In the Royal Castle of Amboise (France), Leonardo da Vinci completed the famous "La Gioconda" - "Mona Lisa". It is generally accepted that Leonardo is buried in the Chapel of St. Hubert at Amboise Castle.
Hidden in Mona Lisa's eyes are tiny numbers and letters that cannot be seen with the naked eye. Perhaps these are the initials of Leonardo da Vinci and the year the painting was created.
"Mona Lisa" is considered the most mysterious picture ever created. Art experts are still unraveling its secrets. At the same time, the Mona Lisa is one of the most disappointing attractions in Paris. The fact is that huge queues line up every day. Mona Lisa is protected by bulletproof glass.
On August 21, 1911, the Mona Lisa was stolen. She was kidnapped by Louvre employee Vincenzo Perugia. There is an assumption that Perugia wanted to return the painting to its historical homeland. The first attempts to find the painting led nowhere. The museum administration was fired. As part of this case, the poet Guillaume Apollinaire was arrested and later released. Pablo Picasso was also under suspicion. The painting was found two years later in Italy. January 4, 1914 painting (after exhibitions on Italian cities) returned to Paris. After these events, the picture gained unprecedented popularity.
In the DIDU cafe there is a large plasticine Mona Lisa. It was sculpted over the course of a month by ordinary cafe visitors. The process was led by artist Nikas Safronov. Mona Lisa, which was sculpted by 1,700 Muscovites and city guests, was included in the Guinness Book of Records. It became the largest plasticine reproduction of the Mona Lisa made by people.
During World War II, many works from the Louvre collection were hidden in the Chateau de Chambord. Among them was the Mona Lisa. The photographs show emergency preparations for sending the painting before the Nazis arrived in Paris. The location where the Mona Lisa was hidden was kept a closely guarded secret. The paintings were hidden for good reason: it would later turn out that Hitler planned to create “the world’s largest museum” in Linz. And he organized a whole campaign for this under the leadership of the German art connoisseur Hans Posse.
According to the History Channel movie Life After People, after 100 years without people, the Mona Lisa is eaten by bugs.
Most researchers believe that the landscape painted behind the Gioconda is fictitious. There are versions that this is the Valdarno Valley or the Montefeltro region, but there is no convincing evidence for these versions. It is known that Leonardo painted the painting in his Milan workshop.
Incredible facts
Mona Lisa, perhaps most popular work fine arts in the world. Painted by the most famous artist, Leonardo da Vinci, this painting has been a subject of interest to many. Mona Lisa was source of discussion for many centuries.
The mysterious expression on the woman's face in the painting still is an unsolved problem. Writer Dan Brown's novel "The Da Vinci Code" has revived people's interest in famous painting. Everyone, on the eve of the solution, gathered in their homes in order to quickly solve hidden codes described in the novel.
Besides the novel, painting is famous for many other reasons. Firstly, it is very famous due to the popularity of Leonardo da Vinci and his work on human anatomy. Secondly, the picture is famous for its unusual methods, used by the artist and, most importantly, the Mona Lisa is notorious for thefts from the museum.
Most of you may have heard about these known facts. But we will reveal less known and most interesting facts about this mysterious work.
The title of the painting is "Mona Lisa"
The title of the painting "Mona Lisa" was result of an error spelling. Mona in Italian means short form"Madonna", which means "my lady".
The woman in the painting
The identity of the woman in the painting is still a mystery. Some believe that this is the female form of Leonardo da Vinci's face. Most are of the opinion that the woman was Lisa Gherardini, who was a 24-year-old mother of two sons.
Damage to the painting
This painting has damage. In 1956, a man named Hugo Ungaza threw a stone into a work of art. This resulted in paint damage in a small area near Mona's left elbow.
The mysterious genius of the Renaissance Leonardo da Vinci - what do we know about him? A great painter who painted so many world masterpieces, why didn’t he complete so many works? The drawings by Leonardo da Vinci known to us convey both the beauty of the world and man, as well as creepy, ugly scenes from life.
He owned not only paintings, but also a variety of inventions, several centuries ahead of their time. The life of this man has always been shrouded in mystery, his achievements are simply amazing. Leonardo da Vinci is not just a man, but a superman living in another dimension.
Drawing by Leonardo da Vinci.
We will focus on his most amazing mystery - the portrait of Mona Lisa or “La Gioconda” (Louvre).
This is a painting that has been debated for centuries, and every researcher is trying to find a new mystery in this painting in order to solve it. The portrait carries within itself not just a specific reality, but is a generalization of the universal, spiritual principle. This is not mysterious woman, this is a mysterious existence” (Leonardo. M. Batkin).
The painting dates back to the beginning of the 16th century. This is a portrait of the wife of a merchant from Florence, Francesco del Giocondo.
The most famous is the riddle of Gioconda's smile. The mastery of the genius here has reached such heights that the expression on Mona Lisa’s face remains elusive, from different points of view - it is always different. Some considered this effect ominous, others - spiritual, hypnotic. This effect is called sfumato (very subtle transitions from light to shadow) - realism and volume as if the picture was painted with many strokes.
But, meanwhile, this is not so! The paint layer is very thin and the strokes are not visible at all. Researchers have long been trying to understand this style of writing using a fluorescent method. A barely perceptible haze shades the lines, making Gioconda almost alive. It begins to seem that now her lips will open and she will utter a word.
The very first description of the painting given by Vasari is contradictory, who wrote that Leonardo da Vinci worked on it for four years and did not finish, but immediately reports that the portrait reproduces all the smallest details that the subtlety of painting can convey. We can say with a great deal of confidence that in the image of Mona Lisa, Leonardo da Vinci depicted not an ordinary woman, but the Mother of God.
Researchers are inclined to conclude that one half of Mona Lisa’s face is John the Baptist, while the profile of the other half belongs to Jesus Christ.
The left hand lies motionless, in the language of Leonardo “If the figures do not make gestures that express the idea with members of the body human soul, then these figures are twice dead.” Right hand looks more “believable”. All this confirms that in the image of Mona Lisa the artist combined a living and a dead image.
We know that he encrypted many of his works, for example, using the “mirror” writing technique. Thus, the letters LV or L2 were discovered in the right pupil of Mona Lisa. Perhaps these are initials, or perhaps a code - after all, in the Middle Ages, letters could replace numbers.
According to researcher Carla Glori, behind the silhouette of Gioconda on the canvas of the brilliant master Leonardo da Vinci, the picturesque surroundings of the town of Bobbio, located in northern Italy, are depicted. This conclusion was expressed following a message from the head of the Italian National Committee for the Protection of cultural monuments Silvano Vinceti - journalist, writer and discoverer of the tomb of Michelangelo da Caravaggio.
The publicist said that he examined the outline of letters and numbers on Leonardo’s priceless canvas. It was about the number “72”, which is under the arch of the bridge, visible to the left of the Mona Lisa. Vinceti himself believes that this is a reference to the mystical theories of Leonardo da Vinci.
Glory Carla believes that the mark “72” indicates the year 1472, when the Trebbia River, which came out during a flood, carried down and destroyed the dilapidated bridge. Later, the Visconti family, which dominated the area at that time, built a new bridge. Everything except the image of the bridge is the magnificent landscape that could be seen from the terraces and windows of the local medieval castle.
The town of Bobbio was famous for the fact that nearby is the grandiose monastery ensemble of San Colombano, which became the prototype for the setting for romantic story Umberto Eco in The Name of the Rose.
Carla Glori also suggested that his model was not the wife of a wealthy city dweller, Lisa del Giocondo, but the daughter of the Duke of Milan, Bianca Giovanna Sforza. The place depicted on the canvas is not the central part of Italy, as previously assumed. The father of the proposed model, Lodovico Sforza, was one of Leonardo's main customers and a renowned philanthropist.
The historian Glory suggests that the painter and naturalist visited him both in Milan and in remote Bobbio. There was a library famous in those days, which fell under the authority of the Milanese rulers. Skeptical researchers claim that the patterns of numbers and letters discovered by Vinceti in the pupils of the Mona Lisa’s eyes are nothing more than cracks that appeared there over time.
However, this is not necessarily the case. An example of this amazing story research of the miraculous icon of the Virgin Mary of Guadalupe, which is located in Mexico.
The most terrible puzzle of Leonardo da Vinci
Combining the qualities of a scientist and a clairvoyant, in his old age Leonardo made a strange drawing - “The End of the World”, which was not understood then. Today it terrifies us: it is the outline of a huge mushroom growing out of an exploded city...
Some scientists and researchers are confident that some of Leonardo's puzzles have already been solved, for example:
- “An ominous feathered race will fly through the air; they will attack people and animals and feed on them with a great cry.” It is believed that we are talking about airplanes, helicopters, and missiles.
- “People will talk to each other from the most distant countries and answer each other.” Well, of course, this is a telephone, mobile communications.
- “Sea water will rise to the high peaks of the mountains, to the heavens and again fall on the homes of people. It will be seen how the largest trees of the forests will be carried by the fury of the wind from east to west.”
It is believed that this prophecy is related to global warming.
It is impossible to list all of Leonardo's works. But even this small part is enough to get an idea of this universal genius, which cannot be compared with anyone who lived in his time.
Leonardo da Vinci's painting "Mona Lisa" was painted in 1505, but it still remains the most popular work art. Still an unsolved problem is the mysterious expression on the woman's face. In addition, the painting is famous for the unusual execution methods used by the artist and, most importantly, the Mona Lisa was stolen several times. The most notorious case happened about 100 years ago - on August 21, 1911.
16:24 21.08.2015
Back in 1911, the Mona Lisa, whose full name was “Portrait of Madame Lisa del Giocondo,” was stolen by a Louvre employee, Italian master on the mirrors of Vincenzo Perugia. But then no one even suspected him of stealing. Suspicion fell on the poet Guillaume Apollinaire, and even Pablo Picasso! The museum administration was immediately fired and the French borders were temporarily closed. Newspaper hype greatly contributed to the growth of the film's popularity.
The painting was discovered only 2 years later in Italy. Interestingly, due to the thief’s own oversight. He made a fool of himself by responding to an advertisement in the newspaper and offering to buy the Mona Lisa to the director of the Uffizi Gallery.
8 facts about Leonardo da Vinci's Mona Lisa that will surprise you
1.
It turns out that Leonardo da Vinci rewrote La Gioconda twice. Experts believe that the colors on the original versions were much brighter. And the sleeves of Gioconda’s dress were originally red, the colors just faded over time.
In addition, in the original version of the painting there were columns along the edges of the canvas. Later the picture was cropped, probably by the artist himself.
2. The first place where they saw “La Gioconda” was the bathhouse of the great politician and collector King Francis I. According to legend, before his death, Leonardo da Vinci sold “Gioconda” to Francis for 4 thousand gold coins. At that time it was simply a huge amount.
The king placed the painting in the bathhouse not because he did not realize what a masterpiece he had received, but quite the opposite. At that time, the bathhouse at Fontainebleau was the most important place in the French kingdom. There, Francis not only had fun with his mistresses, but also received ambassadors.
3. At one time, Napoleon Bonaparte liked the Mona Lisa so much that he moved it from the Louvre to the Tuileries Palace and hung it in his bedroom. Napoleon knew nothing about painting, but he highly valued da Vinci. True, not as an artist, but as a universal genius, which, by the way, he considered himself to be. After becoming emperor, Napoleon returned the painting to the museum in the Louvre, which he named after himself.
4. Hidden in the eyes of the Mona Lisa are tiny numbers and letters that are unlikely to be visible to the naked eye. researchers suggest that these are the initials of Leonardo da Vinci and the year the painting was created.
5. During World War II, many works from the Louvre collection were hidden in the Chateau de Chambord. Among them was the Mona Lisa. The location where the Mona Lisa was hidden was kept a closely guarded secret. The paintings were hidden for good reason: it would later turn out that Hitler planned to create the world's largest museum in Linz. And he organized a whole campaign for this under the leadership of the German art connoisseur Hans Posse.
6. It is believed that the painting depicts Lisa Gherardini, the wife of Francesco del Gioconda, a Florentine silk merchant. True, there are also more exotic versions. According to one of them, Mona Lisa is Leonardo’s mother Katerina, according to another, it is a self-portrait of the artist in a female form, and according to the third, it is Salai, Leonardo’s student, dressed in a woman’s dress.
7. Most researchers believe that the landscape painted behind the Gioconda is fictitious. There are versions that this is the Valdarno Valley or the Montefeltro region, but there is no convincing evidence for these versions. It is known that Leonardo painted the painting in his Milan workshop.
8. The painting has its own room in the Louvre. Now the painting is inside a special protective system, which includes bullet-resistant glass, a complex alarm system and an installation to create a microclimate that is optimal for preserving the painting. The cost of this system is $7 million.
Let’s turn to the same poor student: “What is the most famous painting Leonardo da Vinci"? Answer: “La Gioconda”, who would doubt it. But before Mona Lisa, Leonardo painted several more Madonnas, who cannot be accused of a lack of individuality, unlike their predecessors. Leonardo's Madonnas are quite bodily, feminine, dressed in accordance with secular fashion. Madonna with a Flower, or “Madonna Benois,” named after its Russian owners, the Benois family. From this picture you can judge how tastes have changed over just three or four centuries! Please note, dear friends, how differently its contemporaries and art critics of the 20th century respond to this painting!
M. F. Bocchi, in his book “Sights of the City of Florence,” published in 1591, said:
“A tablet painted in oil by the hand of Leonardo da Vinci, excellent in beauty, depicting the Madonna with the utmost skill and diligence. The figure of Christ, represented as a child, is beautiful and amazing, his uplifted face is one of a kind and amazing in the complexity of the plan and the way this plan is successfully resolved.”
In 1914, the Imperial Hermitage acquired this painting from Maria Alexandrovna, the wife of the court architect Leonty Nikolaevich Benois.
The authenticity of Leonardo's painting was reluctantly confirmed by the greatest authority of the time, Bernard Berenson:
“One unfortunate day I was invited to examine the Benois Madonna. A young woman with a bald forehead and puffy cheeks, a toothless grin, myopic eyes and a wrinkled neck looked at me. An eerie ghost of an old woman plays with a child: his face resembles an empty mask, and a bloated body and limbs are attached to it. Pathetic little hands, stupidly vain folds of skin, color like serum. And yet I had to admit that this terrible creature belongs to Leonardo da Vinci...”
What is it, dear Leonardo fans? But here is another Madonna - “Madonna Litta”. It’s hardly possible to discredit her beauty
This painting was painted for the rulers of Milan, after which it passed to the Litta family, and was in their possession for several centuries. private collection. Original title paintings - “Madonna and Child”. Modern name the painting comes from the name of its owner - Count Litt, owner of the family art gallery in Milan. In 1864, he approached the Hermitage with an offer to sell it. In 1865, along with three other paintings, the “Madonna Litta” was acquired by the Hermitage for 100 thousand francs. Here, thank God, there is no such derogatory review about her as about poor Madonna Benoit.
And yet, in addition to compositional design and authorship, these Madonnas have one more unusual similarity. Pay attention to the foreheads. During this era, women not only plucked their eyebrows, but also shaved the hair on their foreheads and even temples.
Such was the influence of fashion. And although “following fashion is funny,” “not following is stupid.” Apparently that's why Gioconda looks like this.
The fashion for a highly shaved forehead with shaved eyebrows was widespread among women in the 15th century in aristocratic circles in Italy, France and the Netherlands. The introduction of this custom is generally believed to be associated with the name of Isabella of Bavaria (1395) 
Quite serious historians claim that Isabella of Bavaria introduced the fashion for high headdresses - genin, in which not a single strand of hair should be knocked out. Allegedly, she had ugly – black, dull and coarse hair, and she hid it this way. And she forced them to hide the others, who, perhaps, had no need to do so. So, dear ladies, before blindly following fashion, think first about who introduced this fashion and why. Isabella of Bavaria is also credited with inventing the neckline. The skin on her chest, eyewitnesses said, was incredibly tender. In this portrait we will not see any black hair or cleavage. But this doesn’t mean anything, a medieval portrait is not a photograph. But the fashion for all these innovations lasted for more than a century.
There is also a version that in the Middle Ages, due to the extremely low standard of living (poor nutrition, lack of vitamins, etc.), rickets spread everywhere like an epidemic. Balding of the front of the skull is one of the symptoms of rickets. Therefore, the absence of eyebrows and hair on the forehead, of necessity, “came into fashion.” Many researchers also consider the absence of eyebrows and eyelashes in Mona Lisa to be a manifestation of a disease (either rickets, or schizophrenia, or an even more serious pathology). But, be that as it may, Gioconda exists quite triumphantly, despite all these unflattering assumptions.
Let's look at some female portraits, written famous artists middle ages from different countries, for the presence of eyebrows. Again, by the way! When talking about the Renaissance, they most often mean Italian Renaissance, forgetting about the North - no less diverse and significant. Now you will see several paintings by artists Northern Renaissance, depicting equally eyebrowless ladies. Here is a portrait of the three almost eyebrowless duchesses Sibylla, Emilia and Sidonia of Saxony, painted German painter of that era by Cranach Lucas the Elder around 1535 (Germany)
A pale complexion, a slender “swan (snake) neck” and a high, clean forehead were considered beautiful. To lengthen the oval face, ladies shaved the hair above the forehead and plucked their eyebrows, and to make the neck appear longer, they shaved the back of their heads. To create a high, convex forehead, the hair on the forehead and back of the head (to create the effect of a long neck) was sometimes shaved into two or even four fingers, and the eyebrows were plucked. Cases of plucking eyelashes, both upper and lower, are also mentioned.
Rogier van der Weyden Portrait of a Lady 1460 Netherlands: The lady who served as the model for the Portrait of a Lady, painted by Rogier van der Weyden in 1460, also has her eyebrows shaved or plucked.
Portrayed by Jean Fouquet (France) in 1450, the famous courtesan Agnes Sorel, favorite of Charles VII of France, also shaved her eyebrows. She was considered one of the most beautiful women of this era!
Agnes Sorel is credited with introducing such innovations as the wearing of diamonds by uncrowned persons and the invention of the long train. She also brought into fashion very freestyle outfits that exposed one breast. Her behavior and open admission of a relationship with the king often caused resentment common people and some courtiers, however, she was forgiven a lot thanks to the protection of the king and her perfect beauty, about which even the Pope said: “She had the most beautiful face that can only be seen in this world.” As you can see, this lady's forehead and temples are shaved so high that they reveal more than half of her skull, which, judging by the image, is truly perfect.
