Mona Lisa Leonardo history of creation. The main secrets that the Mona Lisa hides. The famous smile of Mona Lisa

“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 picture 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...

In the Royal Castle of Amboise (France), Leonardo da Vinci completed the famous "La Gioconda" - "Mona Lisa". It is generally accepted that Leonardo is buried in the chapel of St. Hubert of the Amboise castle.

Hidden in Mona Lisa's eyes are tiny numbers and letters that cannot be seen with the naked eye. Perhaps these are the initials of Leonardo da Vinci and the year the painting was created.

"Mona Lisa" is considered the most mysterious painting ever created. Art experts are still unraveling its mysteries. At the same time, the Mona Lisa is one of the most disappointing sights in Paris. The fact is that huge queues line up every day. The Mona Lisa is protected by bulletproof glass.

August 21, 1911 there was a high-profile theft of "Mona Lisa". She was kidnapped by Louvre worker Vincenzo Perugia. There is an assumption that Perugia wanted to return the painting to its historical homeland. The first attempts to find the picture did not lead to anything. The administration of the museum was fired. As part of this case, the poet Guillaume Apollinaire was arrested, later released. Pablo Picasso was also under suspicion. The painting was found two years later in Italy. On January 4, 1914, the painting (after exhibitions in Italian cities) returned to Paris. After these events, the picture gained unprecedented popularity.

There is a large plasticine Mona Lisa in the DIDU cafe. It was sculpted within a month by ordinary cafe visitors. The process was led by the artist Nikas Safronov. Gioconda, which was molded by 1700 Muscovites and guests of the city, got into the Guinness Book of Records. It became the largest plasticine reproduction of the Mona Lisa, molded by people.

During World War II, many works from the Louvre collection were hidden in the Chateau de Chambord. Among them was the Mona Lisa. In the pictures - emergency preparations for sending the painting before the arrival of the Nazis in Paris. The place where the Mona Lisa is hidden was kept in the strictest confidence. The paintings were not hidden in vain: it would later turn out that Hitler planned to create "the world's largest museum" in Linz. And for this he organized a whole campaign under the leadership of the German art connoisseur Hans Posse.

After 100 years without people, the Mona Lisa is eaten by bugs in the History Channel film Life After People.

Most researchers believe that the landscape painted behind the Mona Lisa is fictional. There are versions that this is the Valdarno Valley or the Montefeltro region, but there is no convincing evidence for these versions. It is known that Leonardo painted the painting in his Milan workshop.

“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 see it as secret signs, others see it as 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? The 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

Lisa del Giocondo (nee Gherardini) 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 the 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 number 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 by Leonardo Da Vinci (Louvre)

A special relationship also speaks in favor of this version - 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 the nurse of Leonardo.

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, together with amateur historian Lynn Picknett, presented the public with 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 - such a conclusion was made 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 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 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 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.

Maria Moskvicheva

The Mona Lisa (also known as the Mona Lisa) is a portrait of a young woman painted by the Italian painter Leonardo da Vinci around 1503. The painting is one of the most famous paintings in the world. Refers to the Renaissance. Exhibited in the Louvre (Paris, France).

Story

In no other painting by Leonardo is the depth and haze of the atmosphere conveyed with such perfection as in Mona Lisa. This is an aerial perspective, probably the best in execution. "Mona Lisa" received worldwide fame, not only because of the quality of Leonardo's work, which impresses both art lovers and professionals. The painting has been studied by historians and copied by painters, but it would have long remained known only to connoisseurs of art, if not for its exceptional history. In 1911, the Mona Lisa was stolen and only three years later, thanks to a coincidence, was returned to the museum. During this time, "Mona Lisa" did not leave the covers of newspapers and magazines around the world. Therefore, it is not surprising that the Mona Lisa was copied more often than all other paintings. Since then, the painting has become an object of cult and worship, as a masterpiece of world classics.

Model Mystery

The person depicted in the portrait is difficult to identify. Until today, many controversial and sometimes absurd opinions have been expressed on this subject:

• The wife of the Florentine merchant del Giocondo
• Isabella of Este
• Just the perfect woman
• A young boy in a woman's attire
• Self-portrait of Leonardo

The mystery that surrounds the stranger to this day attracts millions of visitors to the Louvre every year.

In 1517, Cardinal Louis of Aragon visited Leonardo at his atelier in France. The description of this visit was made by the secretary of Cardinal Antonio de Beatis: “On October 10, 1517, the monsignor and his ilk visited in one of the remote parts of Amboise visited sir Leonardo da Vinci, a Florentine, a gray-bearded old man who is over seventy years old, the most excellent artist of our time . He showed His Excellency three paintings: one depicting a Florentine lady, painted from life at the request of Brother Lorenzo the Magnificent Giuliano de' Medici, another depicting St. John the Baptist in his youth, and the third depicting St. Anne with Mary and the Christ Child; all are supremely beautiful. From the master himself, due to the fact that at that time his right hand was paralyzed, 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.

According to Giorgio Vasari (1511-1574), author of biographies of Italian artists, Mona Lisa (short for Madonna Lisa) was the wife of a Florentine named Francesco del Giocondo (Italian Francesco del Giocondo), whose portrait Leonardo spent four years, still leaving its unfinished.

Vasari expresses a very laudatory opinion about the quality of this picture: “Any person who wants to see how well art can imitate nature can easily be convinced of this by the example of the head, because here Leonardo reproduced all the details ... The eyes are filled with brilliance and moisture, like living people ... Delicate pink nose seems real. The red tone of the mouth harmoniously matches the complexion ... Whoever looked closely at her neck, it seemed to everyone that her pulse was beating ... ". He also explains the slight smile on her face: "Leonardo allegedly invited musicians and clowns to entertain a lady bored from a long posing."

This story may be true, but, most likely, Vasari simply added it to Leonardo's biography for the entertainment of readers. Vasari's description 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. 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.

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 uninfluential silk merchant Francesco Giocondo, who commissioned a portrait of his third wife, Lisa, from the artist. Despite the words of this anonymous contemporary, many researchers still doubt the possibility that the Mona Lisa was written in Florence (1500-1505). The refined technique indicates a later creation of the painting. In addition, at that time Leonardo was so busy working on the Battle of Anghiari that he even refused Princess Isabella d'Este to accept her order. Could then a simple merchant persuade the famous master to paint a portrait of his wife?

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

Composition

A careful analysis of the composition leads to the conclusion that Leonardo did not seek to create an individual portrait. "Mona Lisa" became the implementation of the ideas of the artist, expressed by him in his treatise on painting. Leonardo's approach to his work has always been scientific. Therefore, the Mona Lisa, which he spent many years creating, became beautiful, but at the same time inaccessible and insensitive way. She seems voluptuous and cold at the same time. Despite the fact that Jaconda's gaze is directed at us, a visual barrier has been created between us and her - a chair handle acting as a partition. Such a concept excludes the possibility of an intimate dialogue, as, for example, in the portrait of Baltasar Castiglione (exhibited in the Louvre, Paris), painted by Raphael about ten years later. However, our gaze constantly returns to her illuminated face, surrounded as a frame by dark, hidden under a transparent veil, hair, shadows on her neck and a dark smoky landscape in the background. Against the backdrop of distant mountains, the figure gives the impression of being monumental, although the size of the picture is small (77x53 cm). This monumentality, inherent in sublime divine beings, keeps us mere mortals at a respectful distance and at the same time makes us unsuccessfully strive for the unattainable. Not without reason, Leonardo chose the position of the model, very similar to the positions of the Mother of God in Italian paintings of the 15th century. Additional distance is created by the artificiality that arises from the flawless sfumato effect (rejection of clear outlines in favor of creating an airy impression). It must be assumed that Leonardo actually completely freed himself from portrait resemblance in favor of creating the illusion of an atmosphere and a living breathing body with the help of a plane, paints and a brush. For us, Gioconda will forever remain Leonardo's masterpiece.

The detective story of the Mona Lisa

Mona Lisa would have long been known only to connoisseurs of fine art, if not for her exceptional history, which made her world famous.

From the beginning of the sixteenth century, the painting, acquired by Francis I after the death of Leonardo, remained in the royal collection. Since 1793 it has been placed in the Central Museum of Art in the Louvre. Mona Lisa has always remained in the Louvre as one of the assets of the national collection. On August 21, 1911, the painting was stolen by an employee of the Louvre, the Italian mirror master Vincenzo Perugia (Italian: Vincenzo Peruggia). The purpose of this kidnapping is not clear. Perhaps Perugia wanted to return the Gioconda to its historical homeland. 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. In the end, on January 1, 1914, the painting returned to France.

In the twentieth century, the picture almost did not leave the Louvre, visiting the USA in 1963 and Japan in 1974. Trips only consolidated the success and fame of the picture.

Leonardo da Vinci. Portrait of Lisa Gherardini, wife of Francesco del Giocondo (Mona Lisa or Gioconda). 1503-1519. Louvre, Paris.

Mona Lisa by Leonardo da Vinci is the most mysterious painting. Because she is very popular. When there is so much attention, an incredible amount of secrets and conjectures appear.

So I could not resist trying to unravel one of these mysteries. No, I will not look for encrypted codes. I will not solve the mystery of her smile.

I'm concerned about something else. Why does the description of the Mona Lisa portrait by Leonardo's contemporaries not match what we see in the portrait from the Louvre? Is there really a portrait of Lisa Gherardini, the wife of the silk merchant Francesco del Giocondo, hanging in the Louvre? And if this is not the Mona Lisa, then where is the real Gioconda kept?

The authorship of Leonardo is indisputable

The fact that the Louvre Gioconda was written by himself, almost no one doubts. It is in this portrait that the sfumato method invented by the master (very subtle transitions from light to shadow) is revealed to the maximum. A barely perceptible haze, shading the lines, makes the Mona Lisa almost alive. It looks like her lips are about to part. She will sigh. The chest will rise.

Few could compete with Leonardo in creating such realism. Except that . But in applying the sfumato method, he was still inferior to him.

Even compared to earlier portraits of Leonardo himself, the Louvre Mona Lisa is an obvious progress.

Leonardo da Vinci. Left: Portrait of Ginerva Benci. 1476 Washington National Gallery. Middle: Lady with an ermine. 1490 Czartoryski Museum, Krakow. Right: Mona Lisa. 1503-1519 Louvre, Paris

Contemporaries of Leonardo described a very different Mona Lisa

There is no doubt about the authorship of Leonardo. But is it right to call the lady in the Louvre the Mona Lisa? Anyone may have doubts about this. It is enough to read the description of the portrait, a younger contemporary of Leonardo da Vinci. Here is what he wrote in 1550, 30 years after the death of the master:

“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 eyes have that shine and that moisture that are usually seen in a living person ... Eyebrows could not be more natural: hair growing densely in one place and less often in another, in accordance with the pores of the skin ... Mouth slightly open with edges connected by the redness of the lips ... Mona Lisa was very beautiful ... the smile was given so pleasant that it seems as if you are contemplating a divine rather than a human being ... ”

Notice how many of the details in Vasari's description do not match the Mona Lisa in the Louvre.

At the time of writing the portrait, Lisa was no more than 25 years old. The Mona Lisa from the Louvre is clearly older. This is a lady who is over 30-35 years old.

Vasari also talks about eyebrows. Which the Mona Lisa doesn't have. However, this can be attributed to poor restoration. There is a version that they were erased due to unsuccessful cleaning of the painting.

Leonardo da Vinci. Mona Lisa (detail). 1503-1519

Scarlet lips with a parted mouth are completely absent from the Louvre portrait.

One can also argue about the lovely smile of a divine being. Not everyone sees it that way. It is sometimes even compared with the smile of a self-confident predator. But this is a matter of taste. The beauty of Mona Lisa mentioned by Vasari can also be argued.

The main thing is that the Louvre Mona Lisa is completely finished. Vasari claims that the portrait was left unfinished. Now that's a serious inconsistency.

Where is the real Mona Lisa?

So if the Mona Lisa isn't hanging in the Louvre, where is it?

I know of at least three portraits that fit Vasari's description much better. In addition, they were all created in the same years as the Louvre portrait.

1. Mona Lisa from the Prado

Unknown artist (student of Leonardo da Vinci). Mona Lisa. 1503-1519

This Mona Lisa received little attention until 2012. Until one day the restaurateurs cleared the black background. And about a miracle! Under the dark paint was a landscape - an exact copy of the Louvre background.

Pradovskaya Mona Lisa is 10 years younger than her rival from the Louvre. Which corresponds to the real age of the real Lisa. She is prettier on the outside. She has eyebrows after all.

However, the experts did not claim the title of the main picture of the world. They acknowledged that the work was done by one of Leonardo's students.

Thanks to this work, we can imagine what the Louvre Mona Lisa looked like 500 years ago. After all, the portrait from the Prado is much better preserved. Due to Leonardo's constant experiments with paints and varnish, Mona Lisa darkened very much. Most likely, she once also wore a red dress, and not a golden brown dress.

2. Flora from the Hermitage

Francesco Melzi. Flora (Columbine). 1510-1515 , Saint Petersburg

Flora fits Vasari's description very well. Young, very beautiful, with an unusually pleasant smile of scarlet lips.

In addition, this is how Melzi himself described the favorite work of his teacher Leonardo. In his correspondence, he calls her Gioconda. The painting, he said, depicted a girl of incredible beauty with a Columbine flower in her hand.

However, we do not see her “wet” eyes. In addition, it is unlikely that Signor Giocondo would allow his wife to pose with bare breasts.

So why does Melzi call her Mona Lisa? After all, it is this name that leads some experts to the idea that the real Mona Lisa is not in the Louvre, but in.

There may have been confusion over the 500 years. From Italian "Gioconda" is translated as "Merry". Maybe that's what the students and Leonardo himself called his Flora. But it so happened that this word coincided with the name of the customer of the portrait, Giocondo.

Unknown artist (Leonardo da Vinci?). Isleworth Mona Lisa. 1503-1507 Private collection

This portrait was opened to the general public about 100 years ago. An English collector bought it from the Italian owners in 1914. They allegedly had no idea what treasure they possess.

A version was put forward that this is the same Mona Lisa that Leonardo painted to order for Signor Giocondo. But he didn't finish it.

It is also assumed that the Mona Lisa that hangs in the Louvre, Leonardo already painted in 10 years. Already for himself. Based on the already familiar image of Signora Giocondo. For the sake of their own pictorial experiments. So that no one interferes with him and does not demand a picture.

The version looks plausible. In addition, the Isleworth Mona Lisa is just unfinished. He wrote about this. Pay attention to how undeveloped the woman's neck and the landscape behind her are. She also looks younger than her Louvre rival. As if really the same woman was portrayed with a difference of 10-15 years.

The version is very interesting. If not for one big BUT. The Isleworth Mona Lisa was painted on canvas. Whereas Leonardo da Vinci wrote only on the blackboard. Including the Louvre Mona Lisa.

Crime of the century. Theft of the Mona Lisa from the Louvre

Maybe the real Mona Lisa hangs in the Louvre. And Vasari described it too inaccurately. And Leonardo has nothing to do with the three paintings.

However, in the 20th century, there was one incident that still makes one doubt that the real Mona Lisa hangs in the Louvre.

In August 1911 the Mona Lisa disappeared from the museum. She was looking for 3 years. Until the criminal gave himself away in the most stupid way. Placed an advertisement in the newspaper for the sale of the painting. A collector came to see the painting and realized that the person who advertised was not crazy. Under his mattress, in fact, the Mona Lisa was gathering dust.

Louvre. Crime scene photo (Mona Lisa disappeared). 1911

The perpetrator turned out to be Italian Vincenzo Perugia. He was a glazier and an artist. Worked for several weeks at the Louvre on glass protective boxes for paintings.

According to him, patriotic feelings woke up in him. He decided to return to Italy the painting stolen by Napoleon. For some reason, he was sure that all the paintings of the Italian masters of the Louvre were stolen by this dictator.

The story is very suspicious. Why didn't he let me know about himself for 3 years? It is possible that he or his client needed time to make a copy of the Mona Lisa. As soon as the copy was ready, the thief made an announcement which was apparently to lead to his arrest. By the way, they sentenced him to a ridiculous term. Less than a year later, Perugia was already free.

So it may well be that the Louvre got back a very high quality forgery. By that time, they had already learned how to artificially age paintings and pass them off as originals.

Louvre workers do not call the most famous portrait of the world Mona Lisa. Among themselves, they designate her as the “Florentine Lady”. Apparently, many of them are sure that she was hardly the wife of Signor Giocondo. So the real Mona Lisa is somewhere else..?

Read about other titans of painting in the article “

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