Leonardo da Vinci's Mona Lisa was painted in 1505, but it remains the most popular work of 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, 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. Interestingly, 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 Mona Lisa 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.

Few images excite the contemplator's imagination as strongly as the woman depicted in the painting of the greatest Renaissance master Leonardo da Vinci "Mona Lisa" (or "La Gioconda"). In the restrained, soft and at the same time triumphant smile that illuminated the face of this lady sitting in a chair, all his talent was revealed. The painting, created by Leonardo, according to historians and art critics, five centuries ago and now the most popular exhibit at the Paris Louvre, is perhaps the most famous work of fine art in the world. There are a great many theories about who the master painted this painting from. And the identity of the woman depicted on the canvas is still a mystery to this day.

Nakhodkaexperts

For a long time it was believed that the Mona Lisa was a portrait of Lisa del Giocondo, the wife of a Florentine merchant. However, the results of scientific research conducted in recent years, during which the famous painting was subjected to careful analysis using the latest technology, cast doubt on this.

Thus, during an examination of the canvas carried out four years ago by Louvre specialists using the infrared reflectogram method, thanks to which art historians see the lower layers of paintings, it was discovered that initially the lady in the painting looked much more piquant than now. She wore a translucent robe that draped abundantly around her body and resembled a toga, one end of which was thrown over her shoulder. Some experts believe that the woman was expecting a child.

There are reasons for such an assumption: in Renaissance Florence, clothes made of gauze were worn exclusively by children and pregnant women. In addition, according to documents stored in the Florentine city archive, in December 1502, Lisa del Giocondo gave birth to a boy named Andrea. However, both during her pregnancy and during her birth, Leonardo da Vinci was not in Florence. Of course, Lisa could pose for him later, wearing the dress she wore while pregnant. But there is no evidence of this.

In any case, the artist painted over the original version of the portrait. And subsequent versions have undergone changes several times. But why? What kind of secret is hidden here? Or maybe there is no secret - just hidden images reflect da Vinci’s creative process, from sketches of the future work to its final form? There are no official comments from art historians on this matter yet.

Gioconda- not a woman?

And in Italy there are researchers who are inclined to believe that Mona Lisa is not a woman at all. That is, the portrait is of a woman, but the artist posed was a young man, and none other than his favorite student Gian Giacomo Caprotti da Oreno, who was called Salai - translated from Italian, “little devil.” Leonardo da Vinci had a long-term - more than a quarter of a century - and, presumably, intimate relationship with him. The feminine boy Salai, who came to Leonardo’s studio in 1490 while still a teenager, is reminiscent of characters in several other paintings by Leonardo da Vinci. In particular, he served as the model for "John the Baptist".

Context

Several years ago, using digital technology, a group of Italian scientists led by Silvano Vinceti discovered that the letter “S” was inscribed in the left eye of Mona Lisa, and the letter “L” in the right eye. According to researchers, these are the initials of the names Salai and Leonardo. Here it is worth remembering that during the Renaissance, Florence was a Mecca for enlightened homosexuals, who felt absolutely free in this city and did not hide their sexual orientation.

Another mystery for scientists

But even if Leonardo painted a portrait of Lisa del Giocondo, why didn’t he give this painting to her or her husband, a wealthy man who could pay well for it? Moreover, da Vinci valued her so much that he did not part with her almost until the end of his life. Only shortly before the death of the genius, his student Francesco Melzi, who inherited the Mona Lisa from Leonardo, sold the painting to the King of France. Well, then the canvas was transferred to the Louvre.

Leonardo da Vinci did everything to ensure that his creation would have a long life. To create this painting, he selected the best materials and worked on it for as long and carefully as on any other work of his. When writing it, the master used the sfumato technique, based on the principle of dispersion, the absence of clear boundaries between objects. It was thanks to her that Mona Lisa's smile acquired its amazing twinkle. Leonardo could spend hours looking at his brainchild, every now and then drawing on or correcting something. He even fainted from severe overexertion. Could a portrait of an ordinary woman have such a strong impact on a great master? This question is being asked by historians more and more often.

By the way, quite recently a drawing depicting a naked lady “Monna Vanna” was discovered in France. Scientists believe that this could be a sketch for the painting "Mona Lisa" by Leonardo da Vinci, made by his student Salai with the help of the master himself. Louvre employees confirm that it was painted during Leonardo’s life and is of high quality, and the similarity of the portraits indicates the similarity of the face and hands. Experts are now grappling with this intriguing new mystery.

See also:

• The bizarre landscapes of sandy mountains located in the Elbe Valley, near Dresden, were glorified by German artists back in the 18th century. Winding gorges, seemingly bottomless abysses and rocks resembling petrified monsters became motifs for both romantic painters and avant-garde artists.



Sources of inspiration: from life to canvas

It is interesting that the founder of the Dresden school of landscape in the second half of the 18th century is considered not to be a German, but a Swiss, Adrian Zingg. He was invited to the court of the Saxon Elector. We owe it to Tsing’s nostalgia that he called this painting, painted in 1786, “In Saxon Switzerland.” The name stuck.



Sources of inspiration: from life to canvas

One of the outstanding artists of the early romanticism era, Caspar David Friedrich, grew up on the German coast of the Baltic Sea. Even in his youth, he was fascinated by the landscapes of his native land, especially the famous Chalk cliffs of the largest German island.



Sources of inspiration: from life to canvas

“Chalk Cliffs on the Island of Rügen,” which he immortalized on canvas in 1818, is one of the most famous paintings by Caspar David Friedrich. Of course, here, as in other romantic films, they are idealized. “Nature, the world, the hiding place of the universe,” wrote Boris Pasternak.



Sources of inspiration: from life to canvas

Blue Country

Mountains, marshes and lakes are the landscape of the "blue country", the Bavarian region around the town of Murnau. In 1908, it was discovered by Wassily Kandinsky and his friend, also an artist, Gabriele Münter. The house in which they lived was called the “Russian house” by local residents. It was the cradle of the artistic association "Blue Rider" - one of the most famous at the beginning of the twentieth century.



Sources of inspiration: from life to canvas

The works of Wassily Kandinsky, filled with bold strokes and rich colors, became a monument to the Bavarian landscapes of Murnau. Kandinsky dedicated the painting “Bavarian Village and Field” (pictured) to “the happiest nook,” as he called Murnau.



Sources of inspiration: from life to canvas

Damn swamp

The village of Worpswede is located in Lower Saxony, on the so-called Devil's Marsh. This is, of course, not mountains, but a very picturesque place. Worpswede became famous thanks to the community of artists founded here in 1889, called the Worpswede Colony. Here, nostalgia for rural motifs and the peasant idyll brought together the Impressionists and Expressionists.



Sources of inspiration: from life to canvas

Examples of the works of the artists of the art colony can today be seen in the Barkenhoff house, which at one time served as the center of the artistic community. Among them are paintings by Fritz Mackensen, Otto Modersohn, Paula Modersohn-Becker, Hans am Ende. The picture shows one of Fritz Mackensen's paintings.



Sources of inspiration: from life to canvas

Garden idyll

The artist Max Liebermann, who tried to avoid the bustle of the city, often retired to his country house near Berlin. He especially loved the garden, laid out according to his own plans. The artist converted the top floor of his villa into a workshop, where he painted many landscapes, the motifs of which were the corners of his garden idyll.



Sources of inspiration: from life to canvas

Max Liebermann is a master of chiaroscuro, one of the outstanding representatives of German impressionism. More than 200 works were written on the second floor of his villa on the shores of Lake Wansee. This is a 1916 painting, "Garden Bench under a Blooming Chestnut Tree."

French researcher and consultant to the Center for the Study of Leonardo da Vinci in Los Angeles, Jean Frank, recently announced that he was able to repeat the unique technique of the great master, thanks to which Mona Lisa seems alive.

"From a technical point of view, the Mona Lisa has always been considered something inexplicable. Now I think I have the answer to this question," says Frank.

Reference: Sfumato technique is a painting technique invented by Leonardo da Vinci. The point is that objects in the paintings should not have clear boundaries. Everything should be like in life: blurred, penetrate one into another, breathe. Da Vinci practiced this technique by looking at damp stains on walls, ash, clouds or dirt. He specially fumigate the room where he worked with smoke in order to look for images in clubs.

According to Jean Frank, the main difficulty of this technique lies in the smallest strokes (about a quarter of a millimeter), which cannot be recognized either under a microscope or using X-rays. Thus, it took several hundred sessions to paint Da Vinci's painting. The image of Mona Lisa consists of approximately 30 layers of liquid, almost transparent oil paint. For such jewelry work, da Vinci apparently had to use a magnifying glass at the same time as a brush.
According to the researcher, he managed to achieve only the level of the master’s early works. However, his research has already received the honor of being located next to the paintings of the great Leonardo da Vinci. The Uffizi Museum in Florence placed next to the master’s masterpieces 6 tables by Franck, which describe step by step how da Vinci painted the eye of the Mona Lisa, and two paintings by Leonardo that he recreated.

It is known that the composition of the Mona Lisa is built on “golden triangles”. These triangles in turn are pieces of a regular star pentagon. But researchers do not see any secret meanings in this; they are rather inclined to explain the expressiveness of Mona Lisa by the technique of spatial perspective.

Da Vinci was one of the first to use this technique; he made the background of the picture unclear, slightly clouded, thereby increasing the emphasis on the outlines of the foreground.

Gioconda's clues

Unique techniques allowed da Vinci to create such a vivid portrait of a woman that people, looking at him, perceive her feelings differently. Is she sad or smiling? Scientists managed to solve this mystery. The Urbana-Champaign computer program, created by scientists from the Netherlands and the USA, made it possible to calculate that Mona Lisa's smile is 83% happy, 9% disgusted, 6% full of fear and 2% angry. The program analyzed the main facial features, the curve of the lips and wrinkles around the eyes, and then rated the face according to six main groups of emotions.

"Mona Lisa", aka "La Gioconda", full name - Portrait of Madame Lisa del Giocondo, is a painting by Leonardo da Vinci, located in the Louvre (Paris, France), one of the most famous works of painting in the world, which is considered to be a portrait of Lisa Gherardini, wife of the Florentine silk merchant Francesco del Giocondo, painted around 1503-1505.

History of the painting

Even the first Italian biographers of Leonardo da Vinci wrote about the place this painting occupied in the artist’s work. Leonardo did not shy away from working on the Mona Lisa - as was the case with many other orders, but, on the contrary, devoted himself to it with some kind of passion. All the time he had left from working on “The Battle of Anghiari” was devoted to her. He spent considerable time on it and, leaving Italy in adulthood, took it with him to France, among some other selected paintings. Da Vinci had a special affection for this portrait, and also thought a lot during the process of its creation; in the “Treatise on Painting” and in those notes on painting techniques that were not included in it, one can find many indications that undoubtedly relate to “La Gioconda” "

Model identification problem

Information about the identity of the woman in the painting remained uncertain for a long time and many versions were expressed:

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

Caterina Sforza

• Isabella of Aragon, Duchess of Milan

The work of a follower of Leonardo is a depiction of a saint. Perhaps her appearance depicts Isabella of Aragon, Duchess of Milan, one of the candidates for the role of Mona Lisa

• Cecilia Gallerani (model of another portrait of the artist - “Lady with an Ermine”)

Leonardo da Vinci's work, "Lady with an Ermine".

• Constanza d'Avalos, who had the nickname "The Cheerful One", that is, La Gioconda in Italian. The Italian art critic Venturi suggested in 1925 that “La Gioconda” is a portrait of the Duchess of Costanza d’Avalos, the widow of Federigo del Balzo, glorified in a small poem by Eneo Irpino, which also mentions her portrait painted by Leonardo. Costanza was the mistress of Giuliano de' Medici.

• Pacifica Brandano is another mistress of Giuliano Medici, the mother of Cardinal Ippolito Medici (According to Roberto Zapperi, the portrait of Pacifica was commissioned by Giuliano Medici for his illegitimate son, who was later legitimized by him, who longed to see his mother, who had already died by that time. Moreover, according to the art critic, the customer , as usual, left Leonardo complete freedom of action).

• Isabela Gualanda

• Just the perfect woman

• A young man dressed as a woman (for example, Salai, Leonardo's lover)

Salai in a drawing by Leonardo (Salai is a student of Leonardo da Vinci, with whom the artist had a long-term - more than 25 years - and possibly intimate relationship.)

• Self-portrait of Leonardo da Vinci himself

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

Leonardo da Vinci

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

However, the version about the correspondence of the generally accepted name of the picture to the personality of the model in 2005 is believed to have found final confirmation. Scientists from the University of Heidelberg studied the notes in the margins of the tome, the owner of which was a Florentine official, a personal acquaintance of the artist Agostino Vespucci. In notes in the margins of the book, he compares Leonardo with the famous ancient Greek painter Apelles and notes that “da Vinci is now working on three paintings, one of which is a portrait of Lisa Gherardini.”

A note in the margin proved the correct identification of the model of the Mona Lisa.

Thus, the Mona Lisa really turned out to be the wife of the Florentine merchant Francesco del Giocondo - Lisa Gherardini. The painting, as scientists prove in this case, was commissioned by Leonardo for the new home of the young family and to commemorate the birth of their second son, named Andrea.

Description of the picture

The rectangular painting depicts a woman in dark clothes, turning half-turned. She sits in a chair with her hands clasped together, one hand resting on its armrest and the other on top, turning in the chair almost to face the viewer. Parted, smoothly and flatly lying hair, visible through a transparent veil draped over it (according to some assumptions - an attribute of widowhood), falls on the shoulders in two thin, slightly wavy strands. A green dress in thin ruffles, with yellow pleated sleeves, cut out on a white low chest. The head is slightly turned.

Art critic Boris Vipper, describing the picture, points out that traces of Quattrocento fashion are noticeable in the face of Mona Lisa: her eyebrows and hair on the top of her forehead are shaved.

The lower edge of the painting cuts off the second half of her body, so the portrait is almost half-length. The chair in which the model sits stands on a balcony or loggia, the parapet line of which is visible behind her elbows. It is believed that earlier the picture could have been wider and accommodated two side columns of the loggia, of which at the moment there are two bases of the columns, fragments of which are visible along the edges of the parapet.

The copy of the Mona Lisa from the Wallace Collection (Baltimore) was made before the edges of the original were trimmed, and allows the missing columns to be seen.

The loggia overlooks a desolate wilderness with meandering streams and a lake surrounded by snow-capped mountains that extends to a high skyline behind the figure. “Mona Lisa is represented sitting in a chair against the backdrop of a landscape, and the very juxtaposition of her figure, very close to the viewer, with the landscape visible from afar, like a huge mountain, imparts extraordinary grandeur to the image. The same impression is promoted by the contrast of the heightened plastic tactility of the figure and its smooth, generalized silhouette with a vision-like landscape stretching into the foggy distance with bizarre rocks and water channels winding among them.”

Current state

The “Mona Lisa” became very dark, which is considered to be the result of its author’s inherent tendency to experiment with paints, because of which the “Last Supper” fresco practically died. The artist's contemporaries, however, managed to express their admiration not only for the composition, design and play of chiaroscuro - but also for the color of the work. It is assumed, for example, that the sleeves of her dress may have originally been red - as can be seen from the copy of the painting from the Prado.

An early copy of the Mona Lisa from the Prado shows how much a portrait image loses when placed against a dark, neutral background

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

Macro photography allows you to see a large number of craquelures (cracks) on the surface of the painting

Technique

As Dzhivelegov notes, by the time of the creation of the Mona Lisa, Leonardo’s mastery “had already entered a phase of such maturity, when all formal tasks of a compositional and other nature were posed and solved, when Leonardo began to feel that only the last, most difficult tasks of artistic technique deserved to do them. And when he found a model in the person of Mona Lisa that satisfied his needs, he tried to solve some of the highest and most difficult problems of painting technique that he had not yet solved. He wanted, with the help of techniques that he had already developed and tested before, especially with the help of his famous sfumato, which had previously given extraordinary effects, to do more than he had done before: to create a living face of a living person and so reproduce the features and expression of this face so that with them the inner world of man was fully revealed.”

Boris Vipper asks the question “by what means was this spirituality achieved, this undying spark of consciousness in the image of the Mona Lisa, then two main means should be named. One is Leonard’s wonderful sfumato. No wonder Leonardo liked to say that “modeling is the soul of painting.” It is sfumato that creates Gioconda’s moist gaze, her smile as light as the wind, and the incomparable caressing softness of the touch of her hands.” Sfumato is a subtle haze that envelops the face and figure, softening contours and shadows. For this purpose, Leonardo recommended placing, as he puts it, “a kind of fog” between the light source and the bodies.

Rothenberg writes that “Leonardo managed to introduce into his creation that degree of generalization that allows him to be considered as an image of the Renaissance man as a whole. This high degree of generalization is reflected in all elements of the pictorial language of the painting, in its individual motifs - in the way the light, transparent veil, covering the head and shoulders of Mona Lisa, unites the carefully drawn strands of hair and small folds of the dress into an overall smooth outline; it is palpable in the incomparable softness of the modeling of the face (from which, according to the fashion of that time, eyebrows were removed) and beautiful, sleek hands.”

Alpatov adds that “in the softly melting haze enveloping the face and figure, Leonardo managed to make one feel the limitless variability of human facial expressions. Although Gioconda's eyes look attentively and calmly at the viewer, thanks to the shading of her eye sockets, one might think that they are frowning slightly; her lips are compressed, but near their corners there are subtle shadows that make you believe that every minute they will open, smile, and speak. The very contrast between her gaze and the half-smile on her lips gives an idea of ​​the inconsistency of her experiences. ... Leonardo worked on it for several years, ensuring that not a single sharp stroke, not a single angular outline remained in the picture; and although the edges of objects in it are clearly perceptible, they all dissolve in the subtlest transitions from half-shadows to half-lights.”

Scenery

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

Whipper considers landscape to be the second medium that creates the spirituality of a painting: “The second medium is the relationship between figure and background. The fantastic, rocky landscape, as if seen through sea water, in the portrait of Mona Lisa has some other reality than her figure itself. The Mona Lisa has the reality of life, the landscape has the reality of a dream. Thanks to this contrast, Mona Lisa seems so incredibly close and tangible, and we perceive the landscape as the radiation of her own dreams.”

Renaissance art researcher Viktor Grashchenkov writes that Leonardo, including thanks to the landscape, managed to create not a portrait of a specific person, but a universal image: “In this mysterious picture, he created something more than a portrait image of the unknown Florentine Mona Lisa, the third wife of Francesco del Giocondo. The appearance and mental structure of a particular person are conveyed by him with unprecedented syntheticity. This impersonal psychologism corresponds to the cosmic abstraction of the landscape, almost completely devoid of any signs of human presence. In smoky chiaroscuro, not only all the outlines of the figure and landscape and all the color tones are softened. In the subtle transitions from light to shadow, almost imperceptible to the eye, in the vibration of Leonard’s “sfumato”, any definiteness of individuality and its psychological state softens to the limit, melts and is ready to disappear. ... "La Gioconda" is not a portrait. This is a visible symbol of the very life of man and nature, united into one whole and presented abstractly from its individual concrete form. But behind the barely noticeable movement, which, like light ripples, runs across the motionless surface of this harmonious world, one can discern all the richness of the possibilities of physical and spiritual existence.”

In 2012, a copy of the “Mona Lisa” from the Prado was cleared, and under the later recordings there was a landscape background - the feeling of the canvas immediately changes.

“Mona Lisa” is designed in golden brown and reddish tones in the foreground and emerald green tones in the background. “Transparent, like glass, the colors form an alloy, as if created not by the hand of a person, but by that internal force of matter, which gives birth to crystals of perfect shape from a solution.” Like many of Leonardo's works, this work has darkened over time, and its color relationships have changed somewhat, but even now the thoughtful comparisons in the tones of carnation and clothing and their general contrast with the bluish-green, “underwater” tone of the landscape are clearly perceived.

Theft

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

On August 21, 1911, the painting was stolen by an employee of the Louvre, Italian mirror master Vincenzo Perugia. The purpose of this abduction is not clear. Perhaps Perugia wanted to return La Gioconda to its historical homeland, believing that the French had “kidnapped” it and forgetting that Leonardo himself brought the painting to France. The searches undertaken by the police did not bring any results. The country's borders were closed, the museum administration was fired. The poet Guillaume Apollinaire was arrested on suspicion of committing a crime and later released. Pablo Picasso was also under suspicion. The painting was found only two years later in Italy - and the culprit was the thief himself, who responded to an advertisement in the newspaper and offered to sell La Gioconda to the director of the Uffizi Gallery. It is assumed that he intended to make copies and pass them off as the original. Perugia, on the one hand, was praised for Italian patriotism, on the other hand, he was given a short term in prison.

Vincenzo Perugia. Leaf from a criminal case.

Finally, on January 4, 1914, the painting (after exhibitions in Italian cities) returned to Paris. During this time, the Mona Lisa remained on the covers of newspapers and magazines around the world, as well as postcards, so it is not surprising that the Mona Lisa was copied more often than any other painting. The painting became an object of worship as a masterpiece of world classics.

Vandalism

In 1956, the lower part of the painting was damaged when a visitor threw acid on it. On December 30 of the same year, a young Bolivian, Hugo Ungaza Villegas, threw a stone at her and damaged the paint layer at her elbow (the loss was later recorded). After this, the Mona Lisa was protected with bulletproof glass, which protected it from further serious attacks. Still, in April 1974, a woman, upset by the museum’s policy towards the disabled, tried to spray red paint from a can while the painting was on display in Tokyo, and on April 2, 2009, a Russian woman, who had not received French citizenship, threw a clay cup at the glass. Both of these cases did not harm the picture.

Crowd in the Louvre near the painting, our days.

WITH The most priceless painting of all mankind is considered to be the work of Leonardo da Vinci "Mona Lisa". The work was created over several years, it is unique. The picture is so familiar to everyone, so deeply imprinted in people's memory, that it is difficult to believe that it once looked different.
The painting has been so often copied and has had such a strong (perhaps too strong) influence on art that it is very difficult to look at it with an unbiased eye, but a careful look at the color illustrations can lead to surprising discoveries even for those who are tired or think they are tired , from "Mona Lisa".
Four main questions can be identified:
The genius of the creator of the painting, Leonardo da Vinci (1452-1519)
Perfect performance technique, secrets that are still unrevealed
The aura of mystery of the woman (who posed)
The story of a painting that is as amazing as a detective story.

P We can talk about genius for a long time, it’s better to read the biography on this site. Objectively, without artistic speculation. Although his abilities were bright, the main thing was his enormous capacity for work and desire to understand the world around him. Leonardo studied topics that were then considered mandatory for an artist: mathematics, perspective, geometry and all the sciences of observation and study of the natural environment. He also began studying architecture and sculpture. After completing his studies, he began his career as a painter of portraits and religious paintings, receiving commissions from wealthy citizens or monasteries. Throughout his life he developed his technical and artistic talents. An unusual ability to deal with any topic and in any field of life, he should have been better known as a talented engineer than as a painter, but he surprised even all his contemporaries, as well as his greedy curiosity with which he constantly studied natural phenomena: " Where does the urine come from?" ... and this despite the fact that his technical experiments in painting were not always successful.

Perfect technique for executing the Mona Lisa

D A la Leonardo da Vinci, the search for perfection is a true, obsession. In his notebooks, in which the desire to achieve perfection shines, he wrote: “Tell me, will anyone tell me, has anyone finished anything to the end?”

The work was done on a thin poplar board, which is now extremely fragile. That is why the work is stored behind a glass display case with certain parameters of temperature and humidity. The Mona Lisa is an ideal portrait, thanks to the subtle effects of light on the face and the thoughtful landscape (color scheme, perspective of the landscape combined with the sky) in the background of the painting. And the most difficult facial modeling, which turned out surprisingly realistic.
Leonardo performed multi-layer painting with amazing patience and virtuosity: after preparing a wooden panel with several layers of coating (already at that time there were many ways to prime wood), he first painted the overall composition, the background, after which thin layers were applied (oil with turpentine, which gave him the opportunity to work at transparent color levels). This made it possible to endlessly reconstruct the face layer by layer, and besides, in certain places, skillfully enhance or reduce the effects of light, transparency and shades on the face. Leonardo called this method sfumato ("sfumato"), by another, more familiar name to us, glaze. Glazing is the name given to thin, transparent and translucent layers of oil and other paints applied to other well-dried similar paints to give the latter the desired intense and transparent tone. It is simply impossible to determine how much glaze was applied. This technique made it possible to achieve incredible imitation of flesh. The gradual transition of the human body into darkness also plays a role. Her background turned out beautiful too. All the details here are extremely accurate, and the mountain peaks and water: the bones and blood of the earth - evoke romantic ideas about the earth the day after the day of Creation.
During his later life, Leonardo was indeed known for his obvious talent for imitating nature, for the perfection of nature, and when his first biographer, the painter Vasari, described the Mona Lisa, he, above all, insisted on the realism of the work: "Her transparent eyes had a sparkle of life : surrounded by reddish and livid shades, they were limited by lashes, the execution of which required the greatest delicacy." The eyelashes are made, in places thicker or sparser, which suggests that they could not be more natural. The nose, with its detailed, thin, pink nostrils, certainly seems alive. [...] In the throat area, an attentive observer can catch the beating of the veins." As for the color scheme of the face, the crimson tones mentioned by Vasari are now completely invisible. The dark varnish changed the relationship of colors and created a vague underwater effect that is still aggravated by the weak light that weakly pours onto the painting from the ceiling windows of the Grand Gallery in the Louvre. Moreover, in our time, the "Mona Lisa" does not look the same (in composition) as when it came out of Leonardo's hands. Once on the left and to the right of the picture were painted low columns, now cut off. Looking at them, it became clear that the lady was sitting on the balcony, and not at all suspended in the air, as it sometimes seems. These changes, however, are more annoying than tragic: the masterpiece has been preserved, and we should be grateful that it is in such excellent condition.
Through “sfumato” Leonardo was able to achieve one of his primary artistic goals, which was mainly the individuality of his model: “A good painter exhibits essentially two things: individuality and the point of his opinion,” said Leonardo. To draw the soul first, and not the body, is in fact the main goal of his work and “sfumato” emphasizes the mystery of the work: “he who immerses things in light must immerse them in infinity.”
An important question here is to what extent the picture is realistic in relation to the model. At present, it is impossible to know whether this is a copy of an existing woman, or whether Leonardo da Vinci idealized the portrait, or whether he completely depicted the type of universal woman.
Mona Lisa was not, as many believe, the ideal of beauty for Leonardo: his ideal is more likely to be seen in the angel from the Madonna of the Rocks. Yet Leonardo must surely consider Mona Lisa a special person: she made such a strong impression on him that he refused other lucrative offers and worked on her portrait for three years. The portrait reflected a unique human character.

The mystery of the model's identity

WITH falsely identify the person depicted in the portrait. There are several controversial opinions about what is in the portrait:
Isabella of Este (there is a picture showing her)
Mistress Giuliano di Medici
Simply the perfect woman
A young man in women's clothing
Self-portrait

In 1517, Cardinal Louis of Aragon visited Leonardo at his estate. A description of this visit was made by the secretary of the cardinal Antonio de Beatis: “On October 10, 1517, Monsignor and others like him visited in one of the remote parts of Amboise Messer Leonardo da Vinci, a Florentine, a gray-bearded old man, more than seventy years old, the most excellent artist of our time. He showed His Excellency three pictures: one of a Florentine lady, painted from life at the request of Friar Lorenzo the Magnificent Giuliano de' Medici, another of St. John the Baptist in his youth, and the third of St. Anne with Mary and the Christ Child, all extremely beautiful. The master, due to the fact that his right hand was paralyzed at that time, could no longer expect new good works.” The first identity statement for the portrait of Mona Lisa, "a certain Florentine lady", according to most researchers, is "Mona Lisa". It is possible, however, that this was another portrait, from which no evidence or copies have survived. Giuliano de' Medici had nothing to do with the Mona Lisa. But it is likely that the secretary, overloaded with work and impressions, dropped the name of the Medici through negligence.

Later, Visari's second statement, he wrote that Mona Lisa (short for Madonna Lisa) was the third wife of a Florentine rich man named Francesco di Bartolomeo del Giocondo (where the second name of the painting "Giocondo" came from).
We know that she married del Giocondo in 1495, but we actually have no evidence that she could be a Medici mistress. When the Mona Lisa first began posing for Leonardo, she was about twenty-four years old - according to the standards of the time, approaching middle age. The portrait was a success - according to Vasari, it was “an exact copy of nature.” But Leonardo surpassed the possibilities of portraiture and made his model not just a woman, but a Woman with a capital W. The individual and the general merge here into one. The artist's view of Woman may not coincide with generally accepted opinions. Later, an anonymous statement sets the precedent that the Mona Lisa is a portrait of Francesco del Giocondo, i.e. a saying (idea) appeared that this was a portrait of a man (later many nude copies were created, where artists try to improvise with either the female or the male gender).
Finally, in later references, from about 1625, according to most researchers, the portrait began to be called Gioconda.
Even today, we do not have any conclusive evidence of the identity of the woman shown by Leonardo. Leonardo looks at his model with a disturbing insensibility: the Mona Lisa seems at the same time voluptuous and cold, beautiful - and even disgusting. The painting is small, but gives the impression of being monumental. This effect is achieved through the relationship between the figure and the background. Monumentality greatly enhances the mixed feeling of charm and coldness that the Mona Lisa evokes: for centuries, men have looked at it with admiration, confusion and something else close to horror. Leonardo completely freed himself from evidence of the identity and portrait resemblance of whom the portrait was painted. For us, the portrait remains a masterpiece by Leonardo.

Detective story of the Mona Lisa story

M for a long time she would have been known only to fine connoisseurs of fine art, if not for her exceptional story, which made her world famous.
The Mona Lisa gained worldwide fame not only because of the qualities of Leonardo's work, which impress art lovers and professionals, but would have long remained only for art connoisseurs if its history were not also exceptional.
Since the beginning of the sixteenth century, the painting, acquired by Francis I directly from the hands of Leonardo da Vinci, remained in the royal collection after Leonardo's death. From 1793 it was placed in the Central Museum of Arts in the Louvre. The Mona Lisa has always remained in the Louvre as one of the assets of the national collection. It was studied by historians, copied by painters, copied often, but on August 21, 1911, the painting was stolen by an Italian painter, Vincenzo Peruggia, in order to return it to its historical homeland.
After a police interrogation of all the suspects, the painter Cubist, the poet Guillaume Apollinaire (that day he called for burning the entire Louvre) and many others, the painting was found only two years later in Italy. It was examined and processed by restorers and hung in place with honors. During this time, the Mona Lisa did not leave the covers of newspapers and magazines around the world.
Since then, the painting has become an object of cult and worship as a masterpiece of world classics.
In the twentieth century, the painting almost never left the Louvre. In 1963 he visited the USA and 1974 in Japan. The trips only cemented her success and fame.