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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Details Category: Fine art and architecture of the Renaissance (Renaissance) Posted on 02.11.2016 16:14 Views: 4071

"Mona Lisa" ("La Gioconda") by Leonardo da Vinci is still one of the most famous paintings of Western European art.

Her high-profile fame is associated both with high artistic merit and with the atmosphere of mystery surrounding this work. This mystery began to be attributed to the painting not during the life of the artist, but in subsequent centuries, inflaming interest in it with sensational reports and the results of research on the painting.
We believe it is right to have a calm and balanced analysis of the merits of this picture and the history of its creation.
First, about the painting itself.

Description of the picture

Leonardo da Vinci "Portrait of Mrs. Lisa Giocondo. Mona Lisa" (1503-1519). Board (poplar), oil. 76x53 cm Louvre (Paris)
The painting depicts a woman (half-length portrait). She sits in a chair with her hands together, one hand resting on his armrest and the other on top. She turned in her chair almost to face the viewer.
Her smooth hair, parted in the middle, is visible through the transparent veil thrown over them. They fall on the shoulders in two sparse, slightly wavy strands. Yellow dress, dark green cape...
Some researchers (in particular, Boris Vipper, a Russian, Latvian, Soviet art historian, teacher and museum figure, one of the founders of the national school of Western European art historians) point out that traces of the Quattrocento fashion are noticeable in the face of Mona Lisa: her eyebrows are shaved and hair on the top of the forehead.
Mona Lisa sits in an armchair on a balcony or loggia. It is believed that earlier the picture could be wider and contain two side columns of the loggia. Perhaps the author himself narrowed it down.
Behind the Mona Lisa is a desert area with winding streams and a lake surrounded by snowy mountains; the terrain extends to a high horizon line. This landscape gives the very image of a woman majesty and spirituality.
V. N. Grashchenkov, a Russian art critic who specialized in the art of the Italian Renaissance, believed that Leonardo, including thanks to the landscape, managed to create not a portrait of a specific person, but a universal image: “In this mysterious painting, he created something more than a portrait image of the unknown Florentine Mona Lisa, the third wife of Francesco del Giocondo. The external appearance and mental structure of a particular person are conveyed by him with unprecedented syntheticity ... "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.

The famous smile of Mona Lisa

Mona Lisa's smile is considered one of the main mysteries of the picture. But is it really so?

Smile of Mona Lisa (detail of the painting) by Leonardo da Vinci
This slight wandering smile is found in many works of the master himself and among the Leonardesques (artists whose style was strongly influenced by the manner of Leonardo of the Milan period, who were among his students or simply adopted his style). Of course, in "Mona Lisa" she reached her perfection.
Let's look at some pictures.

F. Melzi (student of Leonardo da Vinci) "Flora"
The same easy wandering smile.

Painting "The Holy Family". Previously, it was attributed to Leonardo, but now even the Hermitage has recognized that this is the work of his student Cesare da Sesto
The same light wandering smile on the face of the Virgin Mary.

Leonardo da Vinci "John the Baptist" (1513-1516). Louvre (Paris)

The smile of John the Baptist is also considered mysterious: why is this stern Forerunner smiling and pointing upwards?

Who was the prototype of the Mona Lisa?

There is information from the anonymous author of the first biography of Leonardo da Vinci, to which Vasari refers. It is this anonymous author who writes about the silk merchant Francesco Giocondo, who ordered a portrait of his third wife from the artist.
But what opinions did not exist about the identification of the model! There were many assumptions: this is a self-portrait of Leonardo himself, a portrait of the artist’s mother Katerina, various names of the artist’s contemporaries and contemporaries were called ...
But in 2005, scientists from the University of Heidelberg, studying notes on the margins of a Florentine official's tome, found an entry: "... now da Vinci is working on three paintings, one of which is a portrait of Lisa Gherardini." The wife of the Florentine merchant Francesco del Giocondo was Lisa Gherardini. The painting was commissioned by Leonardo for the young family's new home and to commemorate the birth of their second son. This mystery is almost solved.

The history of the painting and its adventures

The full title of the painting Ritratto di Monna Lisa del Giocondo"(Italian) -" Portrait of Mrs. Lisa Giocondo ". In Italian ma donna Means " my lady”, in an abbreviated version, this expression was transformed into monna or mona.
This picture occupied a special place in the work of Leonardo da Vinci. After spending 4 years on it and leaving Italy at a mature age, the artist took her with him to France. It is possible that he did not finish the painting in Florence, but took it with him when he left in 1516. In this case, he completed it shortly before his death in 1519.
Then the painting was the property of his student and assistant Salai.

Salai in a drawing by Leonardo
Salai (died 1525) left the painting to his sisters who lived in Milan. It is not known how the portrait got from Milan back to France. King Francis I bought the painting from Salai's heirs and kept it in his Château de Fontainebleau, where it remained until the time of Louis XIV. He moved it to the Palace of Versailles, after the French Revolution in 1793, the painting ended up in the Louvre. Napoleon admired the La Gioconda in his bedroom of the Tuileries Palace, and then she returned to the museum.
During World War II, the painting was moved from the Louvre to the Château d'Amboise (where Leonardo died and was buried), then to the Abbey of Loc Dieu, then to the Ingres Museum in Montauban. After the end of the war, the Gioconda returned to its place.
In the twentieth century the painting remained in the Louvre. Only in 1963 she visited the USA, and in 1974 - in Japan. On the way from Japan to France, the Mona Lisa was exhibited at the Museum. A. S. Pushkin in Moscow. These trips increased her success and fame.
Since 2005, it has been in a separate room in the Louvre.

Mona Lisa behind bulletproof glass at the Louvre
On August 21, 1911, the painting was stolen by an Italian employee of the Louvre, Vincenzo Perugia. Perhaps Perugia wanted to return the Gioconda to its historical homeland. The painting was found only two years later in Italy. She was exhibited in several Italian cities, and then returned to Paris.
Experienced the "La Gioconda" and acts of vandalism: they doused it with acid (1956), threw a stone at it, after which they hid it behind bulletproof glass (1956), as well as a clay cup (2009), tried to spray red paint from a spray can onto the picture ( 1974).
Pupils and followers of Leonardo created numerous replicas of the Mona Lisa, and avant-garde artists of the 20th century. began to mercilessly exploit the image of the Mona Lisa. But that's a completely different story.
"Gioconda" is one of the best examples of the portrait genre of the Italian High Renaissance.

"Mona Lisa", she is "Gioconda", full name - Portrait of Mrs. Lisa del Giocondo, - 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 portrait of Lisa Gherardini, wife of the Florentine silk merchant Francesco del Giocondo, painted around 1503-1505.

History of the painting

Even the first Italian biographers of Leonardo da Vinci wrote about the place that this painting occupied in the artist's work. Leonardo did not shy away from working on the Mona Lisa - as was the case with many other orders, but, on the contrary, gave herself to her with some kind of passion. 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 ".

Model identification problem

In the information about the identity of the woman in the picture, uncertainty remained for a long time and many versions were expressed:

• Caterina Sforza, illegitimate daughter of the Duke of Milan, Galeazzo Sforza

Caterina Sforza

• Isabella of Aragon, Duchess of Milan

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.

• Cecilia Gallerani (model of another portrait of the artist - "Ladies with an Ermine")

The work of Leonardo da Vinci, "Lady with an Ermine".

• Constanza d'Avalos, which had the nickname "Merry", that is, La Gioconda in Italian. In 1925, the Italian art historian Venturi suggested that the 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 is another mistress of Giuliano Medici, the mother of Cardinal Ippolito Medici (According to Roberto Zapperi, the portrait of Pacifica was commissioned by Giuliano Medici for an illegitimate son legalized by him later, who longed to see his mother, who had already died by that time. At the same time, according to the art critic, the customer , as usual, left for 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)

Salai in Leonardo's drawing

• Self portrait of Leonardo da Vinci

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

Leonardo da Vinci

• Retrospective portrait of the artist's mother Katerina (proposed by Freud, then by Serge Bramly, Rina de "Firenze, Roni Kempler, and others).

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."

Marginal check proves correct identification of Mona Lisa model

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.

Description of the picture

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.

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.

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.

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 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.

Current state

The Mona Lisa became very dark, 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.

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.

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

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

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 be to take care of them. And when he found in the face of Mona Lisa a model that satisfied his needs, he tried to solve some of the highest and most difficult tasks of painting technique that he had not yet solved. With the help of techniques that he had already developed and tested 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 gaze, 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 the carefully drawn 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 Mona Lisa 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.

Scenery

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

Vipper considers the landscape the second means that creates the spirituality of the picture: “The second means is the relationship between the figure and the background. The fantastic, rocky, as if seen through the sea water landscape in the portrait of Mona Lisa has some other reality than her figure itself. The Mona Lisa has the reality of life, the landscape has the reality of a dream. Thanks to this contrast, Mona Lisa seems so incredibly close and tangible, and we perceive the landscape as the 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" softens to the limit, melts and is ready to disappear any certainty of individuality and its psychological state. ... "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 appeared 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 as 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, 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.

Theft

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

On August 21, 1911, the painting was stolen by an employee of the Louvre, the Italian mirror master Vincenzo Perugia. 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. A search by the police turned up nothing. 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 picture was found only two years later in Italy - and the thief himself was to blame for this, responding to an ad in a newspaper and offering to sell the Gioconda to the director of the Uffizi Gallery. It is assumed that he was going to make copies and pass them 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.

Vincenzo Perugia. Sheet from the criminal case.

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. Yet in April 1974, a woman, frustrated by the museum's policy towards 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.

Crowd in the Louvre at the painting, today.

Mona Lisa

Mona Lisa

Mona Lisa, of course, is not only the most significant, successful and popular work of the Renaissance master da Vinci, but also his most discussed creation.

Analysis

The work template itself is extremely revolutionary, especially in the technique of realizing the portrait. Leonardo refused to use a clean background, as he had done before. The location of the figure from the waist, the position of the hands is an absolute novelty. Although it may seem paradoxical, there is movement in this picture. The background shrouded in mist, the bridge over the river, the colors used by the artist create a feeling of naturalness and liveliness. It is assumed that a slight blur of the figure reflects the heartbeat of the heroine. The author also uses the author's sfumato technique in his work, creating a haze effect.

Framed work

One of the elements of the work that touches all viewers is Mona Lisa's smile, known all over the world. The smile is on the verge of recognition. Its presence and form varies depending on the points of observation. It is believed that she, for all her mystery, embodies the impossibility of finding a foothold in human feelings.

Leonardo transforms this portrait into an ideal image, paying special attention to his own vision of reality and nature, which are never in a static position, on the contrary, they are dynamic and alive.

Interpretations and symbolism

There is an assumption that the picture depicts an androgynous lover Leonardo. Some scholars believe that the Mona Lisa is a self-portrait of the artist. The use of modern technologies made it possible to look under the outer layer of paints and see another portrait there, reminiscent of both a draft version of the Mona Lisa and an independent work. However, the Louvre staff and many experts are skeptical of many studies and do not comment on the main high-profile statements.

Gioconda - a picture that perfectly represents "poetry" Leonardo da Vinci: this work shows the personal experiences of the creator, the complexity of the universe in the smallest detail. The background behind Lisa Gherardini is done in an exceptional way: corrosion and rocks formed by rivers, with light filtering, create a landscape. One can trace the transformation of matter from solid to liquid and then to gaseous. The woman, as the subject of the composition, does not contradict this theme, but rather represents the last step in the evolution of this list.

Light in this work plays a fundamental role, it completely “embraces” the woman, creates sharp contrasts with dark fragments, and is also the subject of controversy.

Heritage

Entire books and scientific works are dedicated to Gioconda, the authors of which are trying to understand the content, but the work still hides many secrets. "Mona Lisa" has generated a lot of controversy and talk, still remaining one of the most popular paintings in the history of art. The elusiveness of nature and the human soul, as well as other symbolism, is still trying to be interpreted with the help of the mentioned smile, the colors and colors used, as well as modern technologies.

Painting "Mona Lisa" updated: October 25, 2017 by: Gleb

“From a medical point of view, it is not clear how this woman lived at all”

Her enigmatic smile is mesmerizing. Some see it as divine beauty, others - secret signs, others - a challenge to norms and society. But everyone agrees on one thing - there is something mysterious and attractive in it. This, of course, is about the Mona Lisa - the favorite creation of the great Leonardo. A portrait rich in mythology. What is the secret of the Mona Lisa? Versions are countless. We have selected the ten most common and intriguing.

Today, this painting, 77x53 cm in size, is stored in the Louvre behind thick bulletproof glass. The image, made on a poplar board, is covered with a grid of craquelures. It survived a number of not very successful restorations and darkened noticeably over five centuries. However, the older the picture becomes, the more people it attracts: the Louvre is visited annually by 8-9 million people.

Yes, and Leonardo himself did not want to part with the Mona Lisa, and perhaps this is the first time in history when the author did not give the work to the customer, despite the fact that he took the fee. The first owner of the picture - after the author - King Francis I of France was also delighted with the portrait. He bought it from da Vinci for incredible money at that time - 4000 gold coins and placed it in Fontainebleau.

Napoleon was also fascinated by Madame Lisa (as he called Gioconda) and transferred her to his chambers in the Tuileries Palace. And the Italian Vincenzo Peruggia in 1911 stole a masterpiece from the Louvre, took it to his homeland and hid with her for two whole years until he was detained while trying to transfer the painting to the director of the Uffizi Gallery ... In a word, at all times the portrait of a Florentine lady attracted, hypnotized, delighted. ..

What is the secret of her attraction?

Version #1: classic

The first mention of the Mona Lisa we find in the author of the famous "Biographies" Giorgio Vasari. From his work, we learn that Leonardo undertook "to complete for Francesco del Giocondo a portrait of Mona Lisa, his wife, and after working on it for four years, left it incomplete."

The writer admired the skill of the artist, his ability to show "the smallest details that the subtlety of painting can convey", and most importantly, the smile, which "is so pleasant that it seems as if you are contemplating a divine rather than a human being." The art historian explains the secret of her charm by the fact that “while painting the portrait, he (Leonardo) kept people who played the lyre or sang, and there were always jesters who supported her cheerfulness and removed the melancholy that painting usually imparts to the portraits performed.” There is no doubt: Leonardo is an unsurpassed master, and the crown of his skill is this divine portrait. In the image of his heroine there is a duality inherent in life itself: the modesty of the pose is combined with a bold smile, which becomes a kind of challenge to society, canons, art ...

But is it really the wife of the silk merchant Francesco del Giocondo, whose surname became the second name of this mysterious lady? Is the story about the musicians who created the right mood for our heroine true? Skeptics dispute all this, referring to the fact that Vasari was an 8-year-old boy when Leonardo died. He could not personally know the artist or his model, so he presented only information given by the anonymous author of the first biography of Leonardo. Meanwhile, the writer and in other biographies there are controversial places. Take, for example, the story of Michelangelo's broken nose. Vasari writes that Pietro Torrigiani hit a classmate because of his talent, and Benvenuto Cellini explains the injury with his arrogance and arrogance: copying the frescoes of Masaccio, in the lesson he ridiculed every image, for which he got in the nose from Torrigiani. In favor of Cellini's version is the complex character of Buonarroti, about whom there were legends.

Version #2: Chinese mother

Really existed. Italian archaeologists even claim to have found her tomb in the monastery of Saint Ursula in Florence. But is she in the picture? A number of researchers claim that Leonardo painted the portrait from several models, because when he refused to give the painting to the Giocondo cloth merchant, it remained unfinished. The master improved his work all his life, adding features and other models - thus he received a collective portrait of the ideal woman of his era.

The Italian scientist Angelo Paratico went further. He is sure that Mona Lisa is Leonardo's mother, who was actually ... Chinese. The researcher spent 20 years in the East, studying the connection of local traditions with the Italian Renaissance, and found documents showing that Leonardo's father, the notary Piero, had a wealthy client, and that he had a slave that he brought from China. Her name was Katerina - she became the mother of a Renaissance genius. It is precisely by the fact that Eastern blood flowed in Leonardo's veins that the researcher explains the famous "Leonardo's handwriting" - the ability of the master to write from right to left (this is how entries in his diaries were made). The researcher also saw oriental features in the face of the model, and in the landscape behind her. Paratico proposes to exhume Leonardo's remains and analyze his DNA to confirm his theory.

The official version says that Leonardo was the son of the notary Piero and the "local peasant woman" Katerina. He could not marry a rootless woman, but married a girl from a noble family with a dowry, but she turned out to be barren. Katerina raised the child for the first few years of his life, and then the father took his son to his house. Almost nothing is known about Leonardo's mother. But, indeed, there is an opinion that the artist, separated from his mother in early childhood, tried all his life to recreate the image and smile of his mother in his paintings. This assumption was made by Sigmund Freud in the book “Childhood Memories. Leonardo da Vinci" and it has won many supporters among art historians.

Version #3: Mona Lisa is a man

Viewers often note that in the image of Mona Lisa, despite all the tenderness and modesty, there is some kind of masculinity, and the face of the young model, almost devoid of eyebrows and eyelashes, seems boyish. The famous researcher of the Mona Lisa Silvano Vincenti believes that this is no accident. He is sure that Leonardo posed ... a young man in a woman's dress. And this is none other than Salai, a student of da Vinci, painted by him in the paintings “John the Baptist” and “Angel in the Flesh”, where the young man is endowed with the same smile as Mona Lisa. The art historian, however, made such a conclusion not only because of the external similarity of the models, but after studying high-resolution photographs, which made it possible to discern Vincenti in the eyes of the model L and S - the first letters of the names of the author of the picture and the young man depicted on it, according to the expert .

"John the Baptist" Leonardo Da Vinci (Louvre)

This version is also supported by a special relationship - Vasari hinted at them - a model and an artist, which, perhaps, connected Leonardo and Salai. Da Vinci was unmarried and had no children. At the same time, there is a denunciation document where an anonymous person accuses the artist of sodomy over a certain 17-year-old boy, Jacopo Saltarelli.

Leonardo had several students, with some of them he was more than close, according to a number of researchers. Freud also talks about homosexuality of Leonardo, who supports this version with a psychiatric analysis of the biography and the diary of the genius of the Renaissance. Da Vinci's notes about Salai are also seen as an argument in favor. There is even a version that da Vinci left a portrait of Salai (since the painting is mentioned in the will of the master’s student), and from him the painting came to Francis I.

By the way, the same Silvano Vincenti put forward another assumption: as if the picture depicts a certain woman from the retinue of Ludovik Sforza, at whose court in Milan Leonardo worked as an architect and engineer in 1482-1499. This version appeared after Vincenti saw the numbers 149 on the back of the canvas. According to the researcher, this is the date the painting was painted, only the last number was erased. Traditionally, it is believed that the master began to paint Gioconda in 1503.

However, there are many other candidates for the title of Mona Lisa who compete with Salai: these are Isabella Gualandi, Ginevra Benci, Constanta d'Avalos, the whore Caterina Sforza, a certain secret mistress of Lorenzo Medici and even Leonardo's nurse.

Version number 4: Gioconda is Leonardo

Another unexpected theory hinted at by Freud was confirmed in the studies of the American Lillian Schwartz. Mona Lisa is a self-portrait, Lilian is sure. An artist and graphic consultant at the School of Visual Arts in New York in the 1980s compared the famous "Turin Self-Portrait" of a now quite elderly artist and a portrait of Mona Lisa and found that the proportions of the faces (head shape, distance between the eyes, forehead height) are the same.

And in 2009, Lillian, along with amateur historian Lynn Picknett, gave the public another incredible sensation: she claims that the Shroud of Turin is nothing more than a print of Leonardo's face, made using silver sulfate on the principle of a camera obscura.

However, not many supported Lillian in her research - these theories are not among the most popular, in contrast to the following assumption.

Version #5: Down Syndrome Masterpiece

Gioconda suffered from Down's disease - this was the conclusion in the 1970s by the English photographer Leo Vala after he came up with a method that allows you to "turn" the Mona Lisa in profile.

At the same time, the Danish doctor Finn Becker-Christianson diagnosed Gioconda with his diagnosis: congenital facial paralysis. An asymmetrical smile, in his opinion, speaks of mental disorders up to idiocy.

In 1991, the French sculptor Alain Roche decided to embody the Mona Lisa in marble, but nothing came of it. It turned out that from a physiological point of view, everything in the model is wrong: the face, the arms, and the shoulders. Then the sculptor turned to the physiologist, Professor Henri Greppo, who attracted Jean-Jacques Conte, a specialist in hand microsurgery. Together they came to the conclusion that the right hand of the mysterious woman does not rest on the left, because it is possibly shorter and could be prone to convulsions. Conclusion: the right half of the model's body is paralyzed, which means that the mysterious smile is also just a cramp.

The gynecologist Julio Cruz and Ermida collected a complete "medical record" of Gioconda in his book "A look at Gioconda through the eyes of a doctor." The result is such a terrible picture that it is not clear how this woman lived at all. According to various researchers, she suffered from alopecia (hair loss), high blood cholesterol, exposure of the neck of her teeth, loosening and falling out, and even alcoholism. She had Parkinson's disease, lipoma (a benign fatty tumor on her right arm), strabismus, cataracts and iris heterochromia (different eye color) and asthma.

However, who said that Leonardo was anatomically accurate - what if the secret of genius is precisely in this disproportion?

Version number 6: a child under the heart

There is another polar "medical" version - pregnancy. American gynecologist Kenneth D. Keel is sure that Mona Lisa crossed her arms over her stomach reflexively trying to protect her unborn baby. The probability is high, because Lisa Gherardini had five children (the first-born, by the way, was named Piero). A hint of the legitimacy of this version can be found in the title of the portrait: Ritratto di Monna Lisa del Giocondo (Italian) - "Portrait of Mrs. Lisa Giocondo." Monna is an abbreviation for ma donna - Madonna, mother of God (although it also means "my lady", lady). Art critics often explain the genius of the painting just by the fact that it depicts an earthly woman in the image of the Mother of God.

Version #7: Iconographic

However, the theory that the Mona Lisa is an icon where an earthly woman took the place of the Mother of God is popular in itself. This is the genius of the work and therefore it has become a symbol of the beginning of a new era in art. Previously, art served the church, power and nobility. Leonardo proves that the artist is above all this, that the most valuable thing is the creative idea of ​​the master. And the great idea is to show the duality of the world, and the image of Mona Lisa, which combines divine and earthly beauty, serves as a means for this.

Version #8: Leonardo is the creator of 3D

This combination was achieved using a special technique invented by Leonardo - sfumato (from Italian - "disappearing like smoke"). It was this pictorial technique, when paints are applied layer by layer, that allowed Leonardo to create an aerial perspective in the picture. The artist applied countless layers of these layers, and each was almost transparent. Thanks to this technique, light is reflected and scattered across the canvas in different ways - depending on the angle of view and the angle of incidence of light. Therefore, the facial expression of the model is constantly changing.

The researchers come to the conclusion. Another technical breakthrough of a genius who foresaw and tried to bring to life many inventions embodied centuries later (aircraft, tank, diving suit, etc.). This is also evidenced by the version of the portrait kept in the Madrid Prado Museum, written either by da Vinci himself or by his student. It depicts the same model - only the angle is shifted by 69 cm. Thus, experts believe, they were looking for the right point in the image, which will give the 3D effect.

Version number 9: secret signs

Secret signs are a favorite topic of Mona Lisa researchers. Leonardo is not just an artist, he is an engineer, inventor, scientist, writer, and he probably encoded some universal secrets in his best pictorial creation. The most daring and incredible version was made in the book, and then in the movie The Da Vinci Code. This is, of course, a fictional novel. However, researchers are constantly building no less fantastic assumptions based on certain symbols found in the picture.

Many assumptions are connected with the fact that another one is hidden under the image of Mona Lisa. For example, the figure of an angel, or a feather in the hands of a model. There is also a curious version of Valery Chudinov, who discovered in the Mona Lisa the words Yara Mara - the name of the Russian pagan goddess.

Version #10: cropped landscape

Many versions are connected with the landscape, against which the Mona Lisa is depicted. The researcher Igor Ladov discovered a cyclicity in it: it seems that it is worth drawing several lines to connect the edges of the landscape. Just a couple of centimeters is not enough for everything to fit together. But after all, on the version of the painting from the Prado Museum there are columns that, apparently, were in the original. Nobody knows who cut the picture. If they are returned, the image becomes a cyclical landscape, which symbolizes that human life (in the global sense) is enchanted just like everything else in nature...

It seems that there are as many versions of the mystery of the Mona Lisa as there are people trying to explore the masterpiece. There was a place for everything: from admiration for unearthly beauty to the recognition of complete pathology. Everyone finds something of their own in Gioconda, and perhaps this is where the multidimensionality and semantic layering of the canvas manifested itself, which gives everyone the opportunity to turn on their imagination. Meanwhile, the secret of Mona Lisa remains the property of this mysterious lady, with a slight smile on her lips...