Doctors have revealed the secret of Mona Lisa's mysterious smile. All the secrets of Mona Lisa The history of Mona Lisa's portrait - her mysterious smile
The mysterious genius of the Renaissance Leonardo da Vinci - what do we know about him? Great painter, who wrote so many world masterpieces, why didn’t he finish so many works? The drawings by Leonardo da Vinci known to us convey both the beauty of the world and man, as well as creepy, ugly scenes from life.
He owned not only paintings, but also a variety of inventions, several centuries ahead of their time. The life of this man has always been shrouded in mystery, his achievements are simply amazing. Leonardo da Vinci is not just a man, but a superman living in another dimension.
Drawing by Leonardo da Vinci.
We will focus on his most amazing mystery - the portrait of Mona Lisa or “La Gioconda” (Louvre).
This picture, which has been debated for centuries, and every researcher tries to find in this picture new riddle to solve it. The portrait carries within itself not just a specific reality, but is a generalization of the universal, spiritual principle. This is not a mysterious woman, this is a mysterious being” (Leonardo. M. Batkin).
The picture belongs to early XVI century. This is a portrait of the wife of a merchant from Florence, Francesco del Giocondo.
The most famous is the riddle of Gioconda's smile. The mastery of the genius here has reached such heights that the expression on Mona Lisa's face remains elusive, from different points of view - it is always different. Some considered this effect ominous, others - spiritual, hypnotic. This effect is called sfumato (very subtle transitions from light to shadow) - realism and volume as if the picture was painted with many strokes.
But, meanwhile, this is not so! The paint layer is very thin and the strokes are not visible at all. Researchers have long been trying to understand this style of writing using a fluorescent method. A barely perceptible haze shades the lines, making Gioconda almost alive. It begins to seem that now her lips will open and she will utter a word.
The very first description of the painting given by Vasari is contradictory, who wrote that Leonardo da Vinci worked on it for four years and did not finish, but immediately reports that the portrait reproduces all the smallest details that the subtlety of painting can convey. We can say with a great deal of confidence that in the image of Mona Lisa, Leonardo da Vinci depicted not an ordinary woman, but the Mother of God.
Researchers are inclined to conclude that one half of Gioconda’s face is John the Baptist, the profile of the second half belongs to Jesus Christ.
The left hand lies motionless, in the language of Leonardo “If the figures do not make gestures that express the idea with members of the body human soul, then these figures are twice dead.” The right hand looks more “believable”. All this confirms that in the image of Mona Lisa the artist combined a living and a dead image.
We know that he encrypted many of his works, for example, using the “mirror” writing technique. Thus, the letters LV or L2 were discovered in the right pupil of Mona Lisa. Perhaps these are initials, or perhaps a code - after all, in the Middle Ages, letters could replace numbers.
According to researcher Carla Glory, behind the silhouette of Gioconda on the canvas genius master brushes by Leonardo da Vinci depict the picturesque surroundings of the town of Bobbio, which is located in northern Italy. This conclusion was expressed following a message from the head of the Italian National Committee for the Protection of cultural monuments Silvano Vinceti - journalist, writer and discoverer of the tomb of Michelangelo da Caravaggio.
The publicist said that he examined the outline of letters and numbers on Leonardo’s priceless canvas. It was about the number “72”, which is under the arch of the bridge, visible to the left of the Mona Lisa. Vinceti himself believes that this is a reference to the mystical theories of Leonardo da Vinci.
Glory Carla believes that the mark “72” indicates the year 1472, when the Trebbia River, which came out during a flood, carried down and destroyed the dilapidated bridge. Later, the Visconti family, which dominated the area at that time, built a new bridge. Everything except the image of the bridge is the magnificent landscape that could be seen from the terraces and windows of the local medieval castle.
The town of Bobbio was famous for the fact that nearby is located the grandiose monastery ensemble of San Colombano, which became the prototype for the setting for romantic story Umberto Eco in The Name of the Rose.
Carla Glori also suggested that his model was not the wife of a wealthy city dweller, Lisa del Giocondo, but the daughter of the Duke of Milan, Bianca Giovanna Sforza. The place depicted on the canvas is not the central part of Italy, as previously assumed. The father of the proposed model, Lodovico Sforza, was one of Leonardo's main customers and a renowned philanthropist.
The historian Glory suggests that the painter and naturalist visited him both in Milan and in remote Bobbio. There was a library famous in those days, which fell under the authority of the Milanese rulers. Skeptical researchers claim that the patterns of numbers and letters discovered by Vinceti in the pupils of the Mona Lisa's eyes are nothing more than cracks that appeared there over time.
However, this is not necessarily the case. An example of this amazing story research of the miraculous icon of the Virgin Mary of Guadalupe, which is located in Mexico.
The most terrible puzzle of Leonardo da Vinci
Combining the qualities of a scientist and a clairvoyant, in his old age Leonardo made strange drawing- “The end of the world”, which was not understood then. Today it terrifies us: it is the outline of a huge mushroom growing out of an exploded city...
Some scientists and researchers are confident that some of Leonardo's puzzles have already been solved, for example:
- “An ominous feathered race will fly through the air; they will attack people and animals and feed on them with a great cry.” It is believed that we are talking about airplanes, helicopters, and missiles.
- “People will talk to each other from the most distant countries and answer each other.” Well, of course, this is a telephone, mobile communications.
- "Sea water will rise to high peaks mountains, to heaven and will fall again on the dwellings of people. It will be seen how the largest trees of the forests will be carried by the fury of the wind from east to west.”
It is believed that this prophecy is related to global warming.
It is impossible to list all of Leonardo's works. But even this small part is enough to get an idea of this universal genius, which cannot be compared with anyone who lived in his time.
Leonardo da Vinci's painting "Mona Lisa" was painted in 1505, but it still remains the most popular work art. Still an unsolved problem is the mysterious expression on the woman's face. In addition, the painting is famous for the unusual execution methods used by the artist and, most importantly, the Mona Lisa was stolen several times. The most notorious case happened about 100 years ago - on August 21, 1911.
16:24 21.08.2015
Back in 1911, the Mona Lisa, whose full name was “Portrait of Madame Lisa del Giocondo,” was stolen by an employee of the Louvre, the Italian mirror maker Vincenzo Perugia. But then no one even suspected him of stealing. Suspicion fell on the poet Guillaume Apollinaire, and even Pablo Picasso! The museum administration was immediately fired and the French borders were temporarily closed. Newspaper hype greatly contributed to the growth of the film's popularity.
The painting was discovered only 2 years later in Italy. What’s interesting is that it was due to the thief’s own oversight. He made a fool of himself by responding to an advertisement in the newspaper and offering to buy the Mona Lisa to the director of the Uffizi Gallery.
8 facts about Leonardo da Vinci's Mona Lisa that will surprise you
1.
It turns out that Leonardo da Vinci rewrote La Gioconda twice. Experts believe that the colors on the original versions were much brighter. And the sleeves of Gioconda’s dress were originally red, the colors just faded over time.
In addition, in the original version of the painting there were columns along the edges of the canvas. Later the picture was cropped, probably by the artist himself.
2. The first place where they saw “La Gioconda” was the bathhouse of the great politician and collector King Francis I. According to legend, before his death, Leonardo da Vinci sold “Gioconda” to Francis for 4 thousand gold coins. At that time it was simply a huge amount.
The king placed the painting in the bathhouse not because he did not realize what a masterpiece he had received, but quite the opposite. At that time, the bathhouse at Fontainebleau was the most important place in the French kingdom. There, Francis not only had fun with his mistresses, but also received ambassadors.
3. At one time, Napoleon Bonaparte liked the Mona Lisa so much that he moved it from the Louvre to the Tuileries Palace and hung it in his bedroom. Napoleon knew nothing about painting, but he highly valued da Vinci. True, not as an artist, but as a universal genius, which, by the way, he considered himself to be. After becoming emperor, Napoleon returned the painting to the museum in the Louvre, which he named after himself.
4. Hidden in the eyes of the Mona Lisa are tiny numbers and letters that are unlikely to be visible to the naked eye. researchers suggest that these are the initials of Leonardo da Vinci and the year the painting was created.
5. During World War II, many works from the Louvre collection were hidden in the Chateau de Chambord. Among them was the Mona Lisa. The location where the Mona Lisa was hidden was kept a closely guarded secret. The paintings were hidden for good reason: it would later turn out that Hitler planned to create the world's largest museum in Linz. And he organized a whole campaign for this under the leadership of the German art connoisseur Hans Posse.
6. It is believed that the painting depicts Lisa Gherardini, the wife of Francesco del Gioconda, a Florentine silk merchant. True, there are also more exotic versions. According to one of them, Mona Lisa is Leonardo’s mother Katerina, according to another, it is a self-portrait of the artist in a female form, and according to the third, it is Salai, Leonardo’s student, dressed in a woman’s dress.
7. Most researchers believe that the landscape painted behind the Gioconda is fictitious. 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.
8. The painting has its own room in the Louvre. Now the painting is inside a special protective system, which includes bullet-resistant glass, a complex alarm system and an installation to create a microclimate that is optimal for preserving the painting. The cost of this system is $7 million.
The masterpiece is admired by more than eight million visitors every year. However, what we see today only vaguely resembles the original creation. More than 500 years separate us from the time the painting was created...
THE PICTURE CHANGES OVER THE YEARS
Mona Lisa changes like a real woman... After all, today we have before us an image of a woman’s faded, faded face, yellowed and darkened in those places where previously the viewer could see brown and green tones (it’s not for nothing that Leonardo’s contemporaries more than once admired the fresh and bright colors paintings by an Italian artist).
The portrait did not escape the ravages of time and damage caused by numerous restorations. And the wooden supports became wrinkled and covered with cracks. The properties of pigments, binders and varnish have undergone changes under the influence of chemical reactions over the years.
The honorable right to create a series of photographs of the Mona Lisa in the highest resolution was given to the French engineer Pascal Cotte, the inventor of the multispectral camera. The result of his work was detailed photographs of the painting in the range from ultraviolet to infrared spectrum.
It is worth noting that Pascal spent about three hours creating photographs of the “naked” painting, that is, without a frame or protective glass. At the same time, he used a unique scanner of his own invention. The result of the work was 13 photographs of a masterpiece with 240-megapixel resolution. The quality of these images is absolutely unique. It took two years to analyze and verify the data obtained.
RECONSTRUCTED BEAUTY
In 2007, at the exhibition “The Genius of Da Vinci,” 25 secrets of the painting were revealed for the first time. Here, for the first time, visitors were able to enjoy the original color of the Mona Lisa's paints (that is, the color of the original pigments that da Vinci used).
The photographs presented the picture to readers in its original form, similar to how Leonardo’s contemporaries saw it: a sky the color of lapis lazuli, a warm pink complexion, clearly drawn mountains, green trees...
Photographs by Pascal Cottet showed that Leonardo had not completed the painting. We observe changes in the position of the model's hand. It can be seen that at first Mona Lisa supported the bedspread with her hand. It also became noticeable that the facial expression and smile were somewhat different at first. And the stain in the corner of the eye is water damage in the varnish coating, most likely as a result of the painting hanging for some time in Napoleon's bathroom. We can also determine that some parts of the painting have become transparent over time. And see that, contrary to modern opinion, Mona Lisa had eyebrows and eyelashes!
WHO IS IN THE PICTURE
“Leonardo undertook to make a portrait of Mona Lisa, his wife, for Francesco Giocondo, and, having worked for four years, left it unfinished. While painting the portrait, he kept people playing the lyre or singing, and there were always jesters who moved away from her melancholy and kept her cheerful. That’s why her smile is so pleasant.”
This is the only evidence of how the painting was created belongs to da Vinci's contemporary, the artist and writer Giorgio Vasari (though he was only eight years old when Leonardo died). Based on his words for several centuries now female portrait, on which the master worked in 1503-1506, is considered to be an image of 25-year-old Lisa, the wife of the Florentine magnate Francesco del Giocondo. This is what Vasari wrote - and everyone believed it. But most likely, this is a mistake, and there is another woman in the portrait.
There is a lot of evidence: firstly, the headdress is a widow’s mourning veil (meanwhile, Francesco del Giocondo lived a long life), and secondly, if there was a customer, why didn’t Leonardo give him the work? It is known that the artist kept the painting in his possession, and in 1516, leaving Italy, he took it to France; King Francis I paid 4,000 gold florins for it in 1517 - fantastic money at that time. However, he didn’t get “La Gioconda” either.
The artist did not part with the portrait until his death. In 1925, art historians suggested that the half depicts Duchess Constance d'Avalos - the widow of Federico del Balzo, the mistress of Giuliano Medici (brother of Pope Leo X). The basis for the hypothesis was a sonnet by the poet Eneo Irpino, which mentions her portrait by Leonardo. In 1957, the Italian Carlo Pedretti put forward a different version: in fact, it was Pacifica Brandano, another mistress of Giuliano Medici, the widow of a Spanish nobleman, who had a gentle and cheerful disposition, was well educated and could brighten up any company. It is no wonder that such a cheerful person. , like Giuliano, became close to her, thanks to which their son Ippolito was born.
In the papal palace, Leonardo was provided with a workshop with movable tables and the diffused light he so loved. The artist worked slowly, carefully detailing the details, especially the face and eyes. Pacifica (if that's her) came out as if alive in the picture. The spectators were amazed and often frightened: it seemed to them that instead of the woman in the picture, a monster, some kind of sea siren, was about to appear. Even the landscape behind her contained something mysterious. The famous smile was in no way associated with the idea of righteousness. Rather, there was something in the realm of witchcraft here. It is this mysterious smile that stops, alarms, fascinates and calls the viewer, as if forcing him to enter into a telepathic connection.
Renaissance artists expanded the philosophical and artistic horizons of creativity to the maximum. Man has entered into competition with God, he imitates him, he is obsessed with a great desire to create. He is captured by that one real world, from which the Middle Ages turned away for the sake of the spiritual world.
Leonardo da Vinci dissected corpses. He dreamed of taking over nature by learning to change the direction of rivers and drain swamps; he wanted to steal the art of flight from birds. Painting was for him an experimental laboratory, where he constantly searched for more and more new expressive means. The artist's genius allowed him to see the true essence of nature behind the living physicality of forms. And here we cannot help but mention the master’s favorite subtle chiaroscuro (sfumato), which was a kind of halo for him, replacing the medieval halo: this is equally a divine-human and natural sacrament.
The sfumato technique made it possible to enliven landscapes and surprisingly subtly convey the play of feelings on faces in all its variability and complexity. What Leonardo didn’t invent, hoping to realize his plans! The master tirelessly mixes various substances, trying to obtain eternal colors. His brush is so light, so transparent that in the 20th century even X-ray analysis would not reveal traces of its impact. After making a few strokes, he puts the painting aside to let it dry. His eye distinguishes the slightest nuances: sun glare and shadows of some objects on others, a shadow on the pavement and a shadow of sadness or a smile on his face. General laws drawing, constructing perspective only suggest the path. Our own searches reveal that light has the ability to bend and straighten lines: “Immersing objects in a light-air environment means, in essence, immersing them in infinity.”
WORSHIP
According to experts, her name was Mona Lisa Gherardini del Giocondo, ... Although, maybe Isabella Gualando, Isabella d'Este, Filiberta of Savoy, Constance d'Avalos, Pacifica Brandano... Who knows?
The ambiguity of its origins only contributed to its fame. She passed through the centuries in the radiance of her mystery. Long years the portrait of a “court lady in a transparent veil” was a decoration of royal collections. She was seen either in Madame de Maintenon's bedroom or in Napoleon's chambers in the Tuileries. Louis XIII, who frolicked as a child in the Grand Gallery where it hung, refused to give it up to the Duke of Buckingham, saying: “It is impossible to part with a painting that is considered the best in the world.” Everywhere - both in castles and in city houses - they tried to “teach” their daughters the famous smile.
This is how a beautiful image turned into a fashionable stamp. U professional artists The popularity of the painting has always been high (more than 200 copies of La Gioconda are known). She gave birth to a whole school, inspired such masters as Raphael, Ingres, David, Corot. WITH late XIX century, letters began to be sent to “Mona Lisa” with declarations of love. And yet, in the bizarrely unfolding fate of the picture, some touch, some stunning event was missing. And it happened!
On August 21, 1911, newspapers came out with a sensational headline: “La Gioconda” has been stolen!” The painting was vigorously searched for. They mourned for it. They feared that it had died, burned by an awkward photographer who was photographing it with a magnesium flash in the open air. In France, “La Gioconda” was even mourned Street musicians. “Baldassare Castiglione” by Raphael, installed in the Louvre on the site of the missing one, did not suit anyone - after all, it was just an “ordinary” masterpiece.
La Gioconda was found in January 1913, hidden in a hiding place under the bed. The thief, a poor Italian emigrant, wanted to return the painting to his homeland, Italy.
When the idol of centuries returned to the Louvre, the writer Théophile Gautier sarcastically remarked that the smile had become “mocking” and even “triumphant”? especially in cases where it was addressed to people who are not inclined to trust angelic smiles. The public was divided into two warring camps. If for some it was just a picture, albeit an excellent one, then for others it was almost a deity. In 1920, in the Dada magazine, avant-garde artist Marcel Duchamp added a bushy mustache to a photograph of “the most mysterious of smiles” and accompanied the cartoon with the initial letters of the words “she can’t stand it.” In this form the opponents of idolatry expressed their irritation.
|
MAIN SECRET...
...Hidden, of course, in her smile. As you know, there are different smiles: happy, sad, embarrassed, seductive, sour, sarcastic. But none of these definitions are suitable in this case. The archives of the Leonardo da Vinci Museum in France contain many different interpretations of the riddle of the famous portrait.
A certain “general specialist” assures that the person depicted in the picture is pregnant; her smile is an attempt to catch the movement of the fetus. The next one insists that she is smiling at her lover... Leonardo. Some even think that the painting depicts a man because “his smile is very attractive to homosexuals.”
According to British psychologist Digby Questeg, a proponent latest version, in this work Leonardo showed his latent (hidden) homosexuality. The smile of “La Gioconda” expresses a wide range of feelings: from embarrassment and indecision (what will contemporaries and descendants say?) to hope for understanding and favor.
From the point of view of today's ethics, this assumption looks quite convincing. Let us remember, however, that the morals of the Renaissance were much more liberated than today, and Leonardo did not make a secret of his sexual orientation. His students were always more beautiful than talented; His servant Giacomo Salai enjoyed special favor. Another similar version? "Mona Lisa" is a self-portrait of the artist. A recent computer comparison of the anatomical features of the faces of Gioconda and Leonardo da Vinci (based on the artist’s self-portrait made in red pencil) showed that geometrically they match perfectly. Thus, Gioconda can be called the female form of a genius!.. But then Gioconda’s smile is his smile.
Such a mysterious smile was indeed characteristic of Leonardo; as evidenced, for example, by Verrocchio’s painting “Tobias with the Fish,” in which the Archangel Michael is painted with Leonardo da Vinci.
Sigmund Freud also expressed his opinion about the portrait (naturally, in the spirit of Freudianism): “The smile of Gioconda is the smile of the artist’s mother.” The idea of the founder of psychoanalysis was later supported by Salvador Dali: “In the modern world there is a real cult of Gioconda worship. There have been many attempts on La Gioconda’s life, several years ago there were even attempts to throw stones at her - there is a clear resemblance to aggressive behavior in relation to his own mother. If we remember what Freud wrote about Leonardo da Vinci, as well as everything that his paintings say about the artist’s subconscious, then we can easily conclude that when Leonardo was working on La Gioconda, he was in love with his mother. Completely unconsciously, he wrote a new creature, endowed with all possible signs of motherhood. At the same time, she smiles somehow ambiguously. The whole world saw and still sees today in this ambiguous smile a very definite shade of eroticism. And what happens to the unfortunate poor spectator, who is in the grip of the Oedipus complex? He comes to the museum. A museum is a public institution. In his subconscious it’s just a brothel or simply a brothel. And in that very brothel he sees an image that represents a prototype collective image all mothers. The painful presence of his own mother, casting a gentle glance and giving an ambiguous smile, pushes him to commit a crime. He grabs the first thing he can get his hands on, say a stone, and tears the picture apart, thus committing an act of matricide.”
DOCTORS MAKE A DIAGNOSIS BY SMILE...
For some reason, Gioconda’s smile especially haunts doctors. For them, the portrait of Mona Lisa is an ideal opportunity to practice making a diagnosis without fear of the consequences of a medical error.
Thus, the famous American otolaryngologist Christopher Adur from Oakland (USA) announced that Gioconda has facial paralysis. In his practice, he even called this paralysis “Mona Lisa’s disease,” apparently achieving a psychotherapeutic effect by instilling in patients a sense of involvement in high art. One Japanese doctor is absolutely sure that Mona Lisa had high cholesterol. Evidence of this is a typical nodule on the skin between the left eyelid and the base of the nose, typical for such a disease. Which means: Mona Lisa didn't eat well.
Joseph Borkowski, an American dentist and painting expert, believes that the woman in the painting, judging by the expression on her face, has lost many teeth. While studying enlarged photographs of the masterpiece, Borkowski discovered scars around the Mona Lisa's mouth. “Her facial expression is typical of people who have lost their front teeth,” says the expert. Neurophysiologists also contributed to solving the mystery. In their opinion, it’s not about the model or the artist, but about the audience. Why does it seem to us that Mona Lisa's smile fades away and then appears again? Neurophysiologist Harvard University Margaret Livingston believes that the reason for this is not the magic of Leonardo da Vinci’s art, but the peculiarities of human vision: the appearance and disappearance of a smile depends on which part of Gioconda’s face a person’s gaze is directed at. There are two types of vision: central, detail-oriented, and peripheral, less clear. If you are not focused on the eyes of “nature” or are trying to take in her entire face with your gaze, Gioconda smiles at you. However, as soon as you focus your gaze on your lips, the smile immediately disappears. Moreover, the smile of Mona Lisa can be reproduced, says Margaret Livingston. Why, when working on a copy, you need to try to “draw a mouth without looking at it.” But only the great Leonardo seemed to know how to do this.
|
Some practicing psychologists say that the Secret of Mona Lisa is simple: it is smiling to yourself. Actually, the advice follows modern women: think how wonderful, sweet, kind, unique you are - you are worth rejoicing and smiling at yourself. Carry your smile naturally, let it be honest and open, coming from the depths of your soul. A smile will soften your face, erase from it traces of fatigue, inaccessibility, rigidity that scare men so much. It will give your face a mysterious expression. And then you will have as many fans as the Mona Lisa.
THE SECRET OF SHADOWS AND SHADES
The mysteries of the immortal creation have haunted scientists from all over the world for many years. Scientists previously used X-rays to understand how Leonardo da Vinci created the shadows on his great masterpiece. The Mona Lisa was one of seven works by Da Vinci studied by scientist Philip Walter and his colleagues. The study showed how ultra-thin layers of glaze and paint were used to achieve a smooth transition from light to dark. An X-ray beam allows you to examine layers without damaging the canvas
The technique used by Da Vinci and other Renaissance artists is known as sfumato. With its help, it was possible to create smooth transitions of tones or colors on the canvas.
One of the most shocking discoveries of our research is that you will not see a single stroke or fingerprint on the canvas,” said Walter’s group member.
Everything is so perfect! That’s why Da Vinci’s paintings were impossible to analyze—they didn’t provide easy clues,” she continued.
Previous research had already established the basic aspects of the sfumato technology, but Walter's team has uncovered new details about how the great master was able to achieve this effect. The team used an X-ray to determine the thickness of each layer applied to the canvas. As a result, it was possible to find out that Leonardo da Vinci was able to apply layers with a thickness of only a couple of micrometers (thousandth of a millimeter), the total layer thickness did not exceed 30 - 40 micrometers.
A MYSTERIOUS LANDSCAPE
Behind Mona Lisa, the legendary canvas by Leonardo da Vinci depicts not an abstract, but a very concrete landscape - the outskirts of the northern Italian town of Bobbio, says researcher Carla Glori, whose arguments are cited on Monday, January 10, by the Daily Telegraph newspaper.
Glory came to such conclusions after the journalist, writer, discoverer of Caravaggio’s grave and head of the National Italian Committee for the Protection cultural heritage Silvano Vinceti reported that he saw mysterious letters and numbers on Leonardo’s canvas. In particular, under the arch of the bridge located to the left of the Mona Lisa (that is, from the viewer’s point of view, on the right side of the picture), the numbers “72” were discovered. Vinceti himself considers them a reference to some mystical theories of Leonardo. According to Glory, this is an indication of the year 1472, when the Trebbia River flowing past Bobbio overflowed its banks, demolished the old bridge and forced the Visconti family, which ruled in those parts, to build a new one. She considers the rest of the view to be the landscape that opened from the windows of the local castle.
Previously, Bobbio was known primarily as the place where the huge monastery of San Colombano is located, which served as one of the prototypes for “The Name of the Rose” by Umberto Eco.
In her conclusions, Carla Glory goes even further: if the scene is not the center of Italy, as scientists previously believed, based on the fact that Leonardo began work on the canvas in 1503-1504 in Florence, but the north, then his model is not his wife merchant Lisa del Giocondo, and the daughter of the Duke of Milan Bianca Giovanna Sforza.
Her father, Lodovico Sforza, was one of Leonardo's main customers and a famous philanthropist.
Glory believes that the artist and inventor visited him not only in Milan, but also in Bobbio, a town with a library famous in those days, also subject to the Milanese rulers. However, skeptical experts claim that both the numbers and letters discovered by Vinceti in pupils of the Mona Lisa, nothing more than cracks that formed on the canvas over the centuries... However, no one can exclude the possibility that they were specially applied to the canvas...
IS THE SECRET REVEALED?
Last year, Professor Margaret Livingston of Harvard University said that Mona Lisa's smile is visible only if you look at other features of her face rather than at the lips of the woman depicted in the portrait.
Margaret Livingston presented her theory at the annual meeting of the American Association for the Advancement of Science in Denver, Colorado.
The disappearance of a smile when changing the angle of view is due to how human eye processes visual information, says the American scientist.
There are two types of vision: direct and peripheral. Direct perceives details well, worse - shadows.
The elusive nature of Mona Lisa's smile can be explained by the fact that almost all of it is located in the low-frequency range of light and is well perceived only by peripheral vision, said Margaret Livingston.
The more you look directly at your face, the less your peripheral vision is used.
The same thing happens if you look at one letter of printed text. At the same time, other letters are perceived worse, even at close range.
Da Vinci used this principle and therefore the smile of Mona Lisa is visible only if you look at the eyes or other parts of the face of the woman depicted in the portrait...
“From a medical point of view, it is not clear how this woman even lived.”
Her mysterious smile is captivating. Some see divine beauty in it, others see it as secret signs, and others see it as a challenge to norms and society. But everyone agrees on one thing - there is something mysterious and attractive about her. We are, of course, talking about the Mona Lisa - the favorite creation of the great Leonardo. A portrait rich in mythology. What is the secret of Mona Lisa? There are countless versions. We have selected the ten most common and intriguing ones.
Today this painting, measuring 77x53 cm, is kept in the Louvre behind thick bulletproof glass. The image, made on a poplar board, is covered with a network of craquelures. It has gone through a number of not very successful restorations and has noticeably darkened over five centuries. However, the older the painting becomes, the more people attracts: the Louvre is visited annually by 8-9 million people.
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 - 4,000 gold coins and placed it in Fontainebleau.
Napoleon was also fascinated by Madame Lisa (as he called Gioconda) and took her to his chambers in the Tuileries Palace. And the Italian Vincenzo Perugia stole a masterpiece from the Louvre in 1911, took it home and hid with her for two whole 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, and delighted. ..
What is the secret of her attractiveness?
Version No. 1: classic
We find the first mention of the Mona Lisa in the author of the famous Lives, 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 unfinished.”
The writer admires the artist’s skill, his ability to show “the smallest details that the subtlety of painting can convey,” and most importantly, his smile, which “is given so pleasant that it seems as if one is contemplating a divine rather than a human being.” The art historian explains the secret of her charm by saying that “while painting the portrait, he (Leonardo) held people who were playing the lyre or singing, and there were always jesters who kept her cheerful and removed the melancholy that painting usually imparts to the portraits being painted.” There is no doubt: Leonardo is an unsurpassed master, and the crown of his mastery 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 this really the wife of the silk merchant Francesco del Giocondo, whose surname became the middle name of this mysterious lady? Is it true that the story about the musicians who created the right mood for our heroine? Skeptics dispute all 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 also encounters controversial passages in other biographies. Take the story of Michelangelo's broken nose. Vasari writes that Pietro Torrigiani hit a classmate because he was attracted to his talent, and Benvenuto Cellini explains the injury by his arrogance and impudence: while copying Masaccio’s frescoes, during the lesson he ridiculed every image, for which he received a punch in the nose from Torrigiani. Cellini speaks in favor of the version complex nature Buonarroti, about whom there were legends.
Version No. 2: Chinese mother
It really did exist. Italian archaeologists even claim to have found her tomb in the monastery of St. 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 fabric merchant Giocondo, it remained unfinished. The master spent his whole life improving his work, adding features of other models - thereby obtaining a collective portrait ideal woman of his era.
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 between local traditions and Italian era Renaissance, and discovered documents showing that Leonardo's father, the notary Piero, had a wealthy client, and he had a slave whom he brought from China. Her name was Katerina - she became the mother of the 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 master’s ability to write from right to left (this is how entries were made in his diaries). The researcher also saw oriental features in the model’s face and in the landscape behind her. Paratico suggests exhuming Leonardo's remains and testing 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 took as his wife 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 into his home. Almost nothing is known about Leonardo's mother. But, indeed, there is an opinion that the artist, separated from his mother in early childhood, all his life he tried to recreate the image and smile of his mother in his paintings. This assumption was made by Sigmund Freud in the book “Memories of Childhood. Leonardo da Vinci" and it gained many supporters among art historians.
Version No. 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 ... as a young man in a woman's dress. And this is none other than Salai - a student of da Vinci, who was 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 the Mona Lisa. The art historian, however, made this conclusion not only because of the external similarity of the models, but after studying photographs in high resolution, which made it possible to see 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)
This version is also supported by a special relationship - Vasari also hinted at it - between the model and the artist, which may have 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 person accuses the artist of sodomy of a certain 17-year-old boy Jacopo Saltarelli.
Leonardo had several students, with some of whom he was more than close, according to a number of researchers. Freud also discusses Leonardo's homosexuality, and he supports this version with a psychiatric analysis of his biography and the diary of the Renaissance genius. Da Vinci's notes about Salai are also considered 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: that the painting depicts a certain woman from the retinue 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 numbers 149 on the back of the canvas. This, according to the researcher, is the date the painting was painted, only the last number has been erased. It is traditionally believed that the master began painting 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, Constanza d'Avalos, the libertine Caterina Sforza, a certain secret lover Lorenzo de' Medici and even Leonardo's nurse.
Version No. 4: Gioconda is Leonardo
Another unexpected theory, which Freud hinted at, was confirmed in the research of the American Lillian Schwartz. The Mona Lisa is a self-portrait, Lilian is sure. Artist and Graphic Consultant at the School visual arts in New York in the 1980s, she compared the famous “Turin Self-Portrait” by a very middle-aged artist and a portrait of Mona Lisa and discovered that the proportions of faces (head shape, distance between the eyes, forehead height) were the same.
And in 2009, Lilian, together with amateur historian Lynn Picknett, presented the public with another incredible sensation: she claims that the Shroud of Turin is nothing more than an imprint of Leonardo’s face, made using silver sulfate using the camera obscura principle.
However, not many supported Lilian in her research - these theories are not among the most popular, unlike the following assumption.
Version No. 5: a masterpiece with Down syndrome
Gioconda suffered from Down's disease - this was the conclusion that English photographer Leo Vala came to in the 1970s after he came up with a method to “turn” the Mona Lisa in profile.
At the same time, the Danish doctor Finn Becker-Christiansson diagnosed Gioconda with congenital facial paralysis. An asymmetrical smile, in his opinion, speaks of mental deviations up to and including idiocy.
In 1991, the French sculptor Alain Roche decided to embody the Mona Lisa in marble, but it didn’t work out. 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, and he attracted a specialist in hand microsurgery, Jean-Jacques Conte. Together they came to the conclusion that right hand The mysterious woman does not lean on her 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 the mysterious smile is also just a spasm.
The complete “medical record” of Gioconda was collected by gynecologist Julio Cruz y Hermida in his book “A Look at Gioconda Through the Eyes of a Doctor.” The result was so scary picture that it is not clear how this woman even lived. According to various researchers, she suffered from alopecia (hair loss), high cholesterol in the blood, exposure of the neck of the teeth, their loosening and loss, and even alcoholism. She had Parkinson's disease, a lipoma (a benign fatty tumor on her right arm), strabismus, cataracts, and heterochromia of the iris ( different color eye) and asthma.
However, who said that Leonardo was anatomically accurate - what if the secret of genius lies precisely in this disproportion?
Version No. 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 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 mistress”, lady). Art critics often explain the genius of the painting precisely because it depicts an earthly woman in the image of the Mother of God.
Version No. 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 that is why it has become a symbol of the beginning new era in art. Used to be art served the church, government and nobility. Leonardo proves that the artist stands 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 means for this is the image of the Mona Lisa, which combines divine and earthly beauty.
Version No. 8: Leonardo - creator of 3D
This combination was achieved using a special technique invented by Leonardo - sfumato (from Italian - “disappearing like smoke”). It was this painting technique, when paints are applied layer by layer, that allowed Leonardo to create aerial perspective in the picture. The artist applied countless layers of these, and each one was almost transparent. Thanks to this technique, light is reflected and scattered differently across the canvas, depending on the viewing angle and the angle of incidence of the light. That’s why the model’s facial expression is constantly changing.
The researchers come to a conclusion. Another technical breakthrough of a genius who foresaw and tried to implement many inventions that were implemented centuries later (aircraft, tank, diving suit, etc.). This is evidenced by the version of the portrait stored in the Prado Museum in Madrid, 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 point in the image, which will give the 3D effect.
Version No. 9: secret signs
Secret signs- a favorite topic of Mona Lisa researchers. Leonardo is not just an artist, he is an engineer, inventor, scientist, writer, and probably encrypted some universal secrets in his best painting. The most daring and incredible version was voiced in the book and then in the film “The Da Vinci Code”. Of course, fiction novel. However, researchers are constantly making equally fantastic assumptions based on certain symbols found in the painting.
Many speculations stem from the fact that there is another hidden image of the Mona Lisa. For example, the figure of an angel, or a feather in the hands of a model. There is also an interesting version by Valery Chudinov, who discovered in the Mona Lisa the words Yara Mara - the name of the Russian pagan goddess.
Version No. 10: cropped landscape
Many versions are also related to the landscape against which the Mona Lisa is depicted. Researcher Igor Ladov discovered a cyclical nature in it: it seems worth drawing several lines to connect the edges of the landscape. Just a couple of centimeters are missing for everything to come together. But in the version of the painting from the Prado Museum there are columns, which, apparently, were also in the original. Nobody knows who cropped the picture. If you return them, the image develops into a cyclical landscape, which symbolizes what human life(in a global sense) enchanted just like everything in nature...
It seems that there are as many versions of the solution to the mystery of the Mona Lisa as there are people trying to explore the masterpiece. There was a place for everything: from admiration unearthly beauty- until complete pathology is recognized. Everyone finds something of their own in Mona Lisa and, perhaps, this is where the multi-dimensionality and semantic multi-layeredness of the canvas is manifested, 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...
Everything has its mysteries, and art is no exception. One of unsolved mysteries- This is the painting “La Gioconda” (“Mona Lisa”) by Leonardo da Vinci.
There are numerous discussions around her regarding the beauty and smile of the character in the picture. All viewers and critics agree on only one thing - the picture makes an amazing and unusual impression. Explanations for the mysterious smile appear very often. There are those who believe that the flickering smile effect is due to the distinctive features of human vision. Others argue that the painting's smile is obvious when the observer looks at any detail of the girl's face other than her lips.
Be sure to visit the Louvre while in Paris and look at Leonardo da Vinci's masterpiece. However, try not to be alone with the painting, because many strange cases are associated with it. Some people felt melancholy, sad, or began to cry after looking at the painting for a long time. Although, it is almost impossible to be alone with this picture today; the hall is usually literally packed with tourists.
Leonardo da Vinci was called to Rome by Giuliano de' Medici to paint a portrait of Signora Pacifica Brandano. She was the widow of a Spanish nobleman, with a gentle and cheerful character, good education and was an adornment to society. A workshop was set up for the artist. The girl had to maintain a constant expression on her face, for this purpose during the sessions music was played, songs were sung and poems were read.
The portrait was painted for a long time, carefully drawing out the smallest detail. That's why the girl in the picture looks like she's alive. Some people had a feeling of fear that a monster or something else might appear in the picture. The famous smile captivates with its mystery, evoking extraordinary sensations, it calls the viewer. Despite this, the picture has been replicated in the world more than any other; it is everywhere, including wallpaper for smartphones (there are such, for example, on appdecor.org).
Many claim that Leonardo himself had a similar smile. This can be seen in the painting of his teacher, where Da Vinci served as the model. It is because of this that some have suggested that Mona Lisa is a self-portrait of the artist in female form. A computer comparison of the painting with a self-portrait did not refute this assumption. However, despite this, it is too early to say that this is a true version.
Pacifica's fate cannot be called easy. The marriage was short-lived due to the death of her husband, Giuliano Medici did not want to take his mistress as his wife, and his son was poisoned. Soon the Medici had to marry for convenience; he did not want to upset the bride with a portrait of his mistress, so Leonardo had to change the painting, which was already completed.
Pacifica had a tendency to attract men and seem to take their lives. There is an assumption that her nickname was “Gioconda”. This word is translated as “playing.” Signora Pacifica left her mark not only on her lover, but also on the artist, who became increasingly worse after painting the portrait. Da Vinci begins to feel strange. Apathy, which was not there before, and fatigue fall upon him. The hand shakes more and more and it becomes more difficult to work.
After finishing the portrait and leaving for France, Leonardo created a new palace for the king, but the work was no longer of the same high level as before. He lost energy and became apathetic. Then for weeks he does not get out of bed, and his right hand stops obeying. At the age of 67, the artist dies.
Initially, it was believed that the girl depicted in the painting was 25-year-old Lisa, the wife of the Florentine magnate Giocondo. Actually, that’s why the portrait in some albums and reference books had an ambiguous name - “La Gioconda.” Mona Lisa."
A. Venturi in 1925 admitted that the portrait depicts Constanza d’Avalos, the mistress of Giuliano Medici. The assumption was based on a poem by the poet Eneo Irpino, but there is no other evidence of the veracity of this version.
It was only in 1957 that C. Pedretti proposed the idea of Brandano's Pacifica. It is considered the most correct, thanks to the documents and the circumstances described above. There is an opinion that Pacifica was an energy vampire. These are people who have a smaller aura volume than ordinary people, as a result of which they can be absorbers vital energy their relatives, causing apathy, weakening of the body and serious health problems. That's why Pacifica's unusual portrait has such an impact on people who look at it for a long time.
We should not forget about the experiments of Leonardo, who wanted his paintings to evoke strong emotions. He dreamed of making the viewer horrified or, conversely, bewitching him. His knowledge of anatomy, “sfumato”, chiaroscuro, the mysterious smile of a woman in a portrait and drawing the smallest details- all this created a living creation.
Destruction of “Gioconda’s Smile” would be a crime, because in the world there are many paintings that affect people. We just need to take measures to ensure that these paintings influence people less. For example, limit the time spent near them, or warn visitors.
