When was the monolisa written and by whom. The main secrets that the Mona Lisa hides

He spent considerable time on it and, leaving Italy in adulthood, he took with him to France, among some other selected paintings. Da Vinci had a special affection for this portrait, and also thought a lot during the process of its creation, in the "Treatise on Painting" and in those notes on painting techniques that were not included in it, one can find many indications that undoubtedly refer to the "Gioconda » .

Vasari's message

"Studio of Leonardo da Vinci" in an 1845 engraving of Gioconda being entertained by jesters and musicians

It is possible that this drawing from the Hyde Collection in New York is by Leonardo da Vinci and is a preliminary sketch for a portrait of the Mona Lisa. In this case, it is curious that at first he intended to put a magnificent branch into her hands.

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

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

The painting was well known among art lovers, although Leonardo left Italy for France in 1516, taking the painting with him. According to Italian sources, it has since been in the collection of the French king Francis I, but it remains unclear when and how he acquired it and why Leonardo did not return it to the customer.

Other

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

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

Marginal check proves correct identification of Mona Lisa model

According to one of the put forward versions, "Mona Lisa" is a self-portrait of the artist

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

Painting

Description

A copy of the "Mona Lisa" from the Wallace Collection (Baltimore) was made before the edges of the original were trimmed, and allows you to see the lost columns

The picture of a rectangular format depicts a woman in dark clothes, turning half-turned. She sits in an armchair with her hands clasped together, resting one hand on his armrest, and placing the other on top, turning in the chair almost to face the viewer. Separated by a parting, smoothly and flatly lying hair, visible through a transparent veil thrown over them (according to some assumptions, an attribute of widowhood), fall on the shoulders in two sparse, slightly wavy strands. A green dress in thin ruffles, with yellow pleated sleeves, cut out on a low white chest. The head is slightly turned.

Fragment of the "Mona Lisa" with the remains of the base of the column

The lower edge of the painting cuts off the second half of her body, so the portrait is almost half-length. The armchair in which the model sits stands on a balcony or on a loggia, the parapet line of which is visible behind her elbows. As it is considered earlier picture could be wider and accommodate two side columns of the loggia, from which this moment two bases of columns remain, whose fragments are visible along the edges of the parapet.

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

Composition

The Gioconda portrait is one of the finest examples of the Italian High Renaissance portraiture.

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

Current state

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

Analysis

Technique

As Dzhivelegov notes, by the time of the creation of the Mona Lisa, Leonardo’s skill “has already entered a phase of such maturity, when all formal tasks of a compositional and other nature have been set and solved, when Leonardo began to think that only the last, most difficult tasks of artistic technique deserve to take care of them. And when he found in the face of Mona Lisa a model that satisfied his needs, he tried to solve some of the highest and most difficult tasks of painting technique that he had not yet solved. He wanted, with the help of techniques already developed and tested by him before, especially with the help of his famous sfumato, which gave extraordinary effects before, to do more than he did before: to create a living face of a living person and reproduce the features and expression of this face in such a way that they reveal to the end the inner world of a person.

Landscape behind the Mona Lisa

Boris Whipper asks the question, “by what means is this spirituality achieved, this undying spark of consciousness in the image of Mona Lisa, then two main means should be named. One is the marvelous Leonard's sfumato. No wonder Leonardo liked to say that "modeling is the soul of painting." It is sfumato that creates the Gioconda's wet look, her smile, light as the wind, and the incomparable caressing softness of the touch of her hands. Sfumato is a subtle haze that envelops the face and figure, softening contours and shadows. Leonardo recommended for this purpose to place between the source of light and the bodies, as he puts it, "a kind of fog."

Rotenberg writes that “Leonardo managed to bring into his creation that degree of generalization that allows us to consider him as an image of a Renaissance person as a whole. This high degree of generalization is reflected in all the elements of the pictorial language of the picture, in its individual motifs - in how a light, transparent veil, covering the head and shoulders of Mona Lisa, combines carefully written strands of hair and small folds of the dress into a common smooth contour; it is palpable in the modeling of the face, incomparable in its gentle softness (on which the eyebrows were removed in the fashion of that time) and beautiful well-groomed hands.

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

Landscape

Art critics emphasize the organicity with which the artist combined portrait characteristic personality with a landscape full of special mood, and how much this increased the dignity of the portrait.

An early copy of the "Mona Lisa" from the Prado shows how much the portrait image is lost when placed against a dark neutral background.

In 2012, a copy of the "Mona Lisa" from the Prado was cleared, and a landscape background turned out to be under the later recordings - the feeling of the canvas immediately changes.

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

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

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

The place of the painting in the development of the portrait genre

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

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

"Donna Nuda" (that is, "Nude Donna"). Unknown artist, late XVI century, Hermitage

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

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

The reputation of the painting

"Mona Lisa" behind bulletproof glass in the Louvre and museum visitors crowding nearby

Despite the fact that the "Mona Lisa" was highly appreciated by the artist's contemporaries, in the future her fame faded. The picture was not particularly remembered until mid-nineteenth century, when artists close to the symbolist movement began to praise her, associating it with their ideas regarding feminine mystique. The critic Walter Pater expressed his opinion in his 1867 essay on da Vinci, describing the figure in the painting as a kind of mythical embodiment of the eternal feminine, who is "older than the rocks between which she sits" and who "died many times and learned the secrets of the afterlife" .

The further rise of the painting's fame is associated with its mysterious disappearance at the beginning of the 20th century and its happy return to the museum a few years later (see Theft section below), thanks to which it did not leave the pages of newspapers.

A contemporary of her adventures, critic Abram Efros wrote: “... the museum watchman, who has not departed a single step from the painting, since its return to the Louvre after the abduction in 1911, has been guarding not a portrait of his wife Francesca del Giocondo, but an image of some kind of half-human, half-snake a creature, either smiling or gloomy, dominating the chilled, bare, rocky space that stretched out behind its back.

The Mona Lisa is one of the most famous paintings Western European art. Her high-profile reputation is associated not only with her high artistic merit, but also with the atmosphere of mystery surrounding this work.

Everyone knows what an unsolvable riddle Mona Lisa has been asking for four hundred years now to admirers crowding in front of her image. Never before has an artist expressed the essence of femininity (I quote the lines written by a refined writer hiding behind the pseudonym Pierre Corlet): others to contemplate only its brilliance. (Eugene Muntz).

One of the mysteries is related to the deep affection that the author felt for this work. Various explanations were offered, for example, romantic: Leonardo fell in love with Mona Lisa and deliberately dragged out work in order to stay with her longer, and she teased him with her mysterious smile and brought him to the greatest creative ecstasies. This version is considered mere speculation. Dzhivelegov believes that this attachment is due to the fact that he found in it the point of application of many of his creative searches (see the Technique section).

Gioconda's smile

The Mona Lisa smile is one of the most famous riddles paintings. This light wandering smile is found in many works of both the master himself and the Leonardesques, but it was in Mona Lisa that she reached her perfection.

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

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

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

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

Copy of the 16th century, located in the Hermitage, St. Petersburg

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

The history of the painting in modern times

By the day of his death in 1525, Leonardo's assistant (and possibly lover) named Salai owned, judging by references in his personal papers, a portrait of a woman called "Gioconda" ( quadro de una dona aretata), which was bequeathed to him by his teacher. Salai left the painting to his sisters who lived in Milan. It remains a mystery how, in this case, the portrait got from Milan back to France. It is also unknown who and when exactly cut off the edges of the painting with columns, which, according to most researchers, based on comparison with other portraits, existed in the original version. Unlike another cropped work by Leonardo - "Portrait of Ginevra Benci", the lower part of which was cut off, as it suffered from water or fire, in this case The reasons were most likely of a compositional nature. There is a version that this was done by Leonardo da Vinci himself.

Crowd in the Louvre near the painting, today

King Francis I is believed to have bought the painting from Salai's heirs (for 4,000 écus) and kept it in his Château de Fontainebleau, where it remained until the time of Louis XIV. The latter transported her to the Palace of Versailles, and after French Revolution She ended up in the Louvre. Napoleon hung the portrait in his bedroom of the Tuileries Palace, then she returned back to the museum.

During World War II, the painting was transported for security reasons from the Louvre to the Amboise castle (the place of death and burial of Leonardo), then to the abbey of Loc-Dieu, and finally to the Ingres Museum in Montauban, from where, after the victory, it returned safely to its place.

Vandalism

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

In art

Kazimir Malevich. Composition with Mona Lisa.

painting:

Kazimir Malevich in 1914 made "Composition with Mona Lisa".
The Dadaist Marcel Duchamp in 1919 created the work "L.H.O.O.Q." , which was a reproduction of the famous canvas with an attached mustache.
Fernand Léger painted Mona Lisa with Keys in 1930.
Rene Magritte in 1960 created the painting "La Gioconda", where there is no Mona Lisa, but there is a window.
Andy Warhol in 1963 and 1978 made the composition "Four Mona Lisa" and "Thirty Are Better Than One Andy Warhol" (1963), "Mona Lisa (Two Times)" ().
Salvador Dali painted Self-Portrait as Mona Lisa in 1964.
Representative of figurative art

The Mona Lisa by the great Leonardo da Vinci, also known as the Gioconda, is one of the most mysterious works in the history of art. For several centuries now, disputes have not subsided about who is actually depicted in the portrait. By different versions, this is the wife of a Florentine merchant, a transvestite in women's clothing, the artist's mother and, finally, the artist himself, disguised as a woman ... But this is only part of the secrets associated with the picture.

"Mona Lisa" is not "La Gioconda"?

It is believed that the painting was painted around 1503-1505. Model for her official version, served as a contemporary of the great painter, nee Lisa di Antonio Maria di Noldo Gherardini, whose portrait was allegedly ordered by her husband, the Florentine silk merchant Francesco del Giocondo. The full name of the canvas is “Ritratto di Monna Lisa del Giocondo” - “Portrait of Mrs. Lisa Giocondo”. Gioconda (la Gioconda) also means "cheerful, playing." So maybe it's a nickname, not a surname.

However, there are rumors in the art history community that the famous “Mona Lisa” by Leonardo da Vinci and his “La Gioconda” are two completely different paintings.

The fact is that none of the contemporaries of the great painter saw the portrait completed. Giorgio Vasari, in his book Lives of Artists, claims that Leonardo worked on the painting for four years, but never had time to finish it. However, the portrait now exhibited in the Louvre is fully completed.

Another artist, Raphael, testifies that he saw the La Gioconda in the da Vinci workshop. He sketched a portrait. On it, the model poses between two Greek columns. There are no columns in the well-known portrait. Judging by the sources, the Gioconda was also bigger size than the original Mona Lisa known to us. In addition, there is evidence that the unfinished canvas was handed over to the customer - the husband of the model, the Florentine merchant Francesco del Giocondo. Then it was inherited from generation to generation.

The portrait, called "Mona Lisa", allegedly depicts the favorite of Duke Giuliano de' Medici, Constance d'Avalos. In 1516, the artist brought this painting with him to France. Until the very death of da Vinci, the painting was in his estate near Amboise. In 1517, she found herself in the collection of the French king Francis I. It is she who can now be seen in the Louvre.

In 1914, a British antiquary for just a few guineas bought an image of the Mona Lisa at the clothing market in Bass, which he considered a successful copy of Leonardo's creation. Subsequently, this portrait became known as the "Iuor Mona Lisa". It looks unfinished, in the background there are two Greek columns, as in the memoirs of Raphael.

Then the canvas came to London, where in 1962 it was bought by a syndicate of Swiss bankers.

Is there such a resemblance between two different women that they were confused? Or is there only one painting, and the second is just a copy made by an unknown artist?

hidden image

By the way, French expert Pascal Cotte recently announced that another image, the real Lisa Gherardini, is hiding under a layer of paint in the picture. He came to this conclusion after spending ten years studying the portrait using a technology he developed based on the reflection of light rays.

According to the scientist, it was possible to "recognize" the second portrait under the "Mona Lisa". It also depicts a woman sitting in exactly the same position as Gioconda, however, unlike the latter, she looks a little to the side and does not smile.

fatal smile

And the famous Mona Lisa smile? What only hypotheses were not put forward about it! It seems to some that Gioconda does not smile at all, to someone that she has no teeth, and to someone something ominous seems to be in her smile ...

Back in the 19th century French writer Stendhal noted that after admiring the painting for a long time, he experienced an inexplicable breakdown ... Louvre workers, where the canvas now hangs, say that viewers often faint in front of the Mona Lisa. In addition, museum employees noticed that when the public is not allowed into the hall, the picture seems to fade, but as soon as visitors appear, the colors seem to become brighter, and the mysterious smile comes through more clearly ... Parapsychologists explain the phenomenon by the fact that the Gioconda is a picture -vampire, she drinks the life force of a person ... However, this is just an assumption.

Another attempt to unravel the mystery was made by Nitz Zebe from the University of Amsterdam and his American colleagues from the University of Illinois. They used a special computer program that compared the image of a human face with a database of human emotions. The computer produced sensational results: it turns out that extremely mixed feelings are read on the face of Mona Lisa, and among them only 83% of happiness, 9% belong to disgust, 6% to fear and 2% to anger ...

Meanwhile, Italian historians have discovered that if you look at Mona Lisa's eyes under a microscope, some letters and numbers become visible. So, in the right eye you can see the letters LV, which, however, may represent only the initials of the name Leonardo da Vinci. The symbols in the left eye have not yet been recognized: either these are the letters CE, or B ...

In the arch of the bridge, located in the background of the picture, the number 72 “flaunts”, although there are other versions, for example, that it is 2 or the letter L ... The number 149 (the four is erased) is also visible on the canvas. This may indicate the year the painting was created - 1490 or later ...

But be that as it may, the mysterious smile of the Gioconda will forever remain a model of the highest art. After all, the divine Leonardo was able to create something that will excite descendants for many, many centuries…

culture

Mona Lisa is one of the most famous works art in history hides more than one portrait.

The French scientist Pascal Cotte stated that discovered hidden portraits using light reflection technology.

The scientist said that he had been studying and analyzing the painting for more than 10 years.

"The result debunks many myths and forever changes our understanding of Leonardo's masterpiece.", said Kotte.

Painting "Mona Lisa" by Leonardo da Vinci

The scientist believes that one of the hidden portraits is real portrait Lisa de Giocondo, the women with whom painted "Mona Lisa".

With the help of reconstruction, you can see the image of the model, which looks to the side.

Instead of the famous direct gaze, on the image of the model there is no trace of a mysterious smile that has intrigued art connoisseurs for over 500 years.

Leonardo worked on the painting between 1503 and 1517 in Florence and then in France.

For a long time there were disputes about the identity of the Mona Lisa. For many centuries it was believed that this was Lisa Gherardini, the wife of a Florentine silk merchant.

However, when Mr. Cotte made a reconstruction of Lisa Gerardini, he discovered completely different "Mona Lisa".

In addition, he claims that there are two more images below the surface of the painting - a blurry outline of a portrait with a larger head and nose, larger hands, but smaller lips. The scientist also discovered another image in the style of the Madonna engraved by Leonardo in the form of a pearl rim.

Pascal Cottet used a technique known as layer enhancement method, projecting intense radiation onto a painting and measuring the reflection, allowing what was between layers of paint to be reconstructed. Thanks to this method, the scientist was able to look into the very heart of the famous painting.

Description of the artwork "Mona Lisa"

The Mona Lisa is considered one of the the greatest treasures of Renaissance art. The painting is also known as "Gioconda" and is considered one of the finest examples of portrait art.

Despite its fame, "Mona Lisa", like all the works of Leonardo da Vinci, was not signed, and there was no date on it. The name was taken from a biography of Leonardo written by the biographer Giorgio Vasari, published in the 1550s, where it was said that the artist agreed to paint a portrait of Lisa Gherardini, the wife of Francesco del Giocondo, a silk merchant.

Leonardo worked on the piece for a long time, especially on the position of the model's hands. The mysterious smile and the secret of the model's identity is a source of constant research and admiration.

The price of the painting "Mona Lisa"

The Mona Lisa painting is now in the Louvre in Paris and is considered the most valuable painting in the world, it is insured against inflation for $782 million.

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

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

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

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

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

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

Riddles of the Mona Lisa

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

I want to sing with a smile
M o n y L i z y.
O na - a riddle with the resurrection -
For centuries .
I n t p e r e s n e t h e s i n s ,
S o t v o r i l i
E h e great m a s t e r i m e l -
Wife

E g o t a l a n t u v e l v n e y
simple citizen,
W h e m u t i o n s o u t
Still ,
B a u s u s h e v n u u o g n i ,
P o n i l t a i n u
W omen and mothers, looking at
In g a z a e .

About
T r e c a e t
L o w i m a t e r n s t v a
first call
And nothing around,
k r o m e t a y n y ,
C o t o r a i f i v e t
in u t r i n e .

"Mona Lisa", she is "La Gioconda"; (Italian Mona Lisa, La Gioconda, French La Joconde), full name - Portrait of Mrs. Lisa del Giocondo, Italian. Ritratto di Monna Lisa del Giocondo) is a painting by Leonardo da Vinci located in the Louvre (Paris, France), one of the most famous paintings in the world, which is considered to be a portrait of Lisa Gherardini, the wife of Florentine silk merchant Francesco del Giocondo, written around 1503-1505.

It will soon be four centuries since the Mona Lisa deprives everyone who, having seen enough of it, begins to talk about it.

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

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

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

Vasari's message

"Studio of Leonardo da Vinci" in an 1845 engraving of Gioconda being entertained by jesters and musicians

According to Giorgio Vasari (1511-1574), a biographer of Italian artists who wrote about Leonardo in 1550, 31 years after his death, Mona Lisa (short for Madonna Lisa) was the wife of a Florentine named Francesco del Giocondo (Italian: Francesco del Giocondo), whose portrait Leonardo spent 4 years, yet left it unfinished.

“Leonardo undertook to complete for Francesco del Giocondo a portrait of Mona Lisa, his wife, and after working on it for four years, left it incomplete. This work is now with the French king in Fontainebleau.
This image, to anyone who would like to see to what extent art can imitate nature, makes it possible to comprehend it in the easiest way, because it reproduces all the smallest details that the subtlety of painting can convey. Therefore, the eyes have that brilliance and that moisture that are usually seen in a living person, and around them all those reddish reflections and hairs are conveyed, which can only be depicted with the greatest subtlety of skill. Eyelashes, made like the hair actually growing on the body, where thicker, and where less often, and located according to the pores of the skin, could not be depicted with more naturalness. The nose, with its lovely holes, pinkish and delicate, seems alive. The mouth, slightly open, with edges connected by the redness of the lips, with the physicality of its appearance, does not seem to be paint, but real flesh. In the deepening of the neck, with a careful look, you can see the beating of the pulse. And truly it can be said that this work was written in such a way that it plunges into confusion and fear any presumptuous artist, whoever he may be.
By the way, Leonardo resorted to the following trick: since Mona Lisa was very beautiful, while painting the portrait, he kept people who played the lyre or sang, and there were always jesters who kept her cheerful and removed the melancholy that is usually reported painting to performed portraits. In Leonardo, in this work, the smile is given so pleasant that it seems as if you are contemplating a divine rather than a human being; the portrait itself is revered as an extraordinary work, for life itself could not be otherwise.”

It is possible that this drawing from the Hyde Collection in New York is by Leonardo da Vinci and is a preliminary sketch for a portrait of the Mona Lisa. In this case, it is curious that at first he intended to put a magnificent branch into her hands.

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

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

The painting was well known among art lovers, although Leonardo left Italy for France in 1516, taking the painting with him. According to Italian sources, it has since been in the collection of the French King Francis I, but it remains unclear when and how he acquired it and why Leonardo did not return it to the customer.

In 1517, Cardinal Luigi d'Aragona visited Leonardo in his French workshop. A description of this visit was made by the secretary of Cardinal Antonio de Beatis: “On October 10, 1517, the monsignor and others like him visited in one of the remote parts of Amboise Messire Leonardo da Vinci, a Florentine, a grey-bearded old man over seventy years old, the most excellent painter of our time, who showed His Excellency three paintings: one depicting a Florentine lady, painted from nature at the request of Brother Lorenzo the Magnificent Giuliano de' Medici, another depicting St. Anna with Mary and the Christ child, all extremely beautiful, from the master himself, due to the fact that he was paralyzed at that time right hand, it was no longer possible to expect new good works. According to some researchers, "a certain Florentine lady" means "Mona Lisa". It is possible, however, that this was a different portrait, from which neither evidence nor copies have been preserved, as a result of which Giuliano Medici could not have had anything to do with Mona Lisa.

A 19th-century painting by Ingres in an exaggeratedly sentimental manner shows the grief of King Francis at the deathbed of Leonardo da Vinci

Model identification problem

Vasari, who was born in 1511, could not see the Mona Lisa with his own eyes and was forced to refer to information given by the anonymous author of the first biography of Leonardo. It is he who writes about the silk merchant Francesco Giocondo, who ordered a portrait of his third wife from the artist. Despite the words of this anonymous contemporary, many scholars have doubted the possibility that the Mona Lisa was painted in Florence (1500-1505), as the refined technique may indicate a later painting. It was also argued that at that time Leonardo was so busy working on the “Battle of Anghiari” that he even refused the Marquise of Mantua Isabella d’Este to accept her order (however, he had a very difficult relationship with this lady).

The work of a follower of Leonardo is an image of a saint. Perhaps, Isabella of Aragon, Duchess of Milan, one of the candidates for the role of Mona Lisa, is captured in her appearance.

Francesco del Giocondo, a prominent Florentine priest, at the age of thirty-five in 1495 married for the third time a young Neapolitan from the noble Gherardini family - Lisa Gherardini, full name Lisa di Antonio Maria di Noldo Gherardini (June 15, 1479 - July 15, 1542, or about 1551).

Although Vasari gives information about the identity of the woman, there has still been uncertainty about her for a long time and many versions have been expressed:
Caterina Sforza, illegitimate daughter of the Duke of Milan, Galeazzo Sforza
Isabella of Aragon, Duchess of Milan
Cecilia Gallerani (model of another portrait of the artist - "Ladies with an Ermine")
Constanza d'Avalos, which also had the nickname "Merry", that is, La Gioconda in Italian. Venturi in 1925 suggested that "Gioconda" is a portrait of the Duchess of Costanza d'Avalos, the widow of Federigo del Balzo, sung in a short poem by Eneo Irpino, which also mentions her portrait painted by Leonardo. Costanza was the mistress of Giuliano de' Medici.
Pacifica Brandano (Pacifica Brandano) - another mistress of Giuliano Medici, mother of Cardinal Ippolito Medici illegitimate son who longed to see his mother, who by this time had already died. At the same time, according to the art critic, the customer, as usual, left Leonardo complete freedom of action).
Isabela Gualanda
Just the perfect woman
A young man in a woman's attire (for example, Salai, beloved of Leonardo)
Self portrait of Leonardo da Vinci
Retrospective portrait of the artist's mother Katerina (1427-1495) (offered by Freud, then by Serge Bramly, Rina de "Firenze).

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

According to one of the put forward versions, "Mona Lisa" is a self-portrait of the artist

Marginal check proves correct identification of Mona Lisa model

Art historian Boris Vipper, describing the picture, points out that Mona Lisa's face shows traces of Quattrocento fashion: her eyebrows and hair on the top of her forehead are shaved.

A copy of the "Mona Lisa" from the Wallace Collection (Baltimore) was made before the edges of the original were trimmed, and allows you to see the lost columns.

Fragment of the "Mona Lisa" with the remains of the base of the column

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

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

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

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

Macro photography allows you to see a large number of craquelures (cracks) on the surface of the picture.

As Dzhivelegov notes, by the time of the creation of the Mona Lisa, Leonardo’s skill “has already entered a phase of such maturity, when all formal tasks of a compositional and other nature have been set and solved, when Leonardo began to think that only the last, most difficult tasks of artistic technique deserve to take care of them. And when he found in the face of Mona Lisa a model that satisfied his needs, he tried to solve some of the highest and most difficult tasks of painting technique that he had not yet solved. With the help of techniques that he had already worked out and tried before, especially with the help of his famous sfumato, which had previously given extraordinary effects, he wanted to do more than he had done before: to create a living face of a living person and reproduce the features and expression of this face in such a way that they the inner world of man was revealed to the end.

Boris Whipper asks the question, “by what means is this spirituality achieved, this undying spark of consciousness in the image of Mona Lisa, then two main means should be named. One is a wonderful Leonard's sfumato. No wonder Leonardo liked to say that "modeling is the soul of painting." It is sfumato that creates the Mona Lisa's wet look, her smile, light as the wind, and the incomparable caressing softness of the touch of her hands. Sfumato is a subtle haze that envelops the face and figure, softening contours and shadows. Leonardo recommended for this purpose to place between the source of light and the bodies, as he puts it, "a kind of fog."

Rotenberg writes that “Leonardo managed to bring into his creation that degree of generalization that allows him to be considered as an image of a Renaissance person as a whole. This high degree of generalization is reflected in all the elements of the pictorial language of the picture, in its individual motifs - in the way a light, transparent veil, covering Mona Lisa's head and shoulders, combines carefully written strands of hair and small folds of the dress into a common smooth contour; it is palpable in the modeling of the face, incomparable in its gentle softness (on which the eyebrows were removed in the fashion of that time) and beautiful well-groomed hands.

Landscape behind the Mona Lisa

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

An early copy of the Mona Lisa from the Prado shows how much the portrait image loses when placed against a dark, neutral background.

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

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

In 2012, a copy of the "Mona Lisa" from the Prado was cleared, and a landscape background turned out to be under the later recordings - the feeling of the canvas immediately changes.

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

An earlier female portrait of Leonardo "Lady with an Ermine", although it is wonderful work art, but in its simpler figurative structure belongs to an even previous era.

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

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

The "Portrait of a Woman" by Lorenzo Costa was written in 1500-06 - approximately in the same years as the "Mona Lisa", but in comparison with it demonstrates amazing inertness.

Lazarev agrees with him: “There is hardly any other picture in the world about which art critics would write such an abyss of nonsense as this famous work of Leonard's brush. (...) If Lisa di Antonio Maria di Noldo Gherardini, a virtuous matron and wife of one of the most respected Florentine citizens, heard all this, she would no doubt be genuinely surprised. And Leonardo would have been even more surprised, who set himself here a much more modest and, at the same time, much more difficult task - to give such an image of a human face that would finally dissolve in itself the last remnants of Quattrocentist static and psychological immobility. (...) And therefore, that art critic was a thousand times right when he pointed out the uselessness of deciphering this smile. Its essence lies in the fact that here is one of the first attempts in Italian art to depict the natural mental state for its own sake, as an end in itself, without any religious and ethical motivations. Thus, Leonardo managed to revive his model so much that, in comparison with it, all older portraits seem like frozen mummies.

Raphael, Girl with a Unicorn, c. 1505-1506, Galleria Borghese, Rome. This portrait, painted under the influence of Mona Lisa, is built according to the same iconographic scheme - with a balcony (more with columns) and a landscape.

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

The reputation of the painting

"Mona Lisa" behind bulletproof glass in the Louvre and museum visitors crowding nearby

Despite the fact that the "Mona Lisa" was highly appreciated by the artist's contemporaries, in the future her fame faded. The painting was not particularly remembered until the middle of the 19th century, when artists close to the Symbolist movement began to praise it, associating it with their ideas regarding feminine mystery. The critic Walter Pater expressed his opinion in his 1867 essay on da Vinci, describing the figure in the painting as a kind of mythical embodiment of the eternal feminine, who is "older than the rocks between which she sits" and who "died many times and learned the secrets of the afterlife" .

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

"Mona Lisa" today is one of the most famous paintings of Western European art. Her high-profile reputation is associated not only with her high artistic merit, but also with the atmosphere of mystery surrounding this work.

One of the mysteries is related to the deep affection that the author felt for this work. Various explanations were offered, for example, romantic: Leonardo fell in love with Mona Lisa and deliberately dragged out work in order to stay with her longer, and she teased him with her mysterious smile and brought him to the greatest creative ecstasies. This version is considered mere speculation. Dzhivelegov believes that this attachment is connected with the fact that he found in it the point of application of many of his creative searches (see the Technique section).

Gioconda's smile

Leonardo da Vinci. "John the Baptist". 1513-1516, Louvre. This picture also has its own mystery: why is John the Baptist smiling and pointing up?

Leonardo da Vinci. "Saint Anne with the Madonna and the Christ Child" (detail), c. 1510, Louvre.
Mona Lisa's smile is one of the painting's most famous mysteries. This light wandering smile is found in many works of both the master himself and the Leonardesques, but it was in Mona Lisa that she reached her perfection.

Grashchenkov writes: “The infinite variety of human feelings and desires, opposing passions and thoughts, smoothed and merged into one, echoes in the harmoniously impassive appearance of the Mona Lisa only by the uncertainty of her smile, barely emerging and disappearing. This meaningless fleeting movement of the corners of her mouth, like a distant echo merged into one sound, conveys to us from the boundless distance the colorful polyphony of the spiritual life of a person.
Art critic Rotenberg believes that “there are few portraits in the world art that are equal to the Mona Lisa in terms of the power of expressing the human personality, embodied in the unity of character and intellect. It is the extraordinary intellectual intensity of Leonard's portrait that distinguishes it from the portrait images of the Quattrocento. This feature of his is perceived all the more acutely because it refers to a female portrait, in which the character of the model was previously revealed in a completely different, predominantly lyrical figurative tone. The feeling of strength emanating from the "Mona Lisa" is an organic combination of inner composure and a sense of personal freedom, the spiritual harmony of a person based on his consciousness of his own significance. And her smile itself does not at all express superiority or disdain; it is perceived as the result of calm self-confidence and complete self-control.

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

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

The philosopher A.F. Losev writes sharply negatively about her: ... "Mona Lisa" with her "demonic smile." “After all, one has only to peer into the eyes of the Mona Lisa, as you can easily notice that she, in fact, does not smile at all. This is not a smile, but a predatory face with cold eyes and a clear knowledge of the helplessness of the victim that Gioconda wants to master and in which, in addition to weakness, she also counts on powerlessness before the bad feeling that has taken possession of her.

The discoverer of the term micro expression, psychologist Paul Ekman (prototype of Dr. Cal Lightman from the television series Lie to Me) writes about the facial expression of Gioconda, analyzing it from the point of view of his knowledge of human facial expressions: “the other two types [smiles] combine a sincere smile with a characteristic expression of the eyes. A flirtatious smile, although at the same time the seducer looks away from the object of his interest, in order to then again throw a sly look at him, which, again, is instantly averted, as soon as he is noticed. Part of the unusual impression of the famous Mona Lisa lies in the fact that Leonardo catches his nature precisely at the moment of this playful movement; turning her head in one direction, she looks in the other - at the subject of her interest. In life, this facial expression is fleeting - a furtive glance lasts no more than a moment.

The history of the painting in modern times

By the day of his death in 1525, Leonardo's assistant (and possibly lover) named Salai owned, judging by references in his personal papers, a portrait of a woman called "La Gioconda" (quadro de una dona aretata), which was bequeathed to him by his teacher. Salai left the painting to his sisters who lived in Milan. It remains a mystery how, in this case, the portrait got from Milan back to France. It is also unknown who and when exactly cut off the edges of the painting with columns, which, according to most researchers, based on comparison with other portraits, existed in the original version. Unlike another cropped work by Leonardo - "Portrait of Ginevra Benci", the lower part of which was cut off because it suffered from water or fire, in this case the reasons were most likely of a compositional nature. There is a version that this was done by Leonardo da Vinci himself.

Crowd in the Louvre near the painting, today

King Francis I is believed to have bought the painting from Salai's heirs (for 4,000 écus) and kept it in his castle of Fontainebleau, where it remained until the time Louis XIV. The latter moved her to the Palace of Versailles, and after the French Revolution she ended up in the Louvre. Napoleon hung the portrait in his bedroom of the Tuileries Palace, then she returned back to the museum.

Theft

1911 The empty wall where the Mona Lisa hung
Mona Lisa would have long been known only to connoisseurs of fine art, if not for her exceptional history, which ensured her worldwide fame.

Vincenzo Perugia. Sheet from the criminal case.

On August 21, 1911, the painting was stolen by an employee of the Louvre, Italian master on the mirrors of Vincenzo Perugia (Italian Vincenzo Peruggia). The purpose of this kidnapping is not clear. Perhaps Perugia wanted to return the Gioconda to its historical homeland, believing that the French had “kidnapped” it and forgetting that Leonardo himself brought the painting to France. Police searches were unsuccessful. The country's borders were closed, the museum administration was fired. The poet Guillaume Apollinaire was arrested on suspicion of committing a crime and later released. Pablo Picasso was also under suspicion. The painting was found only two years later in Italy. Moreover, the thief himself was to blame for this, responding to an ad in a newspaper and offering to sell the Gioconda to the director Uffizi galleries. It is assumed that he was going to make copies and pass off as the original. Perugia, on the one hand, was praised for Italian patriotism, on the other hand, they gave him a short term in prison.

In the end, on January 4, 1914, the painting (after exhibitions in Italian cities) returned to Paris. During this time, "Mona Lisa" did not leave the covers of newspapers and magazines around the world, as well as postcards, so it is not surprising that the "Mona Lisa" was copied more than all other paintings. The painting became an object of worship as a masterpiece of world classics.

Vandalism

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

During the Second World War, the painting was transported for security reasons from the Louvre to the Amboise castle (the place of death and burial of Leonardo), then to the abbey of Loc-Dieu, and finally to the Ingres Museum in Montauban, from where, after the victory, it returned safely to its place.

In the twentieth century, the picture almost did not leave the Louvre, visiting the USA in 1963 and Japan in 1974. On the way from Japan to France, the painting was exhibited at the Museum. A. S. Pushkin in Moscow. Trips only consolidated the success and fame of the picture.

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