Is This the New Mona Lisa?

IS THIS THE NEW MONA LISA?

I am not a person who likes to drain a subject dry but in the past week or so, since I wrote a blog entry on NOVA/PBS’ documentary on an attempt to validate a sketch by Leonardo Da Vinci, the Renaissance painter has become recurring news as PBS has another Da Vinci program in the wings and a book by Toby Lester on Leonardo’s Vitruvian Man has just been released. On top of all that, a fascinating news story appeared highlighting the Western world’s most famous painting, Mona Lisa.
All of this starts with an upcoming show at the Louvre that is centered on Da Vinci’s painting of St. Anne. Mona Lisa is kept in the same room, barely visible in an air-controlled box, a wood panel painting on life supports. Also invited into the show is a painting from the Prado in Madrid, known as the Prado Gioconda. This painting has been at the Prado for a long time. Sometimes it was on display and at other times it was retired to the back room collection. For a long time, the painting had a black background, giving the painting a serious, subdued look and has long been assumed to be one of many later century copies of Mona Lisa, maybe painted by an admiring artist while it hung in the Louvre.
In preparation for the Louvre show, the staff at the Prado had their Gioconda cleaned and to their surprise and delight, another background was found under the black overcoat that was very similar to the one found on Da Vinci’s original. This was a cause for celebration and research. Further analysis found that the painting was not a later century painting but was created in the early 1500’s, possibly by a pupil of Da Vinci’s named Francesco Melzi. Further speculation suggests that Melzi and Da Vinci may have worked on their pieces at the same time.
Lisa was the wife of Francesco del Giocondo and it was the word play involved with their family name that gave her the name of La Gioconda. Lisa was a new mother at the age of 22 when she sat for Da Vinci. Leonardo Da Vinci had spent his adult life as a well-regarded painter although he rarely finished his work. As a teen, he worked in the studio of Verocchio for possibly ten years before setting out on his own, but once he did, he preferred to spend his time conceiving engineering schemes and designing weaponry for the famous warring families of northern Italy, especially the Sforzas.
When Ludovico Sforza lost out in a power struggle with Francis I of France, Leonardo, then in his middle age, started to drift and settled for a time in his old stomping grounds of Florence. It was there that he met up with Giocondo and painted his young wife.
The paintings have differences. Melzi’s background is more dramatic but many of the same features appear, including a winding path and river. Both are very similar yet their differences suggest that the Prado work is not just a copy. There are also obvious differences between the way that Lisa looks in the famous Da Vinci painting and in this Prado alternate. DaVinci painted his work on poplar, a wood that takes paint and primer well. But 500 years of existence has cracked the wood in many places, making the painting almost too delicate to clean, and leaving us with a painting that has yellowed from varnish and darkened with age. This new study shows a young woman in the same dress and veil, but now sensuous with color: rosy cheeks and lips and a gorgeous undergarment that begs the world to see the original in such a red. To everyone’s surprise, Lisa also has eyebrows. And in the background, we now see a landscape in blues, grays and ochres.
This gift from the Prado may look like a publicity stunt but what is revealed is so remarkable that this rises well about publicity for an upcoming show and instead reveals some major secrets of art history.

Other works of Fine Art you may enjoy:

The Connections Of Mary Cassatt

Bend In the River, an oil painting

Silence In the City, a cityscape painting

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