Do you ever wonder why so many people are fascinated
with the Mona Lisa? After all, it is just a painting and nothing more. In fact,
it is a painting of a rather plain and ordinary woman. Some say that it is the
painter himself, Leonard Da Vinci. If so, so what? Does it really matter? Not
to me it doesn’t. I saw the Mona Lisa up close, or as close to as possible
seeing how it is enclosed in bullet proof glass to protect it from the masses
that visit each day at the Louvre Museum in Paris, potential thieves etc. So,
again I ask, why are so many so fascinated with a painting of a rather plain
looking ordinary woman from hundreds of years ago? Is it the fascination that
no one knows who she was? Is it the fascination that it maybe Da Vinci himself?
I don’t get it. Do you?
Mona Lisa
behind bullet proof glass at Paris' Louvre Musuem: By Cayetano -
http://www.flickr.com/photos/cayetano/2170060100/, CC BY-SA 2.0, https://commons.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?curid=10860386
Today the Mona Lisa is considered the most
famous painting in the world but until the 20th century, Mona Lisa was one
among many and not the "most famous painting" as it is now termed. “The
Mona Lisa is widely considered the greatest portrait of all time. It appears in
countless advertisements, has inspired poetry, sculpture, forgeries, and theft.
But seriously, why? The painting is small, only 30 x 21 inches, the color is
somber, the background seems desolate and eerie, and the subject isn't anyone
historically significant.” (You tube video Mona Lisa-Why So Famous?)
According to the Encyclopedia Britannica,
Mona Lisa is an oil painting on a poplar wood panel by the Italian painter,
draftsman, sculptor, architect, and engineer Leonardo da Vinci, probably the
world’s most-famous painting. It was painted sometime between 1503 and 1506,
when Leonardo was living in Florence, and it now hangs in the Louvre, in Paris,
where it remains an object of pilgrimage in the 21st century. The poplar panel
shows evidence of warping and was stabilized in 1951 with the addition of an
oak frame and in 1970 with four vertical braces. Dovetails also were added, to
prevent the widening of a small crack visible near the center of the upper edge
of the painting. The sitter’s mysterious smile and her unproven identity have
made the painting a source of ongoing investigation and fascination.
At least a dozen excellent replicas of the
Mona Lisa exist, many of them by the master’s students. The proliferation of
Mona Lisas reflects, at least in part, the subject’s almost immediate
embodiment of the ideal woman—beautiful, enigmatic, receptive, and still just
out of reach.
Over the centuries this quintessential
woman has taken on a new life in popular culture. In the 20th century alone,
her iconic status was mocked in schoolboy fashion—the addition of a mustache
and goatee to a postcard reproduction—in Marcel Duchamp’s readymade, L.H.O.O.Q.
(1919). His irreverent defacing of this best known of iconic paintings
expressed the Dadaists’ scorn for the art of the past, which in their eyes was
part of the infamy of a civilization that had produced the horrors of the First
World War just ended. Andy Warhol too took aim at the painting’s status, in his
1963 serigraph Mona Lisa.
Mona Lisa has also been the subject in
music. References in the visual arts have been complemented by musical
examinations. La Giaconda’s personality and quirks were examined in a 1915
opera by Max von Schillings. Leonardo’s portrait is also the inspiration for
the classic song “Mona Lisa” by American lyricist Ray Evans and songwriter Jay
Harold Livingston. There even exists the Mona Lisa foundation which strictly
exists for the Mona Lisa, and celebrating Da Vinci’s earlier version of the
painting
Mona Lisa is a painting by Leonard Da
Vinci. He has painted many works, but the world remains fixated on this one.
True, it is a work of art. But is it really worth all the hype thrust upon it?
Don't get me wrong. I'm a big art lover. I love to draw, but I'm not good enough to be called an artist, and never claimed to be. I love going to art galleries and admiring other's works of arts. I just don’t think there is anything special about Mona Lisa, but that is just my opinion. What’s yours? What do you think
of the Mona Lisa? Do you feel that it deserves to be elevated to a position of
near idolatry, or is it just another painting for you? Let’s talk….
For more
information about “Mona Lisa”
Mona Lisa:
Why So Famous? Watch the YouTube Video:
The Mona
Lisa - by Leonardo Da Vinci:
UPDATE: 3/10/17:
Do you love art? I do. I'm now a proud sponsor of the Leonardo da Vinci page on artsy. The Leonard da Vinci page provides visitors with Da Vinci's bio, over 15 of his works, exclusive articles, and up-to-date Da Vinci exhibition listings.
Recognize the Last Supper painted by da Vinci?
The da Vinci page also includes related artists and categories, allowing viewers to discover art beyond our Da Vinci page. Click here to view it: https://www.artsy.net/artist/leonardo-da-vinci
"Art is never finished, only abandoned"
-Leonardo Da Vinci
That’s it for this time. Thank you all for visiting with us. Until next
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S.J. Francis
In Shattered Lies: "Good and bad,
it's All About Family." Available now from Black Opal Books and
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Copyright 2016 by S.J. Francis. Opinions expressed here are solely those of the
author, S. J. Francis and are meant to entertain, inform and enlighten, and
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