Mona Lisa

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Mona Lisa (La Gioconda) (Leonardo da Vinci)
Mona Lisa
(La Gioconda)
Leonardo da Vinci , 1503-1506
Oil on poplar wood
77 × 53 cm
Musée du Louvre , Paris

Template: Infobox painting / maintenance / museum

Mona Lisa is a world-famous oil painting by Leonardo da Vinci from the high phase of the Italian Renaissance at the beginning of the 16th century. The  picture, known in Italian as La Gioconda ('the cheerful') - from which its French name La Joconde is derived - was probably named after the Florentine Lisa del Giocondo . The title Mona Lisa, which is common in German-speaking countries, is based on a spelling mistake, because Mona is derived from the Italian short form Monna (for Madonna'Frau'), and is therefore not a first name, but the title with which Lisa was addressed as the wife (madonna) of Francesco del Giocondo .

The original painting has been exhibited in the central Parisian art museum Musée du Louvre since the end of the 18th century and is also one of its most famous exhibits due to the fact that it was stolen from 1911 to 1913. It is painted on thin poplar wood on an area of ​​77 cm × 53 cm (approx. 0.4 m²) and was probably made between 1503 and 1506. Other research suggests that it was made between 1502 and 1503.

description

Crowds in front of the Mona Lisa in the Louvre in Paris

“The young woman [see comment] in the picture is sitting in a chair on a balcony in front of a strange landscape. The armrest of the chair, like your torso, is positioned parallel to the plane of the picture. The face is turned towards the viewer, the eyes directed to the left seem to be looking at him [very unusual for the presentation at the time]. She has full cheeks, a broad forehead and no (!) Eyebrows. The left corner of the closed mouth suggests a smile. The left hand grasps the left armrest and the slender fingers of the right rest gracefully on the left. There is a fine, transparent veil on her hair, her dress falls in simple folds, she has put her coat over her left shoulder. "

- Donald Sassoon : Da Vinci and the Secret of the Mona Lisa, 2006

Identification of the model

Some researchers assume that Leonardo painted an ideal person rather than a real person, but the majority hold other theories:

Lisa del Giocondo theory

The traditional identification of the unsigned and undated portrait as that of Lisa del Giocondo goes back to Giorgio Vasari , the first biographer of modern art history from the 16th century. He noted that after his return to Florence , between 1500 and 1506, Leonardo painted a portrait of Lisa del Giocondo, the third wife of the Florentine merchant and silk merchant Francesco di Bartolomeo di Zanobi del Giocondo . He also claims that four years later Leonardo still did not complete the portrait and did not hand over the still unfinished picture to his client, Francesco del Giocondo, but kept it for himself. Lisa del Giocondo was born in 1479 as the daughter of Antonio Maria di Noldo Gherardini and married Francesco on March 5, 1495. According to this theory, the painting was commissioned by Francesco del Giocondo in the spring of 1503 on the occasion of the purchase of a new house and the uncomplicated birth of a child been given.

Side note in the Heidelberg incunabulum , which caused a stir in 2008

The reference to Lisa del Giocondo is supported by a discovery made in 2008: While cataloging an early print of the Heidelberg University Library (call number D 7620 qt. INC), Armin Schlechter found the handwritten entry of the Florentine clerk Agostino Vespucci from October 1503, who reports, among other things, that Leonardo made a portrait of Lisa del Giocondo.

However, even after the discovery of this entry, some historians questioned the identification of the Mona Lisa as Lisa del Giocondo and looked for other clues. This skepticism can be explained by the fact that Agostino Vespucci's note in the margin does not prove that the painting known as “Mona Lisa” is really being referred to; it could refer to other paintings, even those unknown to science or ascribed to another painter.

According to Pascal Cotte, who subjected the painting to a technical analysis, the portrait does not show Lisa del Giocondo at all, because Lisa, originally begun in 1503, was not completed and later painted over by Leonardo to depict another Florentine woman commissioned by Giuliano de 'Medici which can be seen in the picture in the Louvre.

Brandani theory

The second main thesis pursued today relates to Giuliano di Lorenzo de 'Medici and his illegitimate son Ippolito de' Medici with his lover Pacifica Brandani . Giuliano is said to have ordered the picture from Leonardo as a comforting mother substitute for his young son Ippolito after his mother Brandani died in childbed. This is also indicated by a contemporary name "La Gioconda", which had already been used by a Leonardo's pupil: it means "The Consoling One" - probably because the painting was supposed to comfort little Ippolito de Medici over the loss of his mother.

Salaí theory

A less common identification is based on Leonardo's alleged homosexual orientation. As early as 1476 he was accused of having offended the 17-year-old Jacopo Saltarelli, but this was not clearly clarified. Leonardo is said to have found such a liking for ten-year-old male nude model Gian Giacomo de Caprotti alias Andrea Salaino Florentine (1480-1524) in 1490 that he adopted him and lived with him for a total of twenty years (until his death in 1519). Because of Caprotti's tendency to lie and steal, Leonardo changed his nickname from “Salaino” to “il Salaí ” (= the devil's brood) or “mon Salai” in French. Salaí sometimes behaved like a junior boss in Leonardo's academy, and this - in combination with the well-known behavioral problems - certainly aroused envy and aggression among the employees. Even if Giorgio Vasari with his name “Mona Lisa” had chosen a change of letters for “mon Salai” in order to indirectly identify the person depicted in the picture with Caprotti, it should be noted that this would only reflect Vasari's view, the Leonardo had never met personally. Further speculations in this direction were rejected by the Louvre in February 2011.

Isabella of Aragon Theory

The theory that Isabella of Aragon (1470–1524), daughter of Alfonso II of Naples , hides behind the portrait was popularized by the British writer Robert Payne .

Caterina Sforza theory

The historian Magdalena Soest identifies the painting of the Mona Lisa as a portrait of Caterina Sforza (1462 / 63–1509), who was born the illegitimate daughter of Duke Galeazzo Maria Sforza of Milan and who was later regent of Imola and Forlì . Soest's thesis was presented for the first time in the international media in spring 2002. According to Magdalena Soest, Caterina Sforza fulfills all the (art) historical conditions to be placed on the Mona Lisa model.

Isabella d'Este theory

Profile drawing of Isabella d'Este by Leonardo da Vinci

Leonardo da Vinci visited Isabella d'Este in Mantua in 1499/1500 and made portrait drawings. A profile drawing is preserved in the Louvre . Several letters have survived from the years 1500 to 1504 in which d'Este followed da Vinci - directly and through agents - with requests for an ( oil ) portrait. The drawing obtained shows similarities in the person, but it is a profile drawing; However, subsequent rotation without a model session is quite conceivable and would correspond to the “paralyzed half of the face” (hence also “Mona Lisa syndrome”; medical peripheral facial paralysis ). The landscape could also be interpreted more as Lake Garda (Mantua on the Mincio below Lake Garda ) than as Florence . The background landscape, the large image format and the armrest (“ruler's armchair”) also speak against a bourgeois portrait.

story

From Franz I to Napoleon

Shortly before his death, Leonardo sold the painting to King Francis I of France , who kept it in Amboise Castle. In the following time the painting came to Fontainebleau , Paris and finally to Versailles in the collection of Louis XIV.

After the French Revolution, the picture was given a new home in the Louvre. Napoleon took it from there and hung it in his bedroom. After Napoleon's banishment, the Mona Lisa returned to the Louvre.

theft

The empty space on the wall in the Louvre
Camille Corot's wife with a pearl temporarily took the place of the Mona Lisa

On August 21, 1911, the painting was stolen by the 31-year-old Italian craftsman Vincenzo Peruggia , who was working at the Louvre at the time. He had himself locked up in the museum overnight, hidden in a closet, taken out of the frame and smuggled out of the museum the next day, presumably wrapped in his smock. A left thumbprint was secured on the protective glass case of the picture, but it was simply forgotten to compare this evidence with the anthropometric map of the perpetrator and casual criminal available to the police.

At first, the poet Guillaume Apollinaire and the painter Pablo Picasso were suspected of having stolen the Mona Lisa. On August 30, 1911, Géry Pieret, who had temporarily lived with Apollinaire, revealed himself to a Paris newspaper as the thief of sculptures that he had stolen from the museum's magazine and sold to "a painter", and returned one of them to the newspaper . A few days later, Picasso also returned two more of these sculptures, which he had bought from Pieret through Apollinaire, to the newspaper after they had been anonymized. When she reported about it on September 6, 1911, the police, who had since established Pieret's connection to Apollinaire, arrested the poet. During the interrogation, he also involved Picasso in the matter to relieve himself. He was then also interrogated on September 9, 1911, although not arrested. Although Pieret had no knowledge of the theft of the Mona Lisa, he also announced that another thief would soon also bring the Mona Lisa back. In the end, however, the court could prove neither Apollinaire nor Picasso complicity in the theft of the sculptures or even the Mona Lisa and the artists were acquitted.

Further investigations by the police failed and the theft remained unsolved for more than two years. It was a huge scandal for the Louvre. The government fired the museum director and for three weeks the story ruled the front pages of the newspapers. Many citizens went to the Louvre to look at the empty space on the wall, while hawkers sold postcards and reproductions of the Mona Lisa in front of the Louvre.

To fill the empty space , Raphael's painting Baldassare Castiglione , a work heavily influenced by the Mona Lisa, was hung in its place. In March 1912, the Louvre acquired Camille Corot's Wife with a Pearl , the most famous modern homage to Leonardo's Mona Lisa. In 1913, the Mona Lisa was no longer listed in the Louvre catalog.

So far, Peruggia had hidden the Mona Lisa a few meters from the Louvre in his apartment in a hole in the wall, but ultimately he wanted to bring her "home" to Italy. On December 12, 1913, he therefore tried to sell the picture to the art dealer Alfredo Geri in Florence . Geri received a letter signed “Leonardo” in which the scribe claimed to want to “return” the painting to Italy and asked for 500,000 lire to cover his “expenses”. Geri informed Giovanni Poggi , the director of the Uffizi Gallery , and expressed his interest. Peruggia came to Florence and showed the picture in his hotel room. Geri and Poggi examined it and found the correct inventory number of the Louvre on the back. Later they compared the cracks with the help of a photograph of the original and were now sure that they were looking at the original. They persuaded Peruggia to wait for the money at his hotel and called the police. The public reaction was violent. Italian nationalists demanded that “their” Mona Lisa should stay “at home”. The Italian government assured that it would return the Mona Lisa to the Louvre. But first the painting went “on tour” and was exhibited in Florence, Rome and Milan. It traveled in a specially made, padded box and with an honor guard. Eventually the Mona Lisa returned to Paris with a grand state ceremony.

The trial of Peruggia was a disappointment for the sensation-hungry public, because the perpetrator turned out to be just an occasional criminal, not a specialized art thief. Peruggia was sentenced to just seven months in prison.

The public excitement had given the Mona Lisa a high recognition value . If the picture was known before it was stolen, it became really famous after its disappearance.

Second World War

After France was captured by the German Wehrmacht in June 1940, the curators of the Louvre feared that the art historian Hermann Voss commissioned by Hitler, with the support of Hermann Göring , might confiscate selected works of art for the planned museum near Linz . Even before the occupation of Paris, the most valuable works of art were removed from the Louvre. Like numerous other works in the Louvre, the Mona Lisa was first brought to Chambord Castle in 1938 , then, during the Seat War, in a sealed delivery van to a castle near Souvigny near Le Mans and on June 5, 1940 further south to the Loc-Dieu Abbey near Villefranche -de-Rouergue in the Midi . Although the German occupiers knew the whereabouts, the painting was not confiscated. After Paris was liberated in August 1944, the Mona Lisa was returned to the Louvre. Before that, however, it was shown to selected guests, such as the Chinese delegates at the Paris Peace Conference. It was not until October 1947 that the Mona Lisa was able to take its place in the Louvre again, an event that was celebrated in the media.

attacks

The painting was the subject of vandalism twice in 1956 . In the first case, a stranger poured acid on the portrait. The lower half of the picture was badly damaged.

On December 30, 1956, after hours of staring at the portrait, a homeless Bolivian tourist named Ugo Villegas threw a stone at the portrait, smashing the glass plate and the layer of paint on the left elbow down to the ground. The spot was touched up with watercolors by the restorer Jean Gabriel Goulinat. Since then, the picture has been exhibited behind armored glass .

"Tours"

In 1961, US President John F. Kennedy and his wife Jacqueline visited Charles de Gaulle to improve US-French relations. Jacqueline Kennedy's fluent French and her knowledge of French culture won over de Gaulle so much that he agreed to the proposal to exhibit the Mona Lisa in the United States. The curators of the Louvre were appalled, but the French government could not be talked out of this symbolic gesture. A motorcycle escort accompanied the picture to Le Havre . On board the luxury liner France , the painting was brought to a specially prepared first-class cabin and stowed in an unsinkable box.

On January 8, 1963, the painting was received at a party at Washington's National Gallery of Art . In addition to Washington, it was also exhibited in the New York Metropolitan Museum of Art . An incident occurred that only became known through the publication of the memoirs of the museum director Thomas Hoving : the sprinkler system was accidentally triggered in the museum's painting store and water streamed over the picture for a few hours. The New Yorker magazine calculated that each of the 1.6 million visitors could view the portrait for an average of four seconds and had to wait hours for it.

Ten years later, in 1973, the picture went to Japan, again against the resistance of the curators. During the first week in Tokyo, 18,000 people came daily to see the famous work of art with their own eyes. A key difference to the US tour was that the Mona Lisa was used extensively in advertising in Japan. This use in advertising continued even after their return. Painters also used the famous European image for their own purposes. There were even artists whose oeuvre consisted of nothing more than variations on the theme of the Mona Lisa.

At the request of the French government, the Mona Lisa went from Tokyo to Moscow in order to promote the relaxation of relations with the Soviet Union .

When the Mona Lisa was back in France, the painting was provided with bulletproof armored glass . In addition, signs were set up to show visitors the shortest route through the Louvre to the Mona Lisa.

Mona Lisa del Prado

The Mona Lisa from the Prado , presumably by F. Melzi

At the beginning of 2012, restorers in the Prado in Madrid discovered an exact copy of the Mona Lisa after they had freed an image from overpainting . It has been recorded in the royal collections since 1666. The cleaned picture shows details that are hardly recognizable in the Mona Lisa due to the high risk of cleaning, e.g. B. eyebrows, sidelocks as hairstyle, lace border at the neckline etc. It is assumed that it is a painting by a Leonardo student -  Francesco Melzi or Andrea Salai  - who copied his master by painting parallel to him and at the same time the made the same corrections. From February 21 to March 13, 2012, La Gioconda del Prado was presented to the public in Madrid, after which the painting was on view for some time in the Louvre alongside the original.

The Isleworth Mona Lisa

The Isleworth Mona Lisa

On September 27, 2012, the Isleworth Mona Lisa was presented at the Geneva Hotel Beau-Rivage . The portrait unmistakably shows the same woman as the painting from the Louvre, albeit younger looking, and is said to be the first version of the famous painting from Leonardo's hand. The Zurich-based Mona Lisa Foundation, owner of the painting, has brought in a number of well-known art experts, including Alessandro Vezzosi , director of the Museo Ideale Leonardo da Vinci in Vinci, and Carlo Pedretti of the Armand Hammer Center for Leonardo Studies at the University of California. You are to present historical and scientific evidence for this thesis in Geneva.

The Isleworth Mona Lisa has long been known in art circles, but was considered one of the countless copies. The painting takes its name after the London district of Isleworth , where the artist and art dealer Hugh Blaker (1873-1936) lived, who saw it in the collection of Earl Brownlow of Somerset shortly before the First World War and bought it. After Blaker's death, the Isleworth Mona Lisa came to the American collector Henry F. Pulitzer in the early 1960s. He suspected for the first time that it could be a work by Leonardo himself, and cited Leonardo's biographer Giorgio Vasari as evidence , who wrote that Leonardo had begun the Mona Lisa in 1503, but then left it unfinished. It came into the possession of the Swiss Foundation via the estate of Pulitzer's girlfriend.

The Isleworth Mona Lisa is painted on linen, while the Louvre picture - like almost all of Leonardo's paintings - was painted on wood. In the run-up to the event, there were already considerable doubts about the authenticity of the picture. "There is no basis for claiming that this picture is an original by da Vinci," said Martin Kemp , professor emeritus for art history at Oxford University, the dpa news agency . Many details such as the hair, the structure of her hands, the translucent fabric of her dress, the atmosphere of the landscape - everything is completely different, according to Kemp. In the spring of 2013, researchers at ETH Zurich dated the canvas used with a 95 percent probability to the period between 1410 and 1455. Scientific studies of the white color pigments showed that the painting cannot be a forgery from its discovery year 1913. John F. Asmus, a physicist at San Diego State University , supports Leonardo's authorship: “I've spent months of my life looking closely at both Mona Lisa images. And the many similarities cannot be a coincidence. It is 99 percent certain that both Mona Lisas are by the same artist. "

The Lucerne Mona Lisa

Louis Béroud : La Joconde d'après Léonard de Vinci , 1911, Lucerne Art Museum

The French painter and copyist Louis Béroud was often present at the Louvre in Paris and liked to paint views of the works on display, or copyists at work. Béroud also created an exact copy of the Mona Lisa, known as La Joconde d'après Léonard de Vinci (1911), which is in the collection of the Kunstmuseum Luzern . On August 22, 1911, it was Béroud who first discovered the robbery of da Vinci's Mona Lisa and sounded the alarm. Béroud's copy of the Mona Lisa was therefore not made from the original, but from a copy. Even then, da Vinci's painting was famous and copies of it were extremely sought-after.

Painting technique

As in many of his other works, Leonardo used the sfumato technique he had perfected in both the background and facial details. By Sfumato , which translated from Italian means "foggy" or "blurred", the background will look as represented by a haze or smoke screen. This technique becomes clear in the face in the very soft, almost blurred light-dark transitions on the curves of the head, the corner of the eye and the right corner of the mouth (from the viewer's point of view).

particularities

effect

Leonardo viewed his Mona Lisa “with a disturbing lack of normal sensuality, so it appears seductive and cold, beautiful and rejecting at the same time. The picture is not very large, but has a monumental effect on the viewer in its relationship between person and background. This monumentality increases the impression of charm and frostiness at the same time, so that the Mona Lisa has been viewed by men for centuries with both delight and puzzling astonishment or even with something like fear. "

Walter Pater expressed himself even more enthusiastically and pathetically in 1869. He called the Mona Lisa “a beauty into which the soul and all its diseases have entered! [...] All thoughts and experiences of the world have engraved their traces there ... the sensuality of Greece, the lust of Rome, the mysticism of the Middle Ages ... the return of the pagan world, the sins of the Borgia. "

Ambience and color

“None of Leonardo's paintings reproduce the depth and haze of the atmosphere more completely than the background of the Mona Lisa, which depicts the mirage in the highest perfection.” However, the picture looks different today than it originally did: “There used to be small columns on both sides which were later cut away and which made it clear that the young woman was sitting on a balcony while she is now in the middle of the indefinite space. The colors of the face, the fine red that Vasari mentions, are also no longer visible. The darkened varnish has changed the fine tones and now produces a subdued tone like in underwater photos ”.

eyes

eyes

A trick by Leonardo gives the picture a special effect. He painted the picture with two different vanishing points ( perspectives ) - one for the background and one for the figure. The viewer does not notice this immediately; he just has the feeling that something is wrong here.

The portrayal of the silver gaze was revolutionary at the time , i.e. the eyes that were not painted exactly the same, which also contribute to the mysterious character of the portrait.

When covering the respective half of the face, it can be seen that the left side is the passive (no smile, hardly any shadow, spongy background), the right side is the active half of the face (smile, shadow, active gaze, clear background with people, bridge and house) .

It is also strange for today's observer that the Mona Lisa has no eyebrows. Although it was the ideal of beauty at the time for women to shave their eyebrows, the French researcher Pascal Cotte found on high-resolution scans that the pigments of the eyebrows and eyelashes had merely faded over time.

smile

mouth

The mysterious smile of the Mona Lisa irritates many people. While some research suggests facial paralysis as a possible cause, Borkowski found in 1992 that some people sometimes smile similarly when they have lost their front teeth.

The writer Théophile Gautier made the Mona Lisa a romantic icon of the feminine by writing about it around 1858:

"... but your expression, wise, deep, velvety and full of promises, attracts you irresistibly and poisons you, while the sensual, snake-like [...] mouth mocks you with so much sweetness, grace and superiority that you feel very shy, like a schoolboy in front of a duchess. "

A few years later, the English essayist Walter Pater found a similar formulation in what is probably the most famous description of the painting:

“The figure that appears here so strangely next to the waters expresses the fulfillment of a man’s desire for a thousand years. It is a beauty […] into which the soul with all its sick sensory suffering has flowed! [...] Like the vampire , she has had to die many times and knows the secrets of the grave; she dived down into the sea and carries the deep, ruined day in her mind. "

In September 2006, French and Canadian art scholars discovered another possible reason for the Mona Lisa's smile. With the help of special infrared and 3D techniques, they illuminated the layers of paint. The researchers noticed that the Mona Lisa's dress is covered by a thin, transparent veil that could not be seen with the naked eye. Bruno Mottin from the French Center for Research and Restoration announced this information at a press conference in Ottawa, Canada . According to his explanation, this type of veil is typical of those women who were pregnant or who had just given birth in Italy in the early 16th century. In 2008 Mady Elias and Pascal Cotte were able to demonstrate the use of several layers of paint: several layers of umber and a primer with white lead and one percent cinnabar .

Medical aspects

hands

The Belgian medical professor Jan Dequeker, who has made it his hobby to look for signs of illness on paintings, also examined the picture. He recognized a yellow spot in the left corner of the eye as xanthelasma , a build-up of cholesterol under the skin, and a swelling of the right hand as subcutaneous lipoma, and diagnosed hyperlipidemia , a hereditary disease that is a serious risk factor for heart disease and leads to early death . Since hyperlipidemia is inherited, but the other family members of Lisa del Giocondo lived significantly longer than her, other sources assume that instead of hyperlipidemia, hypercholesterolemia is more likely because this is compatible with a normal lifespan.

reception

In the fine arts

The painting is one of the media icons of the 20th century. Numerous artists have created alienations and revisions of the original. These included:

In 2001 the Museo Ideale Leonardo da Vinci in Vinci (Italy) hosted a major exhibition entitled Leonardo in Azione e Poesia with the participation of 75 international artists of visual and concrete poetry. Participants included: Julien Blaine , Klaus Peter Dencker , Giovanni Fontana, Pierre Garnier , Eugen Gomringer , Klaus Groh , Allan Kaprow , Jiří Kolář , Ladislav Novák , Konrad Balder Schäuffelen , Daniel Spoerri , Karel Trinkewitz , Ben Vautier , Emmett Williams . An extensive catalog with 375 pages was published.

In the literature

Due to its fame, the Mona Lisa has become the subject of numerous parodies by the artistic avant-garde and a mass article of popular culture. In the literature, the “Mona Lisa's smile” has become an established term for obscure behavior. The following authors, among others, have edited the picture in literary terms:

  • DH Lawrence plays in his short story Lovely old lady (The Lovely Lady) at the Mona Lisa.
  • Lawrence Durrell does the same in Justine .
  • In Der Dieb, Georg Heym tells the story of a madman who steals and finally destroys the painting of the Mona Lisa.
  • In The Masterpiece by Ernst Wilhelm Heine , a dead woman is portrayed in whom rigor mortis slowly sets in, which strangely distorts the mouth.
  • Mary McCarthy in The Clique (The Group) .
  • In his memoir Les Mots (The Words) , Jean-Paul Sartre compared the Mona Lisa's smile to that of his grandmother.
  • Dan Brown in The Da Vinci Code (The Da Vinci Code) .
  • James Twining assumes in his thriller The Mysterious Seal that the Mona Lisa in the Louvre is a forgery (or better: a replica) and that the original was hidden by Napoleon while it was in his possession.

In music

  • Max von Schillings composed the opera Mona Lisa , which premiered in 1915 . The libretto by Beatrice von Dovsky built for the retrieval of the painting.
  • In a song text, Cole Porter uses the Mona Lisa as a comparison in You're the Top : "You are the top ... You are the tower of Pisa, you are the smile on the Mona Lisa .."
  • Nat King Cole had a hit with Mona Lisa in 1950 . The song was written by Ray Evans (lyrics) and Jay Livingston (music), who won one of their Oscars for it in 1951 . It is used in the film Captain Carey, USA (1950) by Mitchell Leisen with Alan Ladd and served there as a theme song for partisans in the fight against German troops in Italy during World War II. Evans wanted to call him Prima Donna at first, but his art-loving wife Wyn suggested Mona Lisa . “Mona Lisa, Mona Lisa men have called you, / You look so much like the lady with the enchanted smile. […] Do you smile to seduce, Mona Lisa? Or is that how you hide your broken heart? "
  • In 1966, Bob Dylan described the Mona Lisa as "the most famous piece of poplar in the world" .
  • The Greek singer Demis Roussos published the title Beautiful as Mona Lisa in 1973 .
  • In 2005 Britney Spears released a track entitled Mona Lisa on a bonus CD for the DVD Britney & Kevin: Chaotic , enriched with allusions to herself and Madonna , as well as a music video with the famous painting for the single Someday (I Will Understand) .
  • On the debut album of the Berlin rock band Jennifer Rostock Ins open knife , a song was named Mona Lisa .
  • Kool Savas released a track called Mona Lisa on his album Dead or Alive .
  • The lyrics to Kanye West's Flashing Lights consist of the words Mona Lisa.
  • On the album Das 2. Gebot by the band Unheilig there is a song called Mona Lisa .
  • In Carlos Santana's song Smooth from the album Supernatural (1999), one line of the lyrics reads: "My muñequita, my Spanish Harlem, Mona Lisa" .
  • The title of a song by the American alternative rock band Panic! at the Disco is The Ballad of Mona Lisa .
  • The cover of the album The Art of Rebellion by the hardcore band Suicidal Tendencies from 1992 shows a uniformed man with sunglasses, bandana and crossed arms, who stands next to the burning painting Mona Lisa . In addition, graffiti lettering is emblazoned on the wall around the painting , such as the title of the music album.

In the commercial

In his work Thirty Are Better Than One from 1963, Andy Warhol takes up what advertising claims to this day: the Mona Lisa as an icon of the mass media and commercial advertising. Mona Lisa is used in numerous contemporary advertisements as the carrier of an advertising message, which means that new stories are constantly being created with it in the context of the advertising medium. The icon is thus inherent in a fundamental phenomenon of contemporary mass society that Walter Benjamin predicted as early as 1936, namely the urge to get closer to things spatially and humanly and to overcome the unique through reproduction.

Movies

Feature films

  • The German silent film Mona Lisa from 1912 takes up the theft of 1911 in a satirical way. This was directed by Charles Decroix .
  • The German sound film Der Raub der Mona Lisa (1931) is based heavily on the events of 1911. Willi Forst plays the thief Vincenzo, who steals the Mona Lisa from the Louvre in order to impress his beloved. The sensational “return” of the work of art to Italy and the court case are also used as motifs in the film.
  • In the comedy Hudson Hawk - Der Meisterdieb (1991), an indecisive Leonardo is shown at the beginning, who is concerned about the painterly implementation of the "smile" because his model ("Liesl") has crooked teeth.
  • Mona Lisa's Smile (2003) with Julia Roberts . In the 1950s, an art lecturer taught female students at an elite university to be independent. The smile of the young women (including Julia Stiles , Kirsten Dunst , Maggie Gyllenhaal ) is compared with that of the Mona Lisa; With both of them you don't know whether they are really happy.
  • In The Da Vinci Code (2006) it is the first image used by Jacques Saunière as a trace for Sophie Neveu and Robert Langdon.

Documentaries

literature

  • Walter Pater : The Renaissance . In: Fortnightly Review . 1869.
  • Robert Wallace: Leonardo da Vinci and his time. 1452-1519. Translated into German by Erich Moebes. Time-Life International, Amsterdam 1968 (1966).
  • Thomas David: Leonardo da Vinci. Mona Lisa . Rowohlt, Reinbek bei Hamburg 1997, ISBN 3-499-20840-7 .
  • Jean-Pierre Mohan, Michel Menu, Bruno Mottin (eds.): In the heart of the Mona Lisa - decoding a masterpiece. A scientific expedition to the workshop of Leonardo da Vinci in collaboration with the Center de Recherche et de Restoration des Musées de France . Schirmer / Mosel, Munich 2006, ISBN 3-8296-0233-2 .
  • Charles Nicholl : Leonardo da Vinci - The biography . S. Fischer, Frankfurt am Main 2006, ISBN 978-3-10-052405-8 .
  • Donald Sassoon: Mona Lisa, the history of the world's most famous painting . HarperCollins, London 2001, ISBN 0-00-710614-9 .
  • Donald Sassoon: Da Vinci and the Secret of the Mona Lisa . Gustav Lübbe, Bergisch Gladbach 2006, ISBN 3-7857-2232-X .
  • Manfred Wundram : The most famous paintings in the world . Imprimatur Druck- und Verlagsgesellschaft, Bergisch Gladbach 1976.
  • Frank Zöllner : Leonardo's Mona Lisa. From portrait to icon of the free world . Klaus Wagenbach, Berlin 2006, ISBN 3-8031-2552-9 .
  • Veit Probst : On the genesis of the Mona Lisa: Leonardo da Vinci meets Niccolò Machiavelli and Agostino Vespucci. Verlag Regionalkultur, Ubstadt-Weiher 2008, ISBN 978-3-89735-538-5 , summary and full text (PDF; 50 pages, 2 MB) from Heidelberg University Library .
  • Roberto Zapperi : Farewell to Mona Lisa. The most famous painting in the world is unraveled. Translated by Ingeborg Walter . Verlag CH Beck, Munich 2010, ISBN 978-3-406-59781-7 .
  • Magdalena Soest: Caterina Sforza is Mona Lisa. The story of a discovery. Deutscher Wissenschafts-Verlag (DWV), Baden-Baden 2011, ISBN 978-3-86888-040-3 , table of contents , review:.

Web links

Commons : Mona Lisa  - collection of images, videos and audio files

Portraits

items

Notes and individual references

  1. These are the 'official' sizes that can also be found on the Louvre's website. Comprehensive investigations of the image using scientific means (grazing light photography, X-ray, UV, infrared images, etc.) revealed, among other things: “The Mona Lisa's panel (79.4 × 53.4 cm, 1.4 cm thick) is in Cut parallel cut. ”(Jean-Pierre Mohen, Michel Menu, Bruno Mottin: In the heart of the Mona Lisa: Decoding a masterpiece. A scientific expedition into the workshop of Leonardo da Vinci . 1st edition. Schirmer Mosel, Munich 2006, ISBN 3- 8296-0233-2 , pp. 22 (cf. also the complete illustration, over which a 5 cm grid is laid (ibid., P. 118) and these dimensions are confirmed)).
  2. ^ Frank Zöllner : Leonardo da Vinci, Mona Lisa: the portrait of Lisa del Giocondo, legend and history. Fischer, Frankfurt am Main 1994, ISBN 3-596-11344-X .
  3. Lisa was 24 years old when she modeled Leonardo for the first time in 1503. That already meant a middle age for the idea of ​​the Renaissance. Compare Robert Wallace, Leonardo da Vinci and his time. 1452-1519 , Amsterdam 1968.
  4. Charles Nicholl: Leonardo da Vinci - The Biography. Frankfurt am Main 2006, pp. 457-469.
  5. Mona Lisa - Heidelberg Fund clarifies identity. In: Heidelberg University . January 14, 2008, accessed April 23, 2020 .
  6. Press release: Mona Lisa - Heidelberger Fund clarifies identity. ( Memento from January 20, 2008 in the Internet Archive ). In: Heidelberg University Library , January 19, 2008, with digitized notes.
  7. tdo / dpa : Heidelberg researchers: Mona Lisa was a merchant's wife  . In: Spiegel Online , January 11, 2008.
  8. Armin Schlechter ( arr. ): The noble art of truckerey. Selected incunabula from the Heidelberg University Library. Winter, Heidelberg 2005, cat. 20, pp. 28–29, limited preview in the Google book search.
  9. Armin Schlechter: On writing in books. Glosses and marginalia as part of the tradition. In: Medieval manuscripts. The large libraries in Baden-Württemberg and their treasures. Edited by the Staatsanzeiger-Verlag. Stuttgart 2007, pp. 20-21.
  10. Vincent Delieuvin: Honorable Wife. In: Der Spiegel . January 21, 2008, p. 127 , accessed January 26, 2009 .
  11. See Pascal Cotte: Lumière on The Mona Lisa: Hidden Portraits (Paris: Vinci Editions 2016).
  12. Kia Vahland: Exchange of Wives in Oil. In: Süddeutsche Zeitung , October 15, 2009; (PDF; 93.4 kB). The historian Roberto Zapperi explains why a different woman can be seen in Leonardo da Vinci's painting “La Gioconda” than Lisa, the merchant's wife. Interview; see AP / dpa / Abendblatt: Art historians reveal sensations. New speculations about two da Vinci paintings. In: Hamburger Abendblatt from October 15, 2009.
  13. AP : Roberto Zapperi: "Mona Lisa does not show Mona Lisa". In: Münchner Merkur , October 15, 2009.
  14. Walter Krämer, Michael Schmidt: Lexicon of Popular Lists: God and the World in Data, Facts and Figures. Zurich / Munich 1999, p. 17. Jim Provenzano: Romantic Notions: Leonardo da Vinci and Salai.
  15. Louie Parsons: Mona Lisa or Mon Salai? In: Ovi magazine , November 17, 2006, (English).
  16. dpa : Mona Lisa continues to pose a riddle with a smile. In: Zeit online , February 8, 2011.
  17. ^ Robert Payne : Leonardo . Robert Hale, London 1979, ISBN 978-0-385-04154-6 , pp. 137-149.
  18. Allan Hall: Mona Lisa 'was Italy's legendary woman warrior'. In: The Independent , March 14, 2002; Sergey Borisov: Mona Lisa was 'The Tigress'. In: Pravda , March 26, 2002; Paolo Valentino: E se Monna Lisa fosse una guerriera senza scrupoli? In: Corriere della Sera , March 15, 2002; Christian Campiche: Monna Lisa fut une guerrière qui lutta contre César Borgia. In: La Liberté , April 4, 2002.
  19. Magdalena Soest: Caterina Sforza is Mona Lisa. The story of a discovery . Deutscher Wissenschafts-Verlag, 2011, ISBN 978-3-86888-040-3 , table of contents .
  20. ^ Frank Zöllner : Leonardo da Vinci. All paintings and drawings . With the participation of Johannes Nathan. Taschen, Cologne 2003, ISBN 3-8228-5726-2 , pp. 236 (English: Leonardo da Vinci, 1452–1519: The Complete Paintings and Drawings . Cologne / London 2003. in a slipcase ; 695 pages).
  21. a b chap. 2.10: The theft of the Mona Lisa in 1911. In: 1913 - 2013. The fingerprint - 100 years in the service of the Swiss Confederation , ed. von Fedpol , 2013, pp. 32–33, (PDF; 14.5 MB), accessed on March 14, 2020.
  22. Kai Posmik: A city in mourning - theft of the Mona Lisa in 1911 from the Louvre. In: Berliner Zeitung , August 20, 2011.
  23. Lynn H. Nicholas: The Robbery of Europe. Knaur Taschenbuch, 1997, pp. 119, 122.
  24. Jenny Barchfield, AP : Exhibit reveals how the Louvre kept 'Mona Lisa,' other masterpieces safe during WWII. ( Memento from February 16, 2013 in the web archive archive.today ) In: USA Today , June 5, 2009.
  25. ^ Peter Moritz Pickhaus: Destroyer of Art. Rowohlt, 1988; see Steven Goss: A Partial Guide to the Tools of Art Vandalism. In: cabinetmagazine.org , summer 2001.
  26. The Diary: Mona Lisa; Stewart Copeland; Bright star; Looking For Eric; twins at the Tate Modern. In: The Independent , May 15, 2009.
  27. Margaret Leslie Davis: Mona Lisa in Camelot: How Jacqueline Kennedy and Da Vinci's Masterpiece Charmed and Captivated a Nation. Da Capo Press, 2008.
  28. Sassoon: Da Vinci and the Secret of the Mona Lisa. Bastei Lübbe, 2006
  29. dpa : Second "Mona Lisa" discovered in Spain. In: Zeit online , February 1, 2012.
    Gregor Ziolkowski: Mona Lisa's “twin sister”. Copy of the famous painting in Madrid's Prado. In: Deutschlandfunk Kultur , February 21, 2012.
  30. Daniel Huber: Art thriller about the true "Mona Lisa". In: 20 minutes , September 27, 2012.
  31. That's why the Isleworth Mona Lisa should be real. In: 20 minutes , September 27, 2012.
  32. kuz / Reuters : Leonardo da Vinci: New tests with no value for determining the age of the supposedly "first Mona Lisa". In: SpOn , February 14, 2013.
  33. Werner Rosenberger: When Mona Lisa smiles twice. In: Kurier , November 23, 2013, accessed on April 23, 2020.
  34. ^ Howard Oakley: The Missing Mona Lisa: Louis Béroud painting painters painting paintings. In: The Eclectic Light Company - Macs, Painting, and More. Howard Oakley, December 23, 2017, accessed September 28, 2020 .
  35. Robert Wallace: Leonardo da Vinci and his time. 1452-1519. Amsterdam 1968, p. 127.
  36. Quoted from Robert Wallace: Leonardo da Vinci and his time. 1452-1519. Amsterdam 1968, p. 140.
  37. Robert Wallace: Leonardo da Vinci and his side. 1452-1519. Amsterdam 1968, p. 140.
  38. Whether the picture was really trimmed on both sides is controversial: the board has a complete painting border all around, which seems to contradict the claim.
  39. Robert Wallace: Leonardo da Vinci and his time. 1452-1519. Amsterdam 1968, p. 126.
  40. hda /  AFP : Blanket discovered on the Mona Lisa's knees. In: SpOn , October 24, 2007.
  41. a b Paul Przybylowicz, Lisa Sweet: Art and Disease Lecture. In: Evergreen State College , lecture notes, (PDF; 110 kB).
  42. ^ A b Customs officer: Leonardo da Vinci: Mona Lisa .
  43. Mona Lisa was pregnant. In: 20 minutes , September 27, 2006.
  44. Mady Elias, Pascal Cotte: Multispectral camera and radiative transfer equation used to depict Leonardo's sfumato in Mona Lisa. In: Applied Optics. Volume 47, Issue 12, pp. 2146-2154.
  45. dpa : "Mona Lisa was sick" - a doctor examines paintings. In: Handelsblatt , October 11, 2006.
  46. LHOOQ ( Memento of December 14, 2014 in the Internet Archive ) In: marcelduchamp.net
  47. Marcel Duchamp (French, 1887–1968) Artworks , see: LHOOQ rasée. In: artnet.com , accessed April 23, 2020.
  48. Fernand Léger : La Joconde aux clès, 1930. In: Musée national Fernand Léger - Musées Nationaux du XXe Siècle des Alpes-Maritimes , accessed on April 23, 2020.
  49. ^ Salvador Dali as Mona Lisa. In: Flickr
  50. Joseph Beuys, Giocondologie (Hasenblut), 1963. ( Memento from September 13, 2014 in the Internet Archive ). In: artnet.de , March 31, 2011.
  51. Mona Lisa Red. In: wikiart.org
  52. James Rizzi: Classics 2. The Mona Lisa (1999). In: james-rizzi.com , accessed April 23, 2020.
  53. Sophie Matisse. In: artnet.com
  54. Subodh Gupta : Et tu, Duchamp? 2009/10. ( Memento from January 6, 2014 in the Internet Archive )
  55. Original text: “Mona Lisa, Mona Lisa, men have named you. You're so like the lady with the mystic smile. […] Do you smile to tempt a lover, Mona Lisa? Or is this your way to hide a broken heart? "
  56. ^ Eva Klein: Multiple Mona Lisa. Art as a tool of advertising . In: Advertising and Design. Interdisciplinary Perspectives on a Cultural Field . Transcript, Bielefeld 2014, ISBN 978-3-8376-2348-2 , pp. 61-78.
  57. ^ Gerhard Lamprecht : German silent films 1903-1912 . Deutsche Kinemathek e. V., Berlin 1969, p. 366 . DNB 457340347 .
  58. Review by Thomas Raff : Magdalena Soest: Caterina Sforza is Mona Lisa. The story of a discovery. In: sehepunkte 13 (2013), No. 10.