Mona Lisa

 

                               Mona Lisa

      Five centuries after Leonardo da Vinci painted the Mona Lisa (1503–19), the portrait hangs behind bulletproof glass within the Louvre Museum and draws thousands of jostling spectators each day. It is the most famous painting in the world, and yet, when viewers manage to see the artwork up close, they are likely to be baffled by the small subdued portrait of an ordinary woman. She’s dressed modestly in a translucent veil, dark robes, and no jewelry. Much has been said about her smile and gaze, but viewers still might wonder what all the fuss is about. Along with the mysteries of the sitter’s identity and her enigmatic look, the reason for the work’s popularity is one of its many conundrums. Although many theories have attempted to pinpoint one reason for the art piece’s celebrity, the most compelling arguments insist that there is no one explanation. The Mona Lisa’s fame is the result of many chance circumstances combined with the painting’s inherent appeal. There is no doubt that the Mona Lisa is a very good painting. It was highly regarded even as Leonardo worked on it .

           A stint in Napoleon’s bedroom, the Mona Lisa was installed in the Louvre Museum at the turn of the 19th century. As patronage of the Louvre grew, so too did recognition of the painting . Mona Lisa, also called Portrait of Lisa Gherardini, wife of Francesco del Giocondo, Italian La Gioconda, or French La Joconde, oil painting on a poplar wood panel by Leonardo da Vinci, probably the world’s most famous painting. It was painted sometime between 1503 and 1519, when Leonardo was living in Florence, and it now hangs in the Louvre Museum, Paris, where it remained an object of pilgrimage in the 21st century .

                                          

             The painting presents a woman in half-body portrait, which has as a backdrop a distant landscape . Mona Lisa, also known as La Gioconda, is the wife of Francesco del Giocondo. This painting is painted as oil on wood. The original painting size is 77 x 53 cm (30 x 20 7/8 in) .

    Although da Vinci began work on his masterpiece while living in his native Italy, he did not finish it until he moved to France at King Francois I's request. The French king displayed the painting in his Fontainebleau palace where it remained for a century. Louis XIV removed it to the grand Palace of Versailles. At the outset of the 19th century, Napoleon Bonaparte kept the painting in his boudoir .

                                 

    Some historians believe Mona Lisa is a Self-Portrait of Leonardo da Vinci . Leonardo da Vinci died in 1519, and he is buried at a French castle . 

Other revelations include:

·        Lace on Mona Lisa's dress

·        The transparency of the veil shows da Vinci first painted a landscape and then used transparency techniques to paint the veil atop it.

·        A change in the position of the left index and middle finger.

·        The elbow was repaired from damage due to a rock thrown at the painting in 1956.

·        The blanket covering Mona Lisa's knees also covers her stomach.

·        The left finger was not completely finished.

·        A blotch mark on the corner of the eye and chin are varnish accidents, countering claims that Mona Lisa was sick.

·        And the Mona Lisa was painted on uncut poplar board, contrary to speculations .                  

            Leonardo da Vinci's inexhaustible portrait of Lisa del Giocondo, the 24-year-old mother of five and wife of a wealthy Florentine silk merchant who sat for the High Renaissance master in 1503, is doubtless the most famous work of art in the world .  Da Vinci never fully finished and is thought to have continued to tinker with obsessively until his death in 1519 – as if the painting's endless emergence were the work itself. A preoccupation principally with Mona Lisa's inscrutable smile is almost as old as the painting, and dates back at least to the reaction of the legendary Renaissance writer and historian Giorgio Vasari, who was born a few years after Da Vinci began work on the likeness. "The mouth with its opening and with its ends united by the red of the lips to the flesh-tints of the face," Vasari observed in his celebrated Lives of the Most Excellent Painters, Sculptors, and Architects, "seemed, in truth, to be not colours but flesh. In the pit of the throat, if one gazed upon it intently, could be seen the beating of the pulse." He concluded: "In this work of Leonardo, there was a smile so pleasing, that it was a thing more divine than human to behold, and it was held to be something marvellous, in that it was not other than alive.

                                      

            Who was Mona Lisa? The subject of the painting is believed to be Lisa Gherardini. She was the wife of a wealthy silk merchant from Florence named Francesco del Giocondo. Historians believe Francesco commissioned the painting for their new home to celebrate the birth of their second son, Andrea. The English title “Mona Lisa" comes from the subject's name and the Italian word “mona" (a contraction of the phrase ma donna) that means “my lady." The Italian (La Gioconda) and French (La Joconde) names of the painting come from the Italian for “jocund," which means happy or jovial. It's also a pun on the last name of Lisa's husband, Francesco del Giocondo .

 

                                    

     The glass protecting the Mona Lisa was replaced with a bulletproof case after several attacks in 1956, one of which damaged an area near the subject’s left elbow. The Mona Lisa thus escaped harm from acts of vandalism in 1974 during the work’s visit to Tokyo and in 2009 when a museumgoer threw a ceramic mug at it .

                       

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Best wishes from

Suvendu Singha &  Mamata Singha . ( India , Odisha )