Portrait of Mona Lisa, known as "the Mona Lisa", by Leonardo da Vinci. Around 1503-1506. Louvre Museum, Paris • WIKIMEDIA COMMONS The Portrait of Lisa Gherardini, wife of Francesco del Giocondo hangs – under very high surveillance – in room 711 of the Denon wing of the Louvre Museum in Paris. Better known as The Mona Lisa or Monna Lisa , this oil on wood of 77 cm by 53 cm painted by Leonardo da Vinci is difficult to admire because of the screen formed by the crowd of tourists who rush, telephone in hand, to immortalize by a photo this icon of the art history. The face of Lisa del Giocondo? From its first draft, this unique painting arouses expectations and questions. We know that around 1503 Leonardo began the portrait of a Florentine lady, Lisa Gherardini, wife of the merchant Francesco del Giocondo, who commissioned the portrait either because the family moved into a new residence, or for the birth in 1502 of her second child. . In 2005, a note written by a Florentine, Agostino Vespucci, was discovered on the sidelines of a work by Cicero kept in the library of the University of Heidelberg, and dated October 1503. Vespucci suggests that Leonardo never completes his works, but above all it indicates that the artist was then in the process of painting "the face of Lisa del Giocondo", which seems to close the age-old debate as to the identity of the woman represented in the Louvre masterpiece. . Many have indeed wanted to see – and persist in seeing – multiple identities in this painting, including the self-portrait of the artist disguised as a woman. Those who had the opportunity to see the work in Leonardo's studio quickly ensured its fame. The copies that were immediately made attest to this, starting with the drawing executed by Raphaël around 1504, also kept in the Louvre; it seems to be the sketch of the portrait of Maddalena Doni, dated around 1506, and has affinities with The Mona Lisa in the pose and in the composition. A famous painting from the 16 th century But the best testimony to the influence of Monna Lisa on Renaissance painters can be found in The Lives of the Best Painters, Sculptors and Architects by Giorgio Vasari, a work published in 1550. Vasari, also a remarkable artist, evokes Leonardo da Vinci's painting in these terms:"Whoever wants to know to what extent art can imitate nature can easily realize this by examining this head, where Leonardo has represented the smallest details with extreme finesse. The eyes have that brilliance, that moisture that one observes during life; they are surrounded by reddish and leaden hues, which can only be rendered with the greatest finesse […]. The nose, with its beautiful pink and delicate openings, is truly that of a living person. The mouth, its slit, its extremities, which are linked by the vermilion of the lips to the incarnate face, it is no longer color, it is really flesh. In the hollow of the throat, an attentive observer would catch the beating of the artery; finally, it must be admitted that this figure is of an execution to make tremble and recoil the most skilful artist in the world who would like to imitate it. » Also read:Las Meninas, the coronation of painting at the Spanish court The notoriety that the painting acquired from the 16th th century is no accident. According to Vasari, the quality of the work is due to its naturalism and fidelity to its model. The expressiveness of the portrait owes a lot to the technique used by the master, the sfumato, which, by softening the line of the drawing, blurs the outlines and melts the shadows, producing a vaporous effect, the result of the distance between the viewer and the who is watched. To use the words of Leonardo da Vinci:"There is a lot of air between [things] and the eye which weakens the light, and, by a natural consequence, prevents one from distinguishing exactly the small parts only they have. The portrait painted by Leonardo seeks to transcend the physical appearance of the model to penetrate its psychology and show its qualities, even its virtues. And it is not impossible that the name of the painting, The Mona Lisa , or also to be linked to the Italian adjective giocondo , which means cheerful, joyful, happy. Francis I st buy the artwork Leonardo da Vinci never parted with his painting. When he arrives in France and enters the service of François I st , he brings the portrait, which the monarch buys in 1518. This is how the painting joined the royal collections, then, in 1797, the fund of the very recent Louvre museum. In 1800, however, Napoleon ordered the work to be installed in his apartments in the Tuileries Palace, where it remained until its return to the Louvre in 1804. One can however wonder if the portrait of the Louvre is indeed the work described by Vasari. In 1517, Cardinal Louis of Aragon and his secretary Antonio de Beatis had the opportunity to see the painting at Clos Lucé, Leonardo's French residence, near the Château d'Amboise. According to Beatis, the painter tells them that it is the portrait of "a certain Florentine lady" commissioned by Giuliano de' Medici, thus meaning that the woman painted would be one of the statesman's mistresses. Which suggests that Vespucci and Vasari are wrong, or that there is more than one painting. In fact, in a work devoted to the arts published in 1584, the theoretician Giovanni Paolo Lomazzo mentions two different works, identified respectively as The Mona Lisa and Monna Lisa . According to a received idea, the Mona Lisa would have entered the national collections as spoils of war during the Napoleonic wars in Italy. In reality, it was acquired by François I st , after the arrival of Leonardo da Vinci in France. Although this could be a mistake, such a statement does not fail to intrigue researchers. Furthermore, in his description, Vasari draws attention to the eyelashes and eyebrows of the woman in the portrait - "The eyebrows, their insertion into the flesh, their more or less pronounced thickness, their curvature following the pores of the skin could be rendered in a more natural way. –, details missing from the work exhibited at the Louvre. It is possible that the experiments in which Leonardo was wont to engage led to the disappearance of certain glazes from the painting. Or maybe it is a different work? An artistic puzzle The Monna Lisa of the Prado Museum in Madrid is an important part of the puzzle. On the one hand, it is the oldest known copy of the painting – made at the same time as the original by a pupil of the master –, but it also presents real technical similarities with the painting of the Florentine, to the extent that it was estimated, until the second half of the 19 th century, that it was by the hand of the master. The unfinished landscape and the presence of eyelashes and eyebrows suggest that it may be the painting described by Vasari, the latter having hardly been able to see the work now exhibited in the Louvre, which Leonardo took to France. in 1516, when Vasari was only 5 years old. Did Leonardo therefore deliver to Giocondo a work completed by a pupil, or did he not complete the commission? Were they portraits of two separate women? And did the portrait seen by the Cardinal of Aragon in France represent one of the mistresses of Giuliano de Medici? As if that were not enough, some believe they see in the work described by Vasari in 1550 the Mona Lisa of Isleworth , a Monna Lisa earlier, a little larger than that of the Louvre and painted on canvas; it is currently owned by a private consortium called the Mona Lisa Foundation, headquartered in Zurich. It would therefore be The Mona Lisa "authentic", and the one kept in the Louvre would be a later work. This woman posing in front of an unfinished landscape is younger than that of the two paintings in Paris and Madrid, and would be Lisa del Giocondo, while several identities are put forward for the others, including Leonardo's own mother. From oblivion to glory Be that as it may, the fame of the work declined during the 17 th and XVIII th centuries, and Monna Lisa is probably not the most famous painting in the Louvre in the 19 th century. It does not hang in a particular place as it does today, but alongside other European works. It is possible that the sfumato technique used by Leonardo did not allow mechanical reproduction methods to restore the painting in all its glory. A circle of artists and intellectuals knew the work, however, and many authors paid homage to it in compositions, such as La Femme à la perle by Corot (1868). A fertile ground on which the infatuation of the romantic authors of the middle of the century for Monna would hatch Lisa , which will contribute to forging the image of the impassive femme fatale, bewitchingly seductive, “a sphinx of beauty who smiles so mysteriously”, according to Théophile Gautier. So much so that when the work was stolen from the Louvre in 1911, the investigators first thought that the thief was a madman madly in love with the woman represented in the painting. It is this flight that revives the fame of The Mona Lisa , which triumphantly returned to the Louvre in 1914. Monna Lisa then becomes a real popular icon that is reproduced endlessly, and whose reputation endures, including among artists. Because who has not revisited The Mona Lisa ? Not only did the classical masters imitate the painting and pay homage to it, but modern artists – Léger, Duchamp, Warhol, Dalí, Botero, Banksy… – also wanted to measure themselves against this icon of Western culture. Find out more In the eyes of the Mona Lisa, A. Le Ninèze, Ateliers Henry Dougier, 2019.Leonardo da Vinci. A biography, S. Bramly, JC Lattes, 2019. Timeline 1503-1516 Leonardo da Vinci begins the portrait of Lisa del Giocondo. He won in Milan, Rome, then in France, when he entered the service of François I st .1519-1797 On Death by Leonardo, Monna Lisa enters the royal collections. The painting hung in Fontainebleau and Versailles, before joining the Louvre Museum.1800-1804 Napoleon was fascinated by the portrait and asked that it be taken to his residence in the Tuileries Palace in 1800. Four years later, the painting returned to the Louvre.1911-1914 A thief steals the painting, which disappears for two years, until it is found in Italy. The Mona Lisa returns to the Louvre after being exhibited in Florence, Rome and Milan. What if it wasn't Lisa Gherardini? Over the centuries, several authors have put forward other identities concerning the woman painted by Leonardo da Vinci. Some have even seen the artist's mother or a man dressed as a woman - even the artist himself - behind the most famous smile in the history of painting. If we are to believe their hypotheses, supported by Sigmund Freud's analysis of Leonardo and his work, the artist would have sublimated his sexuality by means of art, which would explain why he would have kept the painting almost to his death. In accordance with the account of Antonio de Beatis, who asserted that it was the portrait of a Florentine lady commissioned by Giuliano de' Medici, the names of several mistresses of this aristocrat have been cited, including Costanza d'Avalos, Isabella d 'Este, Catherine Sforza or Isabella of Aragon. However, none of them were Florentine, and their social status prevented anonymity. The master at work In his Lives of the Most Famous Renaissance Artists, Vasari is full of praise for The Mona Lisa . He details in particular how Leonardo obtained the mythical smile of his model:“He also agreed to do, for Francesco del Giocondo, the portrait of his wife Mona Lisa […]. As Madonna Lisa was very beautiful, while he painted her, he always had singers, jesters and musicians near her, in order to keep her in a sweet gaiety, and to avoid this aspect of sagging and almost inevitable melancholy in portraits. In this one there is a smile so attractive that it is more divine than human to behold, and has always been held to be a wonder not inferior to the model. » A twin at the Prado Museum The Monna Lisa of the Prado is mentioned in the royal inventories from the 17 th century and has been part of the museum's holdings since its inauguration in 1819. Until 2012, it was thought to be one of the versions of Leonardo's painting. However, that year, the conclusions of the analyzes carried out during the restoration of the work, which lasted two years, were revealed. We discover that the black background that darkened the panel is a post-1750 addition and that it covers a landscape identical to the original, although unfinished. The silhouettes of the two women are of the same dimensions, and the oils have identical retouching. These elements lead to the conclusion that the Monna Lisa Madrid is the oldest known replica of the painting, probably made by a prestigious disciple of Leonardo – Francesco Melzi or Salaì – at the same time as the original and using the same technique as that of the master.
