A group of art critics from the Mona Lisa Foundation in Switzerland claims that the portrait of a young woman, known as the Mona Lisa of Isleworth, was by Leonardo da Vinci and is an earlier version of the Mona Lisa now hanging in the Louvre.
Two or one?
After three decades of research and analysis, including regression testing, mathematical comparisons, careful examination of historical documents in the archives, scientists from the Mona Lisa Foundation have come to the conclusion that this is a portrait of Lisa Gerardini, the wife of the Florentine silk merchant Giocondo, better known as Mona Lisa or La Gioconda, and that it was made 11-12 years earlier than the more famous portrait of La Gioconda, which has been hanging in the Louvre for many years.
The Mona Lisa of Isleworth will be shown to the public in Geneva today. And the ex-world chess champion Anatoly Karpov, who is a member of the Mona Lisa Foundation, will do it. Before that, it was only once, literally for a few days, exhibited in an art gallery in Phoenix, after which it ended up in a bank safe for a long time.
Early Mona was found in 1913 by collector Hugh Blaker in one of the rural mansions in the west of England, where she hung unnoticed for more than a century. Blaker took the portrait home to Isleworth, an area in west London from which he got his current name.
After the outbreak of World War I, the portrait was shipped to the United States for safekeeping. After Hugh Blaker's death, the Isleworth Mona Lisa was bought by the American collector Henry Pulitzer. In 1966, he wrote the book "Where is Mona Lisa?", In which he argued that the English version also belongs to Leonardo's brush. After Pulitzer's death, early Mona went to his girlfriend, a Swiss woman, and after her death, the painting was bought by the Mona Lisa Foundation, which now owns it.
Much like the world famous Louvre painting, the Isleworth painting depicts a young woman with an enigmatic smile. The portrait from Isleworth is slightly larger than the Louvre and is painted on canvas, although most of Leonardo's paintings were painted on wood. The colors are brighter than the later version. The landscape in the background is also different. And finally, a woman posing for twenty years, and not thirty, as in the painting in the Louvre.
Promotional video:
Giorgio Vasari, a biographer of Leonardo da Vinci and himself a good artist, wrote that Leonardo began working on the Mona Lisa in 1503, but left the painting unfinished. However, in 1517 in the collection of da Vinci, according to Vasari, there was already a finished portrait of "a certain Florentine lady." Proponents of the authenticity of "The Mona Lisa of Isleworth" believe that she is the first, allegedly unfinished portrait, and the second, completed, now hangs in the Louvre.
Further evidence is the fact that Raphael painted a sketch of the Mona Lisa with columns in the background, the same as in the portrait from Isleworth, in 1504. In addition, in 1584, Giovanni Lomazzo published a Treatise on the Art of Painting, Sculpture and Architecture, in which he wrote that there are two portraits of Mona Lisa.
Despite the fact that the portrait of Lisa da Vinci was written by order of Francesco del Giocondo, the client never got the picture. She was with Leonardo da Vinci when he died in France. Then, in 1519, it was sold to the French king Francis I by Leonardo's assistant, Salai. Since then, she only once, in the early 20th century, left France when she was stolen by an Italian working in the Louvre.
Mysteries of Mona Lisa
This is one of the many mysteries surrounding the Mona Lisa. Despite the worldwide fame, almost everything connected with the portrait of a long-haired woman with an enigmatic smile is shrouded in mystery. The Mona Lisa owes its fame in no small measure to the mystery surrounding it.
By the way, the name of the masterpiece appeared only in the 19th century. “Mona” (more correctly “monna”) is not a name, but a form of abbreviation of the word “madonna”, adopted on the peninsula, which literally translates from Italian as “my lady”. In 16th century Italy, it more often simply indicated the marital status of the owner. The Italians originally called the Mona Lisa by the name of the posing model Gioconda. But it cannot be ruled out that the name does not indicate the surname of Mona Lisa, but is a common noun. Mona Lisa can be the adjective jocund, meaning a playful, witty woman, who likes to joke or even tease. Considering Mona Lisa's famous smile, this version makes sense.
In addition to Lisa Gerardini, many women, including noble ones, apply for the role of Mona Lisa. Magdalena Sest, a painting historian from Leverkusen, Germany, believes that Mona was inspired by the famous courtesan Catherine Sforza, Countess of Forli. The strong resemblance between Mona Lisa and the portrait of Catherine Sforza by Lorenzo di Credi, painted in 1487, is immediately striking. Both women sit in the same position, hold their hands in the same way and even smile almost the same way. Sest analyzed the noses, hair, lips and cheeks of the portraits and ultimately decided that Mona Lisa was Caterina Sforza.
According to Renaissance specialist Mike Voight-Luerssen, Mona Lisa was … Leonardo's mistress. He believes that the portrait depicts the Duchess of Milan. The enigmatic smile of the duchess suggests that she was in love with the painter and, perhaps, even was his mistress. In the diary of Leonardo's contemporary and friend, the Italian artist Bernardino Luini, there is a mention of the fact that he and the Duchess allegedly even secretly got married.
Mona Lisa could well have been the mistress of Giovanni Medici, a young widow named Pacifica Brandino, who gave birth to his child in 1511. The black veil of mourning that covered the woman's hair in the portrait could indicate her widowhood.
It is impossible not to remember the beautiful Isabella Gualanda, who lived in Rome at that time. By the way, Isabella's mother, Bianca Gallerani, posed for Leonardo's painting "The Lady with the Ermine." Both Pacifica and Isabella could have been portrayed by da Vinci commissioned by Giovanni Medici. He could have left the painting to the artist, because at the beginning of 1515 he got married and, naturally, did not dare to hang a portrait of his mistress at home.
We should also mention Isabella d'Este, who literally begged Leonardo to draw her. The sketch in black chalk was probably made in Mantua around 1500. The face in this sketch bears a clear resemblance to the Mona Lisa.
He contributed to the historical detective story and far from painting Sigmund Freud. He saw a deeper meaning in Mona Lisa's smile. "If the heads of beautiful children were reproductions of himself in childhood, then the smiling women in his portraits are none other than his mother Katerina," Freud believed.
Smile of the Cheshire cat
Another secret of the Mona Lisa is a mysterious smile. What is she smiling at - pleasant thoughts about the future birth of a child (according to the theory of Professor Shervin Nuland) or some kind of joke? Or maybe this is not a smile at all, but an optical illusion caused by the absence of the posing model … teeth? It turns out that there is such an outlandish theory. Its author is a British forensic scientist, Dr. Montagu Merlik.
Another explanation for the mysterious smile appeared several years ago in the respected magazine New Scientist. Christopher Tyler and Leonid Kontsevich, employees of the Institute for Vision Problems, assure that the emerging, then seemingly disappearing smile of Mona Lisa is a consequence of … imperfection of our vision. The various noises we hear when standing in front of a painting affect our perception. They have the same effect on the brain as “snow” on TV screens.
Niku Sebe, a professor at the University of Amsterdam, can measure … happiness with the help of smart computer programs. The computer put Mona's smile in the literal sense of the word "on the shelves." Mona Lisa enjoyed life and was happy. There is 83 percent happiness in her smile. 9 percent is discontent, 6 percent is fear and the remaining 2 percent is anger.
In the 80s of the last century, Digby Questid and Lillian Schwartz independently declared that Mona Lisa was a self-portrait of Leonardo da Vinci himself. The authors have convincingly proved that many important details of the Mona Lisa's face coincide with the same details of the self-portrait of the great painter, made in red chalk and kept in the Uffizi Gallery. When stacked on top of each other, they practically merge. In both paintings, scientists say, depicts the same person. And not a woman, but a man!
In this case, the meaning of a smile becomes clear. Or rather, not smiles, but grins. After all, the person depicted in the picture, unlike us, knows the essence of the rally. Some have even suggested that the smile effect is caused by slight wrinkles, swelling around the mouth, which can result from frequent shaving of the mustache and beard.
But why did Leonardo want to portray himself as a woman? To laugh at art lovers? Maybe. But it should not be ruled out that this is proof of yet another original theory. She says that da Vinci had a gay or bisexual orientation. This theory did not appear out of nowhere and has some foundation. His first and very serious misunderstanding with the law occurred when he, a 24-year-old young man, was arrested along with friends for acts of a homosexual nature. Leonardo and his friends got off with a slight fright. Influential patrons stood up for him.
Sergey Manukov