Emily Warner (she/her) questions if the world-renowned ‘Mona Lisa’ is worthy of her popularity.
Image Credit: Image Credit: Wikipedia Commons, https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Da_Vinci%27s_Mona_Lisa_with_original_colors_approximation.jpg
When Itell people I went to the Louvre this holiday, one inevitable question rears its head; “What did you think of the Mona Lisa ?”. I must have had this conversation with every member of my extended family during the Christmas period and by New Year’s Day, I was tired of recounting the experience. My unenthusiastic response, “it was a bit disappointing actually”, generated gasps of shock and dismay. How dare I slander the Mona Lisa’s good name? I ask in response, why are we so obsessed with this painting?
When you first enter the Louvre, there’s no need to worry about finding it. Every tourist may as well be holding a neon sign that says ‘this way’; follow them and you’ll find yourself at the Mona Lisa. Well, not quite at the Mona Lisa, but at the back of a long line of people queueing to see her. Her enigmatic smile is smug, as she surveys the queue from her bulletproof box. People zig-zag their way towards her like disgruntled Ryanair customers at the baggage drop-off, jostling for a photo. When you finally reach the front, you must withstand the glares of those waiting while you take your picture, only to find that you’ve captured half the Mona Lisa and half of someone’s head. It is only after being rapidly ushered from the melee and towards the exit sign by museum workers that you realise you forgot to even look at the painting.
So, why is the Mona Lisa popular? Painted by Leonardo da Vinci in the early 16th century, the picture is a technical masterpiece of the Ital - ian Renaissance. Da Vinci broke from the Florentine tradition of outlining a painting, by applying a technique known as sfumato. This involved painting “without lines or borders, in the manner of smoke or beyond the picture plane”, imperceptibly blending colours together so the transitions between them vanished. As a result, the painting takes on an uncanny liveliness and ethereality. However, Da Vinci was not alone in using the sfumato technique. It was employed by Giorgione, Correggio and Raphael (none of whom have a ten-mile-long queue in front of them!).
Da Vinci also painted her with the eye of a scientist, achieving perfect proportions and naturalism. He used aerial perspective to create the illusion of depth and an imaginary, mystical background. However, the Louvre is not lacking in artistic mastery. Opposite the Mona Lisa, staring at the back of the tourist’s iPhones, is The Wedding Feast at Cana by Paolo Veronese. A stunning, expansive painting that becomes an underappreciated backdrop to the Mona Lisa. Numberless other artworks deserving of respect populate the Louvre; The Winged Victory of Samothrace, The Venus de Milo, The Coronation of Napoleon and many more.
So, if not for its technique, then why has the Mona Lisa been so revered? Perhaps it is the mystery surrounding the painting. The Mona Lisa is thought to depict Lisa del Giocondo, the wife of a Florentine merchant but several alternative theories have circulated. Some say it is an imaginary woman, a combination of women or even a self-portrait, and her maddening smile reveals nothing.
Additionally, the painting gained fame when it was stolen in 1911. Suspects ranged from the avant-garde poet and playwright Guillaume Apollinaire to Pablo Picasso but when the painting was recovered over two years later, the real culprit turned out to be Vincenzo Perugia, an Italian petty criminal. He mistakenly believed that the Mona Lisa had been stolen from Florence by Napoleon and needed returning to its rightful home. In doing so, he solidified its fame in France where the painting has hung ever since.
However, there are hundreds of intriguing stories behind art and often, violence, seduction and mystery reside between every brushstroke. Arguably, the Mona Lisa’s fame is not in her artistry or her history but simply because society says so. Her face has been imitated and reproduced endlessly by other artists such as Andy Warhol, Marcel Duchamp and Banksy. Thanks to meme culture and modern technology she has now been digitised and social media teems with iterations of the same, mysterious face. The Mona Lisa is everywhere; she is a presence so dominating and so encompassing that the original painting seems to wither in comparison to its reputation.
Most people who see the Mona Lisa do not appreciate the skill required to produce it. They are more interested in the selfie they take with her (that they then caption with “I saw the M ona Lisa ” when it should say “I turned my back on the Mona Lisa while someone took a photo of me”). When I was there, the woman in front of me seemed to spend hours posing for a picture, as her long-suffering boyfriend tried to capture one she wouldn’t reject. Furthermore, in comparison to the overwhelming attention it garners and its prevalence online, the real Mona Lisa is small and rather uninspiring (sorry to any fans). Trapped behind glass with a fence and a steel case, some of the radiance cannot help but be sapped from the Mona Lisa . She is slowly ageing in her bulletproof box yet we continue to idealise her; when will the Mona Lisa get a break from the weight of a thousand eyes?
This painting undeniably depicts artistic talent, an unsettling aliveness and anatomical beauty. Yet so do many other pieces of art. My advice would be, don’t avoid the Mona Lisa; she does not deserve to be shunned, vandalised, or derided, but if you ever find yourself in that long queue in the Louvre, turn around and look at the other paintings in the room.