Life78 spoke to Italian researcher Silvano Vincheti, who claims to have discovered another variant. famous painting Leonardo da Vinci "Mona Lisa". The canvas, which is called "Mona Lisa with columns", according to him, is in private collection In Petersburg.
- There is a lot of evidence that this work may indeed belong to the brush of the Tuscan genius of painting, but so far this is only a hypothesis, - said Vincheti.
The researcher said that the latest research methods were used to analyze the painting, in particular, the method of infrared and X-ray spectrometry, and the components of the paint used were also studied.
- The method is called "Carbonium-4". We take a sample of a part of the canvas, process it, and get a diagram. The two main elements are animal skin and paint. We study them and roughly understand in what time period the picture was painted, says Vincheti.
According to him, studies have shown that the painting from a private collection belongs to the period in which da Vinci created his masterpieces. Vincheti added that the painting under study is younger famous work at the Louvre.
The scientist also spoke about the application of new technology using advanced software features. The painting "Mona Lisa with Columns" and its details were compared with other works by da Vinci. In particular, an early version of the famous painting from the Louvre was used for analysis, which, according to the authoritative researcher of da Vinci's work Carlo Pedretti, belongs to the brush of the Italian genius.
– In addition, we compare the painting we are examining with other paintings by the artist. And we are looking for an art historian who specializes specifically in this master, he said.
Comparison of the Russian painting and early work da Vinci showed their complete resemblance, Vincheti said. The researchers paid attention to such a detail as the shape upper lip Mona Lisa. According to Vincheti, in the early painting and in the Russian Mona Lisa, it coincides and is wavy, while in the Louvre image the shape is more linear. The researcher emphasizes that the sketch with a wavy segment undoubtedly belongs to the hand of Leonardo and is in the Royal Library in England.
– As a result of a preliminary study of the paintings, we found a partial match between the original from the Louvre and a copy from a private Russian collection. This is clearly seen in the outline of the Mona Lisa's upper lip, said Carlo Pedretti.
Pedretti also noted that the Russian "Mona Lisa" and the painting in the Louvre have another distinguishing feature: Gioconda's hands are written in darker colors than her face. This indicates the use of the technique of chiaroscuro by the painter., which he described in the Treatise on Painting. This salient feature allows you to distinguish the copy from the master's brush.
In addition, the letters S and L were found in the eyes of the Russian Mona Lisa, Vincheti said. Moreover, the first letter was easily detected in infrared photography, and L is difficult to notice, so a different technique will probably be used.
Pedretti suggested that the painting from the St. Petersburg private collection could have been painted by Leonardo together with his student.
Silvano Vincheti believes that the study very clearly indicates the possible belonging of the "Mona Lisa with columns" by da Vinci. He noted the seriousness and honesty of the work done. However, Vincheti stated that he was ready to change his mind if there was a worthy justification to the contrary.
The appearance of the "Russian Mona Lisa" is consistent with numerous theories that Leonardo da Vinci painted more than one version of the "Mona Lisa". It is also known that the details of the Louvre Mona Lisa by da Vinci were copied several times.
— We investigated the Mona Lisa from Paris with the help of infrared rays. It turned out that the painting in the Louvre, in the form in which it is now there, has been changed at least three times, Vincheti said.
The Italian researcher Silvano Vincheti has repeatedly found himself at the center of scandals related to Italian art. In particular, he initiated the search for a burial place and the exhumation of the model of the artist Leonardo da Vinci Lisa Gherardini. For this, excavations were carried out on the territory monastery of St. Ursula.
At the same time, the Italian previously stated that the model for the Mona Lisa could be a student of the painter Salai (real name Gian Giacomo Caprotti). Vincheti also reported that he found tiny L and S symbols in the pupil of the Gioconda. According to Vincheti, L meant "Leonardo" and S meant "Salai", which may confirm the model theory.
Professor Carlo Pedretti is one of the most authoritative modern researchers of Leonardo da Vinci's work, an Italian historian, director of the Hammer Center for the Study of Leonardo da Vinci's legacy in Los Angeles. He wrote a number of books about the artist's work based on the study of paintings that the great Italian master painted.
Pascal Cotte studied the painting by Leonardo da Vinci for 10 years and eventually discovered several other images under the image of Mona Lisa, reports the BBC. According to the scientist, he studied the painting using reflected light technology, and as a result, he can claim that under the top layer of paint is an image of another model, who is looking the other way and not smiling. In addition, there are earlier images on the canvas. One of them resembles a sketch of another work by Leonardo da Vinci - a portrait of the Madonna.
Pascal Cotte is the co-founder of the French company Lumiere Technology, which among other things deals with the study and digitization of works of art. He gained access to the Mona Lisa in 2004 and first used a technique he calls “me layer expansion method» (Layer Amplification Method) . Intense beams of light are projected onto the painting, and then a special camera captures the reflection of the light. It was thanks to this data that Kotte, he says, was able to reconstruct images between layers of paint.
Pascal Cotte studied the Mona Lisa for 10 years
"Mona Lisa" has been the subject of scientific research for more than half a century. She was studied by many methods, in particular infrared and multispectral scanning, but then the second image under the portrait was not found. However, Pascal Cotte claims that his method allows deeper penetration into the layers of paint. “Now we can analyze what is happening inside the layers of paint, and we can peel all the layers of a painting like an onion. We can reconstruct the entire chronology of the creation of the picture, ”Kotte told the BBC.
The French scientist also intervened in a long-standing dispute about what kind of woman is depicted in the picture. For several centuries it was believed that this is Lisa Gherardini, the wife of a Florentine silk merchant. However, many researchers questioned this version. Kotte did the same. He believes that the drawing he found under the painting is the image of the real Lisa G. erardini , and the portrait, which for more than 500 years was called the "Mona Lisa", in fact - a portrait of another woman. “These results will destroy many myths and forever change our view of Leonardo's masterpiece. When I finished the reconstruction of Lisa Gherardini, I was standing in front of the portrait - and it is completely different from today's Mona Lisa. This is not the same woman,” said Kotte.
Representatives of the Louvre, where the painting is located, have not yet commented on the scientist's statements. However, some colleaguesKotte questioned his discovery. So,professor of art history at the University of OxfordMartin Kerp opined that in fact Kotte discovered only early sketches"Mona Lisa" and not other portraits."I I do not think that his work had stages, each of which is a separate portrait. I see all this as a process of more or less long evolution of one portrait.And I am absolutely sure that Mona Lisa is Lisa [Gherardini]"Kerp said.
7. Conclusion. "Mona Lisa" in the version of 1503.
Recent infrared and X-ray studies of the "Mona Lisa" carried out at the Louvre Museum confirmed the validity of the results of our conclusions based on the discovery and study of the pentimenti necklace around the neck of the Mona Lisa. Thus, our hypothesis, based on the study of art criticism and historical aspects creativity of Leonardo and described in paragraph 6, received additional confirmation.
In a concise form, the main idea of this article is illustrated in Il.9. The “Portrait of Cecilia Gallerani” presented here (Fig. 9a) is an example early creativity Leonardo, which is characterized by official portraits of influential people. On the contrary, the image of the Mother of God (Fig. 96), which is a fragment of the painting “Madonna and Child with Saint Anna”, is very close in its manner to the images of religious characters in the late period of his work. Thus, in its final version, the Mona Lisa may represent a synthesis of the early and late periods of the great painter's work.
Even if Leonardo did not rewrite the Mona Lisa (and the necklace became invisible during the existence of the picture), the original (1503) appearance of the Gioconda can be judged by the portrait of Eleanor of Toledo (which depicts a self-confident, dazzling lady) ( ill.9c), written in 1545 by another Italian artist Agnolo Bronzino, who, like Raphael, was inspired by the art of Leonardo. (We do not claim that Eleanor actually looked like Constanza d'Avalos, but being the daughter of the Spanish viceroy of Naples, she had an aristocratic article and could be depicted in Bronzino's painting in a manner similar to Mona Lisa).
9a. "Portrait of Cecilia Gallerani" by Leonardo da Vinci (1474).
9b. Fragment of Leonardo's painting "Madonna and Child with St. Anne" (1510).
9th century Fragment of the "Portrait of Eleonora of Toledo with her son" by A. Bronzino (1545).
EPILOGUE
The unsolved mysteries of the "Mona Lisa" still haunt the researchers of Leonardo da Vinci's work, and her research continues to this day. This is by no means an easy matter, since the painting is constantly in a sealed case, which is opened to check its condition only once a year. Several hours during one night - this is the short time when scientists can access the immortal creation of the great Leonardo.
Among the most famous works recent years One can note the studies of the Mona Lisa, which were carried out using the 3D laser scanning method by a group of French and Canadian specialists. As part of this work, an accurate 3-D computer model of the Mona Lisa was created over two nights in October 2004. With its help, specialists can now see all the smallest (10 times smaller than the thickness of a human hair) details of the paint layer of the picture. In addition to the possibility of monitoring the state of the "Mona Lisa", this allows you to thoroughly explore the unique technique of painting by Leonardo, called sfumato.
Another equally interesting study was carried out by French scientists in the summer of 2010 using the method of X-ray spectral analysis. It showed that Leonardo applied 30 layers of paint to his canvas, each of which is only 40 microns thick (that's twice as thin as a human hair!). In addition, scientists have discovered that when creating the image of Mona Lisa, Leonardo da Vinci tested a new method of obtaining a color shade - instead of copper, he used manganese oxide. It also turned out that the artist used a special mixture of oils and resins as a binding solution with the addition of a very small amount of pigments. Thanks to this mixture, he managed to create an amazing three-dimensional effect of the Mona Lisa image. It is appropriate to note here that during the life of Leonardo, many customers often scolded him for working on his paintings for too long. As it became clear only in our days, this was due to the fact that it took him a lot of time to prepare paints from plant extracts and a number of other components.
In conclusion, it remains to say that the story told in the article by John Asmus about the ultrasound examination of the walls decorated with murals in the “Salon of the Five Hundred” in the Palazzo Vecchio in Florence, has recently received an interesting and unexpected continuation. Test drilling of the wall above the central door, carried out in 2010, made it possible to discover an “air cavity” under the Vasari fresco, and those carried out in 2011-2012. endoscopic studies have shown the presence of black pigments on its “bottom”, which is another indirect confirmation of the hypothesis of the existence of the lost fresco by Leonardo “The Battle of Anghiari”. It is likely that scientists today, more than ever, are close to unraveling this mystery ...
1 K. Clark, Leonardo da Vinci, Univ. Press, Cambridge (1952).
2 C. Pedretti, Leonardo: A Study in Chronology and Style, Univ. of Cal. Press, Berkeley (1973).
3 A.E. James, et al., "Digital radiography in the analysis of paintings: A new and promising technique," J. Am. Inst. Cons., vol. 22, pp. 41-48 (1982).
4 J.R. Druzik, "The use of digital image processing to clarify the radiography of underpainting," J. Am. Inst. Cons., vol. 22, pp. 49-56 (1982).
5 J.E Asmus and S. Pomeroy, "Ultrasonic mapping of detachments in mural paintings by Vasari," Bui. Am. Inst. Cons., vol. 12, pp. 12-16 (1978).
6 J.F. Asmus and A. Marshack, "Monochromatic imaging for pigment mapping," 2nd Int. Conf. NDT, vol. 1, pp. 7.1-7.10 (1988).
7 J.R. Asmus and N.F. Katz, “Digital image processing applied to problems of art and architecture,” Applications of Digital Image Processing XI, vol. 974, pp. 278-282 (1988).
8 J.F. Asmus, et al., "Computer image enhancement in planning conservation measures," L 1st Int. Conf. NDT, vol. 1, pp. 3.1-3.8 (1983).
9 J.F. Asmus and A.J, Palmer, "Micrometeorite generation with a high-power laser," IEEE J. Quantum Electronics, vol. QE-3, pg. 6 (1967).
10 A.J. Palmer and J.F. Asmus, "A study of homogenization and dispersion of laser-induced stress waves," Applied Optics, vol. 8, pg. 1252(1970).
11 J.F. Asmus, "Sounding out Leonardo," Chemistry, vol. 49, pp. 16-17 (1976).
12 J.F. Asmus, H.T. Newton and M. Seracini "Laser Technique for the divestment of a lost Leonardo da Vinci mural," J. Vac. sci. Tech., vol. 12, pp. 1352-1355 (1975).
13 J.F. Asmus, D.M. Domergue and K. Guggenheim "Photoacoustic spectroscopy as an aid in selective paint layer divestment," Bui. wash. IIC Congress, pp. 65-71 (1982).
14 J.F. Asmus, et al., "Computer enhancement of the Mona Lisa," Perspectives in Computing, vol. 7, pp. 11-22 (1987).
15 W.K. Pratt, "Digital Image Processing," John Wiley, NY (1978).
16 R. McMullen, "Mona Lisa," Houghton Mifflin, Boston (1975).
17 E.H. Gombrich, "The Story of Art," Phaidon, London (1967).
18 J.F. Asmus, "Computer studies of the Isleworth and Louvre Mona Lisas," SPIE Milestone Series, vol. MS 13, pp. 652-656 (1982).
Press release (excerpt)
... One of the most memorable is the section from Paris "Secrets of the Mona Lisa", representing the work of the French engineer Pascal Cotte (Pascal Cotte).
A lifelong passion for the study of the Mona Lisa and its conservation led him to invent an advanced 240-megapixel multispectral camera that uses patented infrared technology and intense illumination to scan the painting and virtually remove layers of centuries-old varnish layer by layer. With this camera, Côté was able to reveal what the just-finished Mona Lisa looked like, as well as to see the recorded elements, restoration and preservation attempts of the canvas - up to the identification of individual pigments used by da Vinci.
Côté gained unprecedented access to the Mona Lisa thanks to a collaboration between the French Ministry of Culture and the Louvre, and photographed the "bare" painting in order to conduct a scientific study of the collected material. All of his amazing discoveries are presented as a gallery exhibition in high-resolution, magnified photographs, the largest of which is a gigantic image of the Mona Lisa measuring 4.26 m x 3.05 m….
Secrets of the Mona Lisa
(explanatory labels at the exhibition)
Pascal Cottet, French engineer and inventor of the multispectral camera, was honored to take a series of photographs of the Mona Lisa at the Louvre. The unframed portrait was photographed in highest resolution 240 megapixels. As a result of the scientific research, an infrared image magnified several times, which in itself is a masterpiece, was obtained.
The infrared beam has the ability to penetrate the top layer of the picture and show what is underneath. As a result of the analysis of the obtained data, we can see traces of retouching and restoration, preliminary sketches, original pigments, etc. on the image.
1) "Mona Lisa" was painted on a poplar board. You can see the borders of the painting and the preparatory stage of work - underpainting. This proves that the board has not been cut.
2) The restoration touched the upper part of the sky. In addition, a number of other minor fixes were made.
3) An 11 cm crack on the board was repaired twice
4) A veil written in several layers was mistakenly taken for a bonnet.
5) Spots in the corner of the eye and on the chin are the result of damaged varnish. This refutes the original hypothesis that da Vinci depicted the symptoms of the disease of the model, who suffered from high cholesterol in the blood.
6) Initially, Mona Lisa's look was somewhat different.
7) Reduction of cracks in the area of the lips and eyes indicates possible restorations or lightening of the varnish.
8) Mona Lisa had a wider face than now
9) The smile was more expressive and clear.
10) Until now, the image of the veil could not be seen clearly. Apparently, Leonardo strove for a clear drawing of the contours of the veil.
11) You can see that the veil was painted over the landscape. Thanks to this information, one can draw a conclusion about the artist’s technique, as well as reproduce the sequence in which Leonardo painted one or another element of the picture.
12) The column became transparent over time. When interacting with certain pigments, the oil tends to become more transparent over the years.
13) Lace disappeared from Mona Lisa's dress.
14) You can see the preparatory sketch of the lace.
15) Previously invisible lines become visible, indicating that the veil was painted by the artist later.
16) You can see a preliminary sketch of the column on the left side of the picture.
17) The railing is made of wood.
18) Under the right elbow, the armrest of the chair covered with a veil became visible.
19) In the area of the model's elbow, traces of restoration were visible, carried out after one of the visitors damaged the painting in 1956 by throwing a stone at it.
20) The fingers are not drawn to the end.
21) Leonardo decided to change the original position of the index and middle fingers of his left hand.
22) The veil lying on Mona Lisa's lap is thrown over her wrist (the wrist is slightly bent). This largely explains the position of the Mona Lisa's hand, supporting the veil on her stomach.
23) The Mona Lisa holds or holds the veil in her lap with the fingers of her left hand.
24) The image clearly shows the decorative elements in the form of small columns on the arm of the chair.
25) Was done amazing discovery See pictures of Mona Lisa's eyes.
Pictures of Mona Lisa's eyes
(caption under the illustration)
So what happened to Mona Lisa's eyebrows and eyelashes?
According to Pascal, there are three hypotheses:
1) It is possible that the paints, consisting of earth powder pigment and oil, with which Leonardo painted eyelashes, mixed with the primer of the canvas and dissolved.
2) Over time, the oil, along with the pigment, has faded. This hypothesis is the most widely accepted. Look at the right column, which is also starting to disappear.
3) It is possible that the eyelashes have disappeared from the painting due to improper cleaning of the painting and damage to the lacquer coating. Many cracks formed near the eyes confirm this hypothesis.
The masterpiece is admired by more than eight million visitors annually. However, what we see today only remotely resembles the original creation. We are more than 500 years away from the time of the creation of the picture ...
THE PICTURE CHANGES OVER THE YEARS
Mona Lisa is changing like a real woman… After all, today we have before us the image of a faded, faded face of a woman, yellowed and darkened in those places where the viewer could see brown and green tones before (not for nothing that Leonardo’s contemporaries more than once admired the fresh and bright colors canvases by an Italian artist).
The portrait has not escaped the ravages of time and damage caused by numerous restorations. And the wooden supports were wrinkled and covered with cracks. Have undergone changes under the influence of chemical reactions and the properties of pigments, binder and varnish over the years.
The honorable right to create a series of images of the "Mona Lisa" in the highest resolution was given to the French engineer Pascal Cotte, the inventor of the multispectral camera. The result of his work was detailed pictures of the painting in the range from ultraviolet to infrared spectrum.
It is worth noting that Pascal spent about three hours creating pictures of the "naked" picture, that is, without a frame and protective glass. In doing so, he used a unique scanner of his own invention. The result of the work was 13 pictures of a masterpiece with a 240-megapixel resolution. The quality of these images is absolutely unique. It took two years to analyze and validate the data.
RECONSTRUCTED BEAUTY
In 2007, 25 secrets of the painting were revealed for the first time at the Da Vinci Genius exhibition. Here, for the first time, visitors were able to enjoy the original color of the Mona Lisa paints (that is, the color of the original pigments used by da Vinci).
The photographs presented the readers with a picture in its original form, similar to what Leonardo's contemporaries saw: the sky is the color of lapis lazuli, the warm pink complexion of the skin, clearly traced mountains, green trees ...
Photographs by Pascal Cotte showed that Leonardo did not finish the painting. We observe changes in the position of the model's hand. It can be seen that at first Mona Lisa supported the veil with her hand. It also became noticeable that the facial expression and smile were somewhat different at first. And the spot in the corner of the eye is water damage to the lacquer, most likely as a result of the painting hanging in Napoleon's bathroom for some time. We can also determine that some parts of the picture have become transparent over time. And see what's contrary modern point Mona Lisa had eyebrows and eyelashes!
WHO IS IN THE PICTURE
“Leonardo undertook to complete a portrait of Mona Lisa, his wife, for Francesco Giocondo, and, having labored for four years, left it unfinished. While writing the portrait, he kept people who played the lyre or sang, and there were always jesters who removed from her melancholy and supported her gaiety. That is why her smile is so pleasant.
This is the only evidence of how the picture was created, belongs to a contemporary of da Vinci, the artist and writer Giorgio Vasari (although he was only eight years old when Leonardo died). Based on his words for several centuries female portrait, on which the master worked in 1503-1506, is considered an image of 25-year-old Lisa, the wife of the Florentine magnate Francesco del Giocondo. So Vasari wrote - and everyone believed. But it is likely that this is a mistake, and the portrait is of another woman.
There is a lot of evidence: firstly, the headdress is a widow's mourning veil (meanwhile, Francesco del Giocondo lived a long life), and secondly, if there was a customer, why didn't Leonardo give him the job? It is known that the artist kept the painting at home, and in 1516, leaving Italy, he took it to France, King Francis I in 1517 paid 4,000 golden florins for it - fantastic money for those times. However, he did not get the Gioconda either.
The artist did not part with the portrait until his death. In 1925, art critics suggested that the half depicts the 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 the sonnet of the poet Eneo Irpino, which mentions her portrait by Leonardo. In 1957, the Italian Carlo Pedretti put forward a different version: in fact, this is Pacifika Brandano, another mistress of Giuliano Medici. Pachifika, the widow of a Spanish nobleman, had a soft and cheerful disposition, was well educated and could decorate any company. No wonder that such a cheerful person , like Giuliano, became close to her, thanks to which their son Ippolito was born.
In the papal palace, Leonardo was provided with a workshop with movable tables and diffused light so beloved by him. The artist worked slowly, carefully filling out the details, especially the face and eyes. Pacifica (if this is it) in the picture came out as if alive. The audience was amazed, often frightened: it seemed to them that instead of a woman in the picture, a monster was about to appear, some kind of sea siren. Even the landscape behind her contained something mysterious. The famous smile was in no way associated with the idea of righteousness. Rather, there was something from the realm of witchcraft. It is this mysterious smile that stops, disturbs, fascinates and calls the viewer, as if forcing them to enter into a telepathic connection.
Renaissance artists pushed the philosophical and artistic horizons of creativity to the maximum. Man has entered into rivalry with God, he imitates him, he is possessed by a great desire to create. He is captured by that real world, from which the Middle Ages turned away for the sake of the spiritual world.
Leonardo da Vinci dissected corpses. He dreamed of taking over nature by learning to change the direction of rivers and drain swamps, he wanted to steal the art of flight from birds. Painting was for him an experimental laboratory, where he constantly searched for more and more means of expression. The genius of the artist allowed him to see the true essence of nature behind the living corporeality of forms. And here it is impossible not to say about the finest chiaroscuro (sfumato) beloved by the master, which was a kind of halo for him, replacing the medieval halo: it is equally divine-human and natural sacrament.
The sfumato technique made it possible to enliven landscapes and convey the play of feelings on faces in all its variability and complexity with amazing subtlety. What only Leonardo did not invent, hoping to realize his plans! The master indefatigably mixes various substances, striving to obtain eternal colors. His brush is so light, so transparent that in the twentieth century even X-ray analysis will not reveal traces of her blow. After making a few strokes, he puts the picture aside to let it dry. His eye distinguishes the slightest nuances: sun glare and shadows of some objects on others, a shadow on the pavement and a shadow of sadness or a smile on a face. The general laws of drawing, building perspective only suggest the way. Their own searches reveal that light has the ability to bend and straighten lines: "To immerse objects in a light-air medium means, in fact, to immerse them in infinity."
WORSHIP
According to experts, her name was Mona Lisa Gherardini del Giocondo, ... Although, maybe Isabella Gualando, Isabella d "Este, Filiberta of Savoy, Constance d" Avalos, Pacifica Brandano ... Who knows?
The obscurity of the origin only contributed to its fame. She passed through the ages in the radiance of her mystery. Long years the portrait of the "court lady in a transparent veil" was an adornment of the royal collections. She was seen either in the bedroom of Madame de Maintenon, or in the chambers of Napoleon in the Tuileries. Louis XIII, who frolicked as a child in the Grand Gallery, where it hung, refused to give it to the Duke of Buckingham, saying: "It is impossible to part with a picture that is considered the best in the world." Everywhere - both in castles and in city houses - they tried to "teach" their daughters the famous smile.
So a beautiful image turned into a fashion stamp. Among professional artists, the popularity of the painting has always been high (more than 200 copies of the Mona Lisa are known). She gave birth to a whole school, inspired such masters as Raphael, Ingres, David, Corot. With late XIX century "Mona Lisa" began to send letters with a declaration of love. And yet, in the bizarrely developing fate of the picture, there was a lack of some stroke, some stunning event. And it happened!
On August 21, 1911, the newspapers came out under the sensational headline: “La Gioconda” is stolen!” The painting was vigorously searched for. open sky. In France, "La Gioconda" was mourned even by street musicians. "Baldassare Castiglione" by Raphael, installed in the Louvre in place of the missing one, did not suit anyone - after all, it was just an "ordinary" masterpiece.
"La Gioconda" was found in January 1913 hidden in a cache under the bed. The thief, a poor Italian immigrant, wanted to return the painting to his homeland, Italy.
When the idol of centuries was again in the Louvre, the writer Theophile Gauthier quipped that the smile had become "mocking" and even "triumphant"? especially when addressed to people who are not inclined to trust angelic smiles. The audience was divided into two warring camps. If for some it was just a picture, albeit an excellent one, then for others it was almost a deity. In 1920, in the magazine Dada, the avant-garde artist Marcel Duchamp added a magnificent mustache to the photograph of the "most mysterious of smiles" and accompanied the cartoon with the initial letters of the words "she is unbearable." In this form, the opponents of idolatry poured out their irritation.
|
MAIN MYSTERY…
…Hidden, of course, in her smile. As you know, smiles are different: happy, sad, embarrassed, seductive, sour, sarcastic. But none of these definitions this case no good. The archives of the Leonardo da Vinci Museum in France contain a wide variety of interpretations of the riddle of the famous portrait.
A certain "generalist" assures that the person depicted in the picture is pregnant; her smile is an attempt to catch the movement of the fetus. The next one insists that she smiles at her lover ... Leonardo. Someone even thinks: the picture shows a man, because "his smile is very attractive to homosexuals."
According to the British psychologist Digby Questeg, a supporter of the latter version, in this work Leonardo showed his latent (hidden) homosexuality. Gioconda's smile expresses a wide range of feelings: from embarrassment and indecision (what will contemporaries and descendants say?) to hope for understanding and favor.
From the point of view of today's ethics, such an assumption looks quite convincing. Recall, however, that the mores of the Renaissance were much more liberated than the current ones, and Leonardo did not at all make a secret of his sexual orientation. His pupils were always more beautiful than talented; his servant Giacomo Salai enjoyed special favor. Another similar version? "Mona Lisa" - a self-portrait of the artist. A recent computer comparison of the anatomical features of the face of Gioconda and Leonardo da Vinci (based on a self-portrait of the artist made in red pencil) showed that they match perfectly geometrically. Thus, Gioconda can be called the female hypostasis of a genius!.. But then Gioconda's smile is his smile.
Such an enigmatic smile was indeed characteristic of Leonardo; which, for example, is evidenced by Verrocchio's painting "Tobias with a Fish", in which the Archangel Michael is painted with Leonardo da Vinci.
Sigmund Freud also expressed his opinion about the portrait (naturally, in the spirit of Freudianism): "The smile of the Mona Lisa is the smile of the artist's mother." The idea of the founder of psychoanalysis was later supported by Salvador Dali: "In modern world there is a real cult of jocondo worship. Gioconda was attempted many times, several years ago there were even attempts to throw stones at her - a clear resemblance to aggressive behavior towards her own mother. If we recall what Freud wrote about Leonardo da Vinci, as well as everything that is said about the subconscious of the artist of his painting, then we can easily conclude that when Leonardo worked on Gioconda, he was in love with his mother. Quite unconsciously, he wrote a new creature, endowed with all the possible signs of motherhood. At the same time, she smiles somehow ambiguously. The whole world saw and still sees today in this ambiguous smile quite a certain shade of eroticism. And what happens to the unfortunate poor spectator, who is at the mercy of the Oedipus complex? He comes to the museum. The museum is a public institution. In his subconscious - just a brothel or simply a brothel. And in that very brothel, he sees an image that is a prototype collective image all mothers. The tormenting presence of his own mother, casting a gentle glance and bestowing an ambiguous smile, pushes him to crime. He grabs the first thing that comes his way, say, a stone, and tears the painting apart, thus committing an act of matricide.
DOCTORS PUT BY SMILE… DIAGNOSIS
For some reason, Gioconda's smile especially haunts doctors. For them, the portrait of the Mona Lisa is an ideal opportunity to practice making a diagnosis without fear of the consequences of a medical error.
Thus, the famous American otolaryngologist Christopher Adur from Auckland (USA) announced that Gioconda had facial paralysis. In his practice, he even called this paralysis "Mona Lisa's disease", apparently achieving a psychotherapeutic effect by instilling in patients a sense of belonging to high art. One Japanese doctor is absolutely certain that Mona Lisa had high cholesterol. Evidence of this is a nodule on the skin between the left eyelid and the base of the nose, typical for such an ailment. And that means: Mona Lisa ate wrong.
Joseph Borkowski, an American dentist and painting expert, believes that the woman in the painting, judging by the expression on her face, has lost many teeth. While examining enlarged photographs of the masterpiece, Borkowski discovered scars around the Mona Lisa's mouth. "The expression on her face is typical of people who have lost their front teeth," says the expert. Neurophysiologists also contributed to unraveling the mystery. In their opinion, the point is not in the model and not in the artist, but in the audience. Why does it seem to us that Mona Lisa's smile fades away, then reappears? Harvard University neurophysiologist Margaret Livingston believes that the reason for this is not the magic of Leonardo da Vinci's art, but the peculiarities of human vision: the appearance and disappearance of a smile depends on which part of the Gioconda's face the person's gaze is directed to. There are two types of vision: central, focusing on details, and peripheral, less distinct. If you are not focused on the eyes of "nature" or try to cover her entire face with your eyes - Gioconda smiles at you. However, it is worth focusing on the lips, as the smile immediately disappears. Moreover, Mona Lisa's smile is quite possible to reproduce, says Margaret Livinston. Why, in the process of working on a copy, you need to try to "draw a mouth without looking at it." But how to do this, it seems, only the great Leonardo knew.
|
Some practicing psychologists say that Mona Lisa's secret is simple: it's a smile to herself. Actually, the advice modern women: think how wonderful, sweet, kind, unique you are - you are worth it to rejoice and smile at yourself. Carry your smile naturally, let it be honest and open, coming from the depths of your soul. A smile will soften your face, will erase from him the traces of fatigue, impregnability, rigidity that so scare away men. It will give your face a mysterious expression. And then you will have as many fans as the Mona Lisa.
THE SECRET OF SHADOWS AND SHADES
The mysteries of immortal creation have haunted scientists from all over the world for many years now. So, earlier scientists used X-rays to understand how Leonardo da Vinci created shadows on the great masterpiece. "Mona Lisa" was one of seven works by Da Vinci studied by scientist Philip Walter and his colleagues. The study showed how ultra-thin layers of glaze and paint were used to achieve a smooth transition from light to dark. X-ray beam allows you to examine the layers without damaging the canvas
The technique used by Da Vinci and other Renaissance artists is known as "sfumato". With its help, it was possible to create smooth transitions of tones or colors on the canvas.
One of the most shocking discoveries of our study is that you will not see a single smear or fingerprint on the canvas, said a member of Walter's group.
Everything is so perfect! That is why Da Vinci's paintings were impossible to analyze - they did not give easy clues, - she continued.
Previous research has already established the main aspects of the sfumato technology, but Walter's group has uncovered new details of how the great master managed to achieve such an effect. The team used an x-ray to determine the thickness of each layer applied to the canvas. As a result, it was possible to find out that Leonardo da Vinci was able to apply layers with a thickness of only a couple of micrometers (a thousandth of a millimeter), the total thickness of the layer did not exceed 30 - 40 micrometers.
SHUTTERED LANDSCAPE
Behind the Mona Lisa, the legendary painting by Leonardo da Vinci depicts not an abstract, but a very specific landscape - the neighborhood of the northern Italian town of Bobbio, says researcher Carla Glori, whose arguments are cited on Monday, January 10, by the Daily Telegraph newspaper.
Glory came to these conclusions after a journalist, writer, discoverer of the tomb of Caravaggio and head of the Italian National Committee for the Protection of cultural heritage Silvano Vinceti (Silvano Vinceti) reported that he saw on the canvas of Leonardo mysterious letters and numbers. In particular, under the arch of the bridge located along left hand from the Gioconda (that is, from the point of view of the viewer, on the right side of the picture), the numbers "72" were found. Vincheti himself considers them a reference to some mystical theories of Leonardo. According to Glory, this is an indication of the year 1472, when the Trebbia river flowing past Bobbio overflowed its banks, demolished the old bridge and forced the Visconti family, who ruled in those parts, to build a new one. She considers the rest of the view to be a landscape from the windows of the local castle.
Previously, Bobbio was known primarily as the place where the huge monastery of San Colombano (San Colombano), which served as one of the prototypes for the "Name of the Rose" by Umberto Eco, is located.
In his conclusions, Carla Glory goes even further: if the scene is not the center of Italy, as scientists believed before, based on the fact that Leonardo began work on the canvas in 1503-1504 in Florence, but the north, then his model is not his wife merchant Lisa del Giocondo (Lisa del Giocondo), and the daughter of the Duke of Milan Bianca Giovanna Sforza (Bianca Giovanna Sforza).
Her father, Lodovico Sforza, was one of Leonardo's main customers and a well-known philanthropist.
Glory believes that the artist and inventor stayed with him not only in Milan, but also in Bobbio, a town with a famous library at that time, also subject to Milanese rulers. True, skeptical experts claim that both the numbers and letters discovered by Vincheti in pupils of Mona Lisa, nothing more than cracks formed on the canvas over the centuries ... However, no one can exclude them from the fact that they were applied to the canvas on purpose ...
SECRET REVEALED?
Last year, Professor Margaret Livingston of Harvard University said that Mona Lisa's smile is visible only if you look not at the lips of the woman depicted in the portrait, but at other details of her face.
Margaret Livingston presented her theory at the annual meeting of the American Association for the Advancement of Science in Denver, Colorado.
The disappearance of a smile when changing the angle of view is due to how the human eye processes visual information, an American scientist believes.
There are two types of vision: direct and peripheral. Direct well perceives details, worse - shadows.
The elusive nature of Mona Lisa's smile can be explained by the fact that it is almost all located in the low-frequency range of light and is well perceived only by peripheral vision, said Margaret Livingston.
The more you look directly at the face, the less peripheral vision is used.
The same thing happens when looking at a single letter of printed text. At the same time, other letters are perceived worse, even at close range.
Da Vinci used this principle and therefore Mona Lisa's smile is visible only if you look at the eyes or other parts of the face of the woman depicted in the portrait ...