mysterious letters and numbers on Leonardo’s canvas. In particular, under the arch of the bridge located along left hand from the Mona Lisa (that is, from the viewer’s point of view, on the right side of the picture), the numbers “72” were revealed. Vinceti 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, which ruled in those parts, to build a new one. She considers the rest of the view to be the landscape that opened from the windows of the local castle.
Previously, Bobbio was known primarily as the place where the huge monastery of San Colombano is located, which served as one of the prototypes for “The Name of the Rose” by Umberto Eco.
In her conclusions, Carla Glory goes even further: if the scene is not the center of Italy, as scientists previously believed, 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, and the daughter of the Duke of Milan Bianca Giovanna Sforza.
Her father, Lodovico Sforza, was one of Leonardo's main customers and a famous philanthropist.
Glory believes that the artist and inventor visited him not only in Milan, but also in Bobbio, a town with a library famous in those days, also subject to the Milanese rulers. However, skeptical experts claim that both the numbers and letters discovered by Vinceti in pupils of the Mona Lisa, nothing more than cracks that formed on the canvas over the centuries... However, no one can exclude the possibility that they were specially applied to the canvas...
IS THE SECRET REVEALED?
Last year, Professor Margaret Livingston of Harvard University said that Mona Lisa's smile is visible only if you look at other features of her face rather than at the lips of the woman in the portrait.
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 human eye processes visual information, says the American scientist.
There are two types of vision: direct and peripheral. Direct perceives details well, worse - shadows.
The elusive nature of Mona Lisa's smile can be explained by the fact that almost all of it is 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 your face, the less your peripheral vision is used.
The same thing happens if you look at one letter of printed text. At the same time, other letters are perceived worse, even at close range.
Da Vinci used this principle and therefore the smile of Mona Lisa is visible only if you look at the eyes or other parts of the face of the woman depicted in the portrait...
This version stuck, despite the fact that Vasari describes in his biography of Leonardo... a different portrait! With a half-open mouth (the lips are closed in the portrait), with eyebrows (there are none in the portrait)…
There are many different versions who is actually depicted in the portrait; We offer you the simplest of them. Although a little shocking...
Look at these three faces. Similarity with the most famous portrait Leonardo's brushes are obvious, isn't it?
Let's add another face. The question is not for art connoisseurs: who is depicted here? Woman or man?
This is John the Baptist. Man.
And below you see a portrait of a man who served as the artist’s model for the image of John the Baptist. His name is Gian Giacomo Caprotti da Oreno. This is the model, apprentice and student of the great Leonardo.
By the way, it was he who was the first owner of the Mona Lisa after Leonardo’s death. Here is his portrait in adulthood...
How can it be that the model for a woman's image is a man? Very simple. The fact is that angels were the ideal of beauty, and since an angel is neither a man nor a woman, the artist does not care who is inspired when depicting an “angelic appearance.”
You and I often call little children “angels.” Have you ever wondered why? Not just because little children are beautiful. But also because we can’t always determine whether the person in front of us is a boy or a girl...
By the way, let us remember the painting “Unknown” by Ivan Nikolaevich Kramskoy. The artist was faced with the task of depicting beautiful woman. Such that there is no doubt left: an exemplary beauty! Do you know whose features he gave to the heroine? Your son Seryozha!
People have long intuitively felt that in this portrait created the brilliant Leonardo, there is some kind of secret. It’s not for nothing that disputes about whose portrait the artist actually painted are still raging. In 1502-1506. Leonardo da Vinci painted his most significant work - a portrait of Mona Lisa, the wife of Messer Francesco del Giocondo. Many years later, the painting received a simpler name - “La Gioconda”. The name “La Gioconda” became conventional, as many had doubts about the identity of the woman depicted in the painting.
In the 16th century Giorgio Vasari, Leonardo’s compatriot, author of the famous “Biographies of the Most Famous Painters, Sculptors and Architects,” could not explain why the artist did not give Francesco del Giocondo a portrait of his wife. Since then, many hypotheses have appeared, the authors of which are trying to answer the question: who is depicted in the picture? The most interesting is the hypothesis of American researchers, who came to the conclusion that the portrait depicts Leonardo da Vinci himself. A similar conclusion was reached as a result comparative analysis self-portrait of the artist and La Gioconda using a special computer program. Other researchers, comparing “La Gioconda” with portraits of noble persons of that time, with other paintings by Leonardo da Vinci, gave her different names if they suddenly discovered a portrait resemblance. The most famous among them: the Duchess of Francaville; Philibert of Savoy, Isabelle d'Este, courtesan; Signora Pacifica, lover of Giuliano de' Medici and even Holy Virgin Maria.
But Leonardo, of course, did not paint his self-portrait under the guise of the Mona Lisa, who actually posed. Otherwise, he would have been caught and ridiculed immediately next to the portrait, since it would have been easy to compare the original with his image. Even Raphael great artist, who, despite his youth, was allowed into the picture, did not notice anything like that.
To unravel the mystery of La Gioconda, it is necessary to note at least two strange fact biography of Leonardo da Vinci.
1. Leonardo did not paint himself.
Not a single picturesque self-portrait of Leonardo has reached us. Only a drawing made a few years after the creation of La Gioconda is known. What is the reason for Leonardo’s dislike for his appearance?
2. Leonardo had no family.
There is not a single evidence that he loved any woman (apart from tender feelings and a hint of platonic love to Cecilia Gallerini, mistress of Lodovico Moro). And this despite the fact that Leonardo was stately and handsome, strong and courageous, courteous and educated.
Why did Leonardo never fall in love with a single woman?
To answer these questions, let's first look into the artist's early childhood and the history of the da Vinci family. Leonardo's father, the notary Ser Piero da Vinci, owned an estate in the vicinity of the town of Vinci in the Tuscan Alban Mountains. Here, in the mountains, he met Leonardo's future mother, a girl named Katerina. She was a simple peasant woman - strong, healthy and beautiful.
Ser Pierrot was 25 years old when Catherine gave birth to Leonardo in 1452. “Immediately old Antonio (Piero’s father), writes one of Leonardo’s biographers, “in order to knock the fool out of Katerina’s head and calm his conscience, he married his son to the Florentine Albiera from the Amadori family and, unleashing a thick purse, persuaded young man Piero del Vacca, nicknamed the Bully for his hot temper, marries the beautiful deceived Caterina.”
So Leonardo, barely having time to be born, was separated from his mother. Already at the age of five, he began to notice that some woman was relentlessly watching him. It was Katerina, his mother. He often met her while walking. Katerina usually stood at one of the houses in the village and looked at Leonardo with a sad smile.
From the point of view classical psychoanalysis with a high probability we can assume that the boy has the so-called Oedipus complex, which consists of love for his mother and the desire for incest with her, with simultaneous jealousy and hatred towards his father.
In the case of Leonardo da Vinci, most likely this particular complex took place, and if not in full, then at least partially. The image of Katerina, a beautiful peasant woman, was imprinted in Leonardo’s mind from childhood. For Leonardo, she remained simply Katerina even when he learned in Florence that Piero Zadira’s wife was his mother.
In Leonardo's notes we read: “Katerina came on July 16, 1493.” He stubbornly refused to call her mother.
Deprived of his mother since childhood, Leonardo could not fully feel what his sons’ love for her meant. But he loved this image. He was in love with his own mother. That's why he never loved another woman and didn't have a family. That's why he didn't paint self-portraits. Leonardo was very similar to his mother. As soon as he painted himself, the features of his mother would appear on the canvas, but only in a male form. In fact, the result was an image of his ideal, his idol, but in a grotesque form. Given his condition, it is easy to understand that it was difficult or impossible for Leonardo to endure this.
Constantly under the burden of a complex, Leonardo could not help but want to paint a portrait of Catherine. He clearly remembered the features dear to him. However, to paint a picture worthy of his idol, a picture where Katerina would be as if alive, he needed a model. Apparently, Mona Lisa Gherardini, wife of Francesco del Giocondo, looked like or resembled Caterina. Only one thing is known for sure: the artist did not paint her portrait to order.
Leonardo deliberately made friends with Messer Francesco del Giocondo and himself offered to paint a portrait of his wife. What else, besides portrait resemblance, could attract the artist to the Mona Lisa? She smiled sadly. Mona Lisa at this time was still recovering from the death of her daughter. The sad smile of the young woman revived in Leonardo’s memory the smile of Katerina, his mother, whom he had already buried by that time.
Leonardo undertook to paint a portrait of his wife Mona Lisa for Francesco del Giocondo and, after working on it for four years, left it unfinished. Under the guise of painting a portrait of Mona Lisa, Leonardo painted a portrait of Catherine. Having a living model in front of him, the artist transformed the sketchy image of Katerina stored in his memory into a living image. “Indeed, in this face the eyes had that shine and that moisture that we see in a living person, and around them there was a bluish redness and those hairs that are impossible to convey without mastery of the greatest subtleties of painting. The eyelashes, thanks to the fact that it was shown where they are thicker and where they are thinner, and how they are located around the eye in accordance with the pores of the skin, could not be depicted more naturally” (Giorgio Vasari).
Leonardo used the Mona Lisa as a decoration material. In fact, La Gioconda is Katerina with the skin of Mona Lisa. For four long years, spending, according to some estimates, at least 10,000 hours, with a magnifying glass in his hand, Leonardo created his masterpiece, applying brush strokes measuring 1/20-1/40 mm. Only Leonardo was capable of this - it was hard labor, the work of an obsessed person.
When the portrait was ready (not counting the landscape), the Florentines recognized the woman depicted in the painting as the Mona Lisa. They attributed some discrepancy between the portrait and the original to the artistic vision of the author, because portraits often did not convey the model with photographic precision, but, on the contrary, they embellished it. Therefore, everyone recognized the Mona Lisa except her husband.
Francesco del Giocondo realized that the portrait did not depict his wife. But he didn’t know that this was Katerina, whom Leonardo looked like in his younger years. It is this circumstance that explains such a strange at first glance result of a comparative computer analysis of La Gioconda and a self-portrait.
Having completed the portrait, Leonardo immediately left Florence. He took the painting with him because it was great value just for him. For 16 years - until the end of his life - he did not part with the portrait, constantly kept it with him and did not show it to anyone.
And one more interesting fact. Later, after leaving Florence, Leonardo painted the background of the painting. This mountain landscape. These are mountains that could not be more suitable for Katerina, and not for anyone else. These are the mountains in which she was born, this is her world.
Leonardo da Vinci, secretive and brilliant, hid the secret of La Gioconda deeply.
