Her mysterious smile is mesmerizing. Some see divine beauty in her, others - secret signs, and others - a challenge to norms and society. But all agree on one thing - there is something mysterious and attractive in her.
What is the secret of La Gioconda? There are countless versions. Here are the most common and intriguing ones.
This enigmatic masterpiece has puzzled researchers and art historians for centuries. Now Italian scholars have added another dimension to the intrigue, claiming that da Vinci left a series of very small letters and numbers in the painting. When viewed under a microscope, the letters LV can be seen in the Mona Lisa's right eye.
And in the left eye there are also some symbols, but not as noticeable as others. They resemble the letters CE, or the letter B.
On the arch of the bridge against the background of the painting there is an inscription either "72" or "L2" or the letter L, and the number 2. Also on the painting there is the number 149 and the fourth erased number after them.
Today this 77x53 cm painting is kept in the Louvre behind thick bullet-proof glass. The image taken on a poplar board is covered with a net of craquelures. It has undergone a series of not very successful restorations and has noticeably darkened over five centuries. However, the older the painting gets, the more people it attracts: the Louvre is visited by 8-9 million people annually.
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 painting - after the author - King Francis I of France was also delighted with the portrait. He bought it from da Vinci for incredible money at that time - 4000 gold coins and placed it in Fonteblo.
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Napoleon was also fascinated by Madame Lisa (as he called the Gioconda) and took her to his chambers in the Tuileries Palace. And the Italian Vincenzo Perugia in 1911 stole the masterpiece from the Louvre, took it home and hid with her for two years until he was detained while trying to hand over the painting to the director of the Uffizi gallery … In a word, at all times the portrait of a Florentine lady attracted, hypnotized, delighted …
What is the secret of her appeal?
Version # 1: classic
The first mention of Mona Lisa we find in the author of the famous "Biographies" Giorgio Vasari. From his work, we learn that Leonardo undertook "to make for Francesco del Giocondo a portrait of Mona Lisa, his wife, and after working on it for four years, left it imperfect."
The writer admires the artist's skill, his ability to show "the smallest details that can be conveyed by the subtlety of painting," and most importantly, a smile that "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 kept her cheerful and removed the melancholy that painting usually imparts to 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 modestness 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 it true the story about musicians who created the right mood for our heroine? Skeptics dispute all of this, citing the fact that Vasari was an 8-year-old boy when Leonardo died. He could not personally know the artist or his model, so he presented only information given by the anonymous author of the first biography of Leonardo. Meanwhile, the writer and other biographies have controversial places. Take the story of Michelangelo's broken nose. Vasari writes that Pietro Torrigiani struck a classmate because of his talent, and Benvenuto Cellini explains the injury with his arrogance and arrogance: copying Masaccio's frescoes, in class he ridiculed every image, for which he got in the nose from Torrigiani. Cellini's version is supported by the complex character of Buonarroti, about which there were legends.
Version number 2: Chinese mother
Lisa del Giocondo (nee Gherardini) did exist. Italian archaeologists even claim to have found her grave at the Monastery of Saint Ursula in Florence. But is she in the picture? A number of researchers claim that Leonardo painted a portrait from several models, because when he refused to give the painting to the textile merchant Giocondo, it remained unfinished. Throughout his life, the master perfected his work, adding features of other models, thus obtaining 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 … a Chinese woman. The researcher spent 20 years in the East, studying the connection between local traditions and the Italian Renaissance, and found documents showing that Leonardo's father, a notary, Piero, had a wealthy client, and that he had a slave, whom he brought from China. Her name was Katerina - she became the mother of the genius of the Renaissance. It is precisely by the fact that Eastern blood flowed in Leonardo's veins that the researcher explains the famous "Leonardo's handwriting" - the master's ability to write from right to left (this is how entries were made in his diaries). The explorer saw both oriental features in the model's face 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, but married a girl from a noble family with a dowry, but she turned out to be sterile. Katerina raised the child for the first few years of his life, and then the father took his son to his home. Almost nothing is known about Leonardo's mother. But, in fact, 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 expressed by Sigmund Freud in the book Memories of childhood. Leonardo da Vinci”and it 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 Mona Lisa researcher 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 disciple 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 see Vincenti in the eyes of models L and S - the first letters of the names of the author of the painting 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 - the model and the artist, which, possibly, connected Leonardo and Salai. Da Vinci was not married and had no children. At the same time, there is a denunciation document, where an anonymous author 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 discusses Leonardo's homosexuality, who supports this version with a psychiatric analysis of his biography and the diary of the Renaissance genius. Da Vinci's notes on Salai are also seen as an argument in favor. There is even a version that da Vinci left the portrait of Salai (since the painting is mentioned in the will of the master's apprentice), and from him the painting got to Francis I.
By the way, the same Silvano Vincenti put forward another assumption: as if the painting depicts a certain woman from the suite of Louis Sforza, at whose court in Milan Leonardo worked as an architect and engineer in 1482-1499. This version appeared after Vincenti saw the number 149 on the back of the canvas. This, according to the researcher, is the date of the painting, only the last number has been erased. Traditionally, it is believed that the master began to paint La Gioconda in 1503.
However, there are many other candidates for the title of Mona Lisa who compete with Salai: these are Isabella Gualandi, Ginevra Benchi, Constanza d'Avalos, the libertine Caterina Sforza, a certain secret mistress of Lorenzo Medici and even Leonardo's nurse.
Version number 4: La Gioconda is Leonardo
Another unexpected theory, which Freud alluded to, found confirmation in the studies of the American Lillian Schwartz. Mona Lisa is a self-portrait, Lillian is sure. In the 1980s, an artist and graphic consultant at the School of Visual Arts in New York juxtaposed the famous "Turin Self-Portrait" by a very middle-aged artist with the portrait of Mona Lisa and found that the proportions of the faces (head shape, distance between eyes, forehead height) were the same.
And in 2009, Lillian, together with the amateur historian Lynn Picknett, presented the public with another incredible sensation: she claims that the Turin Shroud is nothing more than Leonardo's face imprint, made with 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, unlike the following assumption.
Version # 5: a masterpiece with Down syndrome
La Gioconda suffered from Down's disease - this was the conclusion reached by the English photographer Leo Vala in the 1970s after he came up with a method to "turn" the Mona Lisa in profile.
At the same time, Danish doctor Finn Becker-Christianson diagnosed Gioconda with congenital facial paralysis. An asymmetric smile, in his opinion, speaks of deviations in the psyche, 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, arms, and shoulders. Then the sculptor turned to a physiologist, Professor Henri Greppot, and he attracted a specialist in hand microsurgery Jean-Jacques Conte. Together they came to the conclusion that the mysterious woman's right hand does not rest on her left, because, perhaps, it is shorter and could be prone to convulsions. Conclusion: the right half of the model's body is paralyzed, which means that a mysterious smile is also just a spasm.
Gynecologist Julio Cruz and Hermida collected the full "medical card" of Gioconda in their 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 the teeth, loosening and loss of teeth, and even alcoholism. She had Parkinson's disease, lipoma (a benign fatty tumor on her right arm), strabismus, cataract and iris heterochromia (different eye colors) 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 one more polar "medical" version - pregnancy. American gynecologist Kenneth D. Keel is sure that Mona Lisa crossed her arms on her stomach, reflexively trying to protect her unborn baby. The probability is high, because Lisa Gherardini had five children (the first child, by the way, was named Pierrot). A hint of the legitimacy of this version can be found in the title of the portrait: Ritratto di Monna Lisa del Giocondo (Italian) - "Portrait of Mrs. Lisa Giocondo." Monna is short for ma donna - Madonna, mother of God (although it also means “my lady,” lady). Art critics often explain the genius of the picture precisely 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 became a symbol of the beginning of a new era in art. Previously, art served the church, government and nobility. Leonardo proves that the artist stands above all this, that the master's creative intention is most valuable. And the great design is to show the duality of the world, and the means for this is the image of Mona Lisa, in which divine and earthly beauty is combined.
Version # 8: Leonardo - 3D Creator
This combination is achieved with the help of a special technique invented by Leonardo - sfumato (from Italian - “disappearing like smoke”). It was this pictorial technique, when paints were applied layer by layer, that allowed Leonardo to create an aerial perspective in the painting. The artist applied countless layers of these layers, and each was almost transparent. Thanks to this technique, light is reflected and scattered in different ways across the canvas - depending on the angle of view and the angle of incidence of the light. Therefore, the facial expression of the model is constantly changing.
Mona Lisa is the first 3D painting in history, the researchers conclude. Another technical breakthrough of a genius who foresaw and tried to implement many inventions embodied centuries later (aircraft, tank, diving suit, etc.). This is evidenced by the version of the portrait, kept in the Madrid Prado Museum, painted either by da Vinci himself or by his student. It depicts the same model - only the angle is shifted by 69 cm. Thus, experts believe, there was a search for the desired image point, which will give the 3D effect.
Version # 9: secret signs
Secret signs are a favorite theme of Mona Lisa researchers. Leonardo is not just an artist, he is an engineer, inventor, scientist, writer, and he probably encrypted some universal secrets in his best painting. The most daring and incredible version was sounded in the book, and then in the film "The Da Vinci Code". This is, of course, a fiction novel. Nevertheless, researchers are constantly making no less fantastic assumptions based on some 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 an interesting version of Valery Chudinov, who discovered in Mona Lisa the words of Yara Mara - the name of a Russian pagan goddess.
Version # 10: cropped landscape
Many versions are also associated with the landscape, against which the Mona Lisa is depicted. The researcher Igor Ladov discovered a cyclical nature in it: it seems that it is worth drawing several lines to connect the edges of the landscape. Literally a couple of centimeters are missing to make everything come together. But the version of the painting from the Prado Museum has columns, which, apparently, were in the original. Nobody knows who cropped the picture. If you return them, then the image develops into a cyclical landscape, which symbolizes the fact that human life (in a global sense) is enchanted just like everything in nature …
There seem to be as many versions of the Mona Lisa's mystery as there are people trying to explore the masterpiece. A place was found for everything: from admiration for unearthly beauty - to the recognition of complete pathology. Everyone finds something of their own in the Gioconda and, perhaps, this is where the multidimensionality and semantic multi-layeredness 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 …
Today, experts argue that the elusive half-smile of the Gioconda is a deliberately created effect that Leonardo da Vinci used more than once. This version arose after the recent discovery of an early work, La Bella Principessa (Beautiful Princess), in which the artist uses a similar optical illusion.
The mystery of Mona Lisa's smile is that it is noticeable only when the viewer looks above the woman's mouth in the portrait, but if you look at the smile itself, it disappears. Scientists attribute this to an optical illusion, which is created by a complex combination of colors and shades. This is facilitated by the peculiarities of a person's peripheral vision.
Da Vinci created the effect of an elusive smile thanks to the use of the so-called sfumato technique (unclear, indefinite) - blurred outlines and specially superimposed shadows around the lips and eyes visually change depending on the angle from which a person looks at the picture. Therefore, the smile appears and disappears.
For a long time, scientists have argued about whether this effect was created deliberately and intentionally. Discovered in 2009, the portrait of "La Bella Principessa" proves that da Vinci practiced this technique long before the creation of "La Gioconda". On the girl's face - the same barely noticeable half-smile, like the Mona Lisa.
Comparing the two paintings, scientists came to the conclusion that da Vinci also applied the effect of peripheral vision there: the shape of the lips visually changes depending on the angle of view. If you look directly at the lips, the smile is not noticeable, but if you look higher, the corners of the mouth seem to go up, and the smile appears again.
Psychology professor and visual expert Alessandro Soranzo (UK) writes: "The smile disappears as soon as the viewer tries to catch it." Scientists conducted a series of experiments under his leadership.
To demonstrate the optical illusion in action, the volunteers were asked to look at da Vinci's canvases from different distances and, for comparison, at the painting by his contemporary Pollaiolo "Portrait of a Girl". The smile was noticeable only in da Vinci's paintings, depending on a particular angle of view. The same effect was observed when images were blurred. Professor Soranzo has no doubt that this is an optical illusion deliberately created by da Vinci, and he has been developing this technique for several years.