The mysterious smile of the Mona Lisa. Gioconda's smile is an optical illusion! The picture changes over the years

Leonardo da Vinci Francisco Goya Dominique Ingres Eugene Delacroix Auguste Renoir Henri Toulouse-Lautrec Henri Matisse Alphonse Mucha Salvador Dali Ilya Repin Isaac Levitan Ivan Kramskoy Valentin Serov Konstantin Somov

M.: OJSC Publishing House "Raduga", 1999. - 320 p.

ISBN 5-05-004742-0

Editor L. Ermilova

Artist A. Nikulin

Art editor T. Ivashchenko

Technical editor E. Makarova

Proofreaders S. Voinova, S. Galkina, V. Pestova

“The Smile of Gioconda” is a book about painters. Under one cover are collected literary portraits of nine famous Western and five Russian artists, from Leonardo da Vinci to Konstantin Somov. Realists, impressionists, modernists and the great surrealist Salvador Dali... All of them are presented in the fullness and pulse of life, with their passions and sufferings, with love interests and the search for their place in art. The book opens with an intriguing study of the world's most popular painting, the portrait of the Mona Lisa. This is almost a detective story about how the painting was created, who is depicted in it, how attempts to unravel the mysterious smile of Mona Lisa have been going on for 500 years, how the painting was stolen, and much more that is interesting not only to art lovers, but also to the general reader.

Nikolai Zabolotsky has a request-spell:

Love painting, poets!

Only she, the only one, is given

Souls of changeable signs

Transfer to canvas.

But why only poets? Everyone loves painting. Looking at pictures has been a passion since ancient times. Unlike literature, paints from canvases affect a person immediately, without delay, spontaneously. Paintings affect not so much our intellect as they affect our heart and soul, and excite our subconscious. In short, painting is a super-emotional art.

The antithesis “realistic - unrealistic” has long been outdated. Somehow, at the dawn of the birth of photography, artists became worried: the death of painting had come. But their fears were in vain. Henri Matisse said more than once: “When you see a cake through the glass of a shop window, your mouth waters not nearly as much as if you walked into a store and smelled it.” This is of course true. But it is also true that a painted cake (a woman, the sea, or whatever) can have a wider range of perception than the depicted object itself. The artist sees something more in the cake (the woman, the sea...), allowing us to see it too. This “something” is art.

In one of his letters to Dmitry Merezhkovsky, Alexander Benois wrote in February 1903:

“For us, the world, despite the triumphant Americanism, the railways, telegraphs and telephones, all the modern cruelty and vulgarity of life, all the vile distortion of the earth - for us the world is still full of charm, and most importantly, full of promises. Not everything is still a railroad bed, not everything is pavement: in some places green grass still grows, flowers shine and smell. And among these flowers is the main and most mysterious, the most enchanting, the most divine - art...”

Art, and painting in particular, increases the capacity of our lives thousands of times. But art is not only beauty and goodness. According to Freud, it represents the only area of ​​social life where humanity can manifest its ineradicable thirst for the satisfaction of incestuous and aggressive instincts, which are so strictly persecuted in life. “In art alone,” said Sigmund Freud, “it still happens that a person tormented by desires creates something similar to satisfaction...”

Visual illustrations of the thesis of the father of psychoanalysis are the paintings of Bosch, Goya, Salvador Dali and other surrealist modernists.

Art is always under fire from criticism. Henri Matisse said: “It is easy to criticize! Art critics are failed artists: they see shortcomings, but they themselves could not get rid of them.” And even before Matisse, at the end of the 18th century, Antoine de Rivarol noted: “In art, the hardworking part of the nation creates, while its idle part judges and decides.”

You will not find art criticism in this book. I deliberately avoided her. My goal is to highlight some of my favorite artists. About their life, work, love and suffering. About how they fought against the inertia of the public and struggled in the grip of poverty, chased fame, were carried away by women... In short, these are biographical sketches about Western and Russian artists with very subjective variations like “My Salvador Dali” or “My Isaac Levitan.” At least that’s what their author thinks about them and imagines. You may not agree with my assessments, have your own opinion. But one thing should unite us - LOVE FOR PAINTING.

Yuri Bezelyansky, November 1998

We cannot comprehend Your truth...

Michelangelo

Search with your eyes in the stream of oncoming faces

Always the same familiar features...

Mikhail Kuzmin

All our lives we are looking for someone: a loved one, the other half of our torn self, a woman, finally. Federico Fellini said about the heroines of his film “City of Women”: “I feel completely at their mercy. I feel good only with them: they are a myth, a mystery, uniqueness, charm... A woman is everything..."

Ah, the eternal circling around a woman! All these Madonnas, Beatrice, Laura, Juliet, Chloe, invented by the imagination of artists and poets or real creatures of blood and flesh - they always excite us men.

Perhaps she, too, was a very real woman who lived a long time ago, almost 500 years ago, we will talk about this later. Presumably in memory of her, Leonardo da Vinci painted a portrait, which became the object of worldwide worship.

In the painting, Mona Lisa sits in a chair against the backdrop of some fantastic landscape. The contours of the half-length portrait form a kind of pyramid, majestically rising above the base of the resting hands. The almost transparent skin on the face and neck seems to tremble from the heart pulsation, the light shimmers in the folds of clothing, in the veils on the hair. This subtle thrill makes the entire image soar. Floating Mona Lisa with a fluttering smile...

“La Gioconda” is the most famous and most mysterious painting of world painting, born from the brush of the brilliant Italian artist of the Renaissance. Another name for this painting is “Mona Lisa,” and the full title is “Portrait of Madame Lisa de Giocondo.” The painting depicts a portrait of the wife of the noble Florentine Francesco de Giocondo. Leonardo put his soul and all his virtuoso artistic skill into this painting. There is no other painting in the world that would enjoy such great respect and popularity as La Gioconda; it is not surprising that the largest number of copies were made from it, which were distributed throughout the world.

Many artists have repeatedly tried to repeat this masterpiece by Leonardo.

For example, a painting called “Donna Nuda” painted by an unknown artist.

Leonardo da Vinci himself valued La Gioconda most of all his creations; when, at the invitation of the French king, he left Italy and moved to live in France, he took it with him. The painting took about three years to complete, from 1503 to 1505.

Maybe somewhere this is what Leonardo’s medieval studio looked like. This is an engraving from 1845, in which the noble Madame Lisa, while posing for the artist, is entertained by musicians and artists. Leonardo deliberately invited musicians and artists to keep his model in a good mood.

The most mysterious part of the picture is the famous smile of Gioconda. The smile of Gioconda haunts artists and art historians who have copied tons of paper in an attempt to explain what this interesting, mysterious, barely noticeable smile of this noble lady could mean. Different people saw different and sometimes opposite features in her smile, such as pride, tenderness, coquetry, cruelty, modesty. However, there is no doubt that Mrs. Lisa de Giocondo was a very smart, extraordinary and strong-willed woman.

What do you see?

Some critics of Leonardo even undertake to argue that Gioconda’s smile is not a smile at all, but a predatory grin.

Not only art historians, but also psychologists analyzed this mysterious smile. So Sigmund Freud wrote about this picture: In the facial expression of the beautiful Florentine woman we see a perfect image of the antagonism that rules a woman’s love life, restraint and seduction, sacrificial tenderness and recklessly demanding sensuality. Leonardo, in the person of Mona Lisa, managed to reproduce the double meaning of her smile, the promise of boundless tenderness and ominous threats.

Of all the thoughts that I read and found on the Internet, while writing this article, I liked the thought of one psychologist the most - Paul Ekman. Paul Ekman has done a lot of research on human facial expressions. In his opinion, the smile of Mrs. Lisa de Giocondo can be classified as a so-called flirting smile. This is such a playful flirtatious smile when a woman deliberately averts her eyes from the object of her interest (some handsome guy), and then again casts an instant sly glance at him, which is instantly averted, only the guy notices that a beauty is looking at him. In life, such a fleeting flirting smile lasts only short moments, and Leonardo’s great merit and skill is that he captured exactly this short-term instant smile of Gioconda in his painting.

P.S. Spirits are speaking: In the light of computer technology, the famous painting by Leonardo da Vinci has received a funny application: “La Gioconda” has become one of the most beautiful wallpapers on the desktop of personal computers. After all, oddly enough, many computer users prefer to set “La Gioconda” as a screensaver, probably subconsciously attracted by her mysterious smile.

The masterpiece is admired by more than eight million visitors every year. However, what we see today only vaguely resembles the original creation. More than 500 years separate us from the time the painting was created...

THE PICTURE CHANGES OVER THE YEARS

Mona Lisa changes like a real woman... After all, today we have before us an image of a faded, faded woman’s face, yellowed and darkened in those places where previously the viewer could see brown and green tones (it’s not for nothing that Leonardo’s contemporaries more than once admired the fresh and bright colors of the Italian paintings artist).

The portrait did not escape the ravages of time and damage caused by numerous restorations. And the wooden supports became wrinkled and covered with cracks. The properties of pigments, binders and varnish have undergone changes under the influence of chemical reactions over the years.

The honorable right to create a series of photographs of the Mona Lisa in the highest resolution was given to the French engineer Pascal Cotte, the inventor of the multispectral camera. The result of his work was detailed photographs of the painting in the range from ultraviolet to infrared spectrum.

It is worth noting that Pascal spent about three hours creating photographs of the “naked” painting, that is, without a frame or protective glass. At the same time, he used a unique scanner of his own invention. The result of the work was 13 photographs of a masterpiece with 240-megapixel resolution. The quality of these images is absolutely unique. It took two years to analyze and verify the data obtained.

RECONSTRUCTED BEAUTY

In 2007, at the exhibition “The Genius of Da Vinci,” 25 secrets of the painting were revealed for the first time. Here, for the first time, visitors were able to enjoy the original color of the Mona Lisa's paints (that is, the color of the original pigments that da Vinci used).

The photographs presented the picture to readers in its original form, similar to how Leonardo’s contemporaries saw it: a sky the color of lapis lazuli, a warm pink complexion, clearly drawn mountains, green trees...

Photographs by Pascal Cottet showed that Leonardo had not completed the painting. We observe changes in the position of the model's hand. It can be seen that at first Mona Lisa supported the bedspread with her hand. It also became noticeable that the facial expression and smile were somewhat different at first. And the stain in the corner of the eye is water damage in the varnish coating, most likely as a result of the painting hanging for some time in Napoleon's bathroom. We can also determine that some parts of the painting have become transparent over time. And see that, contrary to modern opinion, Mona Lisa had eyebrows and eyelashes!

WHO IS IN THE PICTURE

“Leonardo undertook to make a portrait of Mona Lisa, his wife, for Francesco Giocondo, and, having worked for four years, left it unfinished. While painting the portrait, he kept people playing the lyre or singing, and there were always jesters who moved away from her melancholy and kept her cheerful. That’s why her smile is so pleasant.”

This is the only evidence of how the painting was created belongs to da Vinci’s contemporary, the artist and writer Giorgio Vasari (though he was only eight years old when Leonardo died). Based on his words, for several centuries now, the female portrait, on which the master worked in 1503-1506, has been considered an image of 25-year-old Lisa, the wife of the Florentine magnate Francesco del Giocondo. This is what Vasari wrote - and everyone believed it. But most likely, this is a mistake, and there is another woman in the portrait.

There is a lot of evidence: firstly, the headdress is a widow’s mourning veil (meanwhile, Francesco del Giocondo lived a long life), and secondly, if there was a customer, why didn’t Leonardo give him the work? It is known that the artist kept the painting in his possession, and in 1516, leaving Italy, he took it to France; King Francis I paid 4,000 gold florins for it in 1517 - fantastic money at that time. However, he didn’t get “La Gioconda” either.

The artist did not part with the portrait until his death. In 1925, art historians suggested that the half depicts Duchess Constance d'Avalos - the widow of Federico del Balzo, the mistress of Giuliano Medici (brother of Pope Leo X). The basis for the hypothesis was a sonnet by the poet Eneo Irpino, which mentions her portrait by Leonardo. In 1957, the Italian Carlo Pedretti put forward a different version: in fact, it was Pacifica Brandano, another mistress of Giuliano Medici, the widow of a Spanish nobleman, who had a gentle and cheerful disposition, was well educated and could brighten up any company. It is no wonder that such a cheerful person. , like Giuliano, became close to her, thanks to which their son Ippolito was born.

In the papal palace, Leonardo was provided with a workshop with movable tables and the diffused light he loved so much. The artist worked slowly, carefully detailing the details, especially the face and eyes. Pacifica (if that's her) came out as if alive in the picture. The spectators were amazed and often frightened: it seemed to them that instead of the woman in the picture, a monster, some kind of sea siren, was about to appear. Even the landscape behind her contained something mysterious. The famous smile was in no way associated with the idea of ​​righteousness. Rather, there was something in the realm of witchcraft here. It is this mysterious smile that stops, alarms, fascinates and calls the viewer, as if forcing him to enter into a telepathic connection.

Renaissance artists expanded the philosophical and artistic horizons of creativity to the maximum. Man has entered into competition with God, he imitates him, he is obsessed with a great desire to create. He is captured by the real world from which the Middle Ages turned away for the sake of the spiritual world.

Leonardo da Vinci dissected corpses. He dreamed of taking over nature by learning to change the direction of rivers and drain swamps; he wanted to steal the art of flight from birds. Painting was an experimental laboratory for him, where he constantly searched for new and new means of expression. The artist's genius allowed him to see the true essence of nature behind the living physicality of forms. And here we cannot help but say about the master’s favorite subtle chiaroscuro (sfumato), which for him was a kind of halo that replaced the medieval halo: this is equally a divine-human and natural sacrament.

The sfumato technique made it possible to enliven landscapes and surprisingly subtly convey the play of feelings on faces in all its variability and complexity. What Leonardo didn’t invent, hoping to realize his plans! The master tirelessly mixes various substances, trying to obtain eternal colors. His brush is so light, so transparent that in the 20th century even X-ray analysis would not reveal traces of its impact. After making a few strokes, he puts the painting aside to let it dry. His eye distinguishes the slightest nuances: sun glare and shadows of some objects on others, a shadow on the pavement and a shadow of sadness or a smile on his face. The general laws of drawing and perspective construction only suggest the path. Our own searches reveal that light has the ability to bend and straighten lines: “Immersing objects in a light-air environment means, in essence, immersing them in infinity.”

WORSHIP

According to experts, her name was Mona Lisa Gherardini del Giocondo, ... Although, maybe Isabella Gualando, Isabella d'Este, Filiberta of Savoy, Constance d'Avalos, Pacifica Brandano... Who knows?

The ambiguity of its origins only contributed to its fame. She passed through the centuries in the radiance of her mystery. For many years, the portrait of a “court lady in a transparent veil” was a decoration of royal collections. She was seen either in Madame de Maintenon's bedroom or in Napoleon's chambers in the Tuileries. Louis XIII, who frolicked as a child in the Grand Gallery where it hung, refused to give it up to the Duke of Buckingham, saying: “It is impossible to part with a painting that is considered the best in the world.” Everywhere – both in castles and in city houses – they tried to “teach” their daughters the famous smile.

This is how a beautiful image turned into a fashionable stamp. The popularity of the painting has always been high among professional artists (more than 200 copies of La Gioconda are known). She gave birth to a whole school, inspired such masters as Raphael, Ingres, David, Corot. Since the end of the 19th century, letters began to be sent to “Mona Lisa” with declarations of love. And yet, in the bizarrely unfolding fate of the picture, some touch, some stunning event was missing. And it happened!

On August 21, 1911, newspapers came out with a sensational headline: “La Gioconda” has been stolen!” The painting was energetically searched for. They mourned for it. They feared that it had died, burned by an awkward photographer who photographed it with a magnesium flash in the open air. In France, “La Gioconda” was even mourned street musicians. “Baldassare Castiglione” by Raphael, installed in the Louvre on the site of the missing one, did not suit anyone - after all, it was just an “ordinary” masterpiece.

La Gioconda was found in January 1913, hidden in a hiding place under the bed. The thief, a poor Italian emigrant, wanted to return the painting to his homeland, Italy.

When the idol of centuries returned to the Louvre, the writer Théophile Gautier sarcastically remarked that the smile had become “mocking” and even “triumphant”? especially in cases where it was addressed to people who are not inclined to trust angelic smiles. The public was divided into two warring camps. If for some it was just a picture, albeit an excellent one, then for others it was almost a deity. In 1920, in the Dada magazine, avant-garde artist Marcel Duchamp added a bushy mustache to a photograph of “the most mysterious of smiles” and accompanied the cartoon with the initial letters of the words “she can’t stand it.” In this form the opponents of idolatry expressed their irritation.

There is a version that this drawing is an early version of the Mona Lisa. It’s interesting that here the woman is holding a lush branch in her hands. Photo: Wikipedia.

MAIN SECRET...

...Hidden, of course, in her smile. As you know, there are different smiles: happy, sad, embarrassed, seductive, sour, sarcastic. But none of these definitions are suitable in this case. The archives of the Leonardo da Vinci Museum in France contain many different interpretations of the riddle of the famous portrait.

A certain “general specialist” assures that the person depicted in the picture is pregnant; her smile is an attempt to catch the movement of the fetus. The next one insists that she is smiling at her lover... Leonardo. Some even think that the painting depicts a man because “his smile is very attractive to homosexuals.”

According to the British psychologist Digby Questega, a supporter of the latter version, in this work Leonardo showed his latent (hidden) homosexuality. The smile of “La Gioconda” expresses a wide range of feelings: from embarrassment and indecision (what will contemporaries and descendants say?) to hope for understanding and favor.

From the point of view of today's ethics, this assumption looks quite convincing. Let us remember, however, that the morals of the Renaissance were much more liberated than today, and Leonardo did not make a secret of his sexual orientation. His students were always more beautiful than talented; His servant Giacomo Salai enjoyed special favor. Another similar version? "Mona Lisa" is a self-portrait of the artist. A recent computer comparison of the anatomical features of the faces of Gioconda and Leonardo da Vinci (based on the artist’s self-portrait made in red pencil) showed that geometrically they match perfectly. Thus, Gioconda can be called the female form of a genius!.. But then Gioconda’s smile is his smile.

Such a mysterious smile was indeed characteristic of Leonardo; as evidenced, for example, by Verrocchio’s painting “Tobias with the Fish,” in which the Archangel Michael is painted with Leonardo da Vinci.

Sigmund Freud also expressed his opinion about the portrait (naturally, in the spirit of Freudianism): “The smile of Gioconda is the smile of the artist’s mother.” The idea of ​​the founder of psychoanalysis was later supported by Salvador Dali: “In the modern world there is a real cult of Gioconda worship. There have been many attempts on La Gioconda’s life, several years ago there were even attempts to throw stones at her - a clear resemblance to aggressive behavior towards one’s own mother. If you remember what he wrote about Leonardo da Vinci Freud, as well as everything that his paintings say about the artist’s subconscious, we can easily conclude that when Leonardo was working on La Gioconda, he was in love with his mother. Quite unconsciously, he painted a new creature, endowed with all possible signs of motherhood. At the same time, she smiles somehow ambiguously. The whole world saw and still sees in this ambiguous smile a very definite shade of eroticism. And what happens to the ill-fated viewer, who is in the grip of the Oedipus complex? He comes to the museum. A museum is a public institution. In his subconscious, it is simply a brothel or simply a brothel. And in that very brothel he sees an image that is a prototype of the collective image of all mothers. The painful presence of his own mother, casting a gentle glance and giving an ambiguous smile, pushes him to commit a crime. He grabs the first thing he can get his hands on, say a stone, and tears the picture apart, thus committing an act of matricide.”

DOCTORS MAKE A DIAGNOSIS BY SMILE...

For some reason, Gioconda’s smile especially haunts doctors. For them, the portrait of Mona Lisa is an ideal opportunity to practice making a diagnosis without fear of the consequences of a medical error.

Thus, the famous American otolaryngologist Christopher Adur from Oakland (USA) announced that Gioconda has facial paralysis. In his practice, he even called this paralysis “Mona Lisa disease,” apparently achieving a psychotherapeutic effect by instilling in patients a sense of involvement in high art. One Japanese doctor is absolutely sure that Mona Lisa had high cholesterol. Evidence of this is a typical nodule on the skin between the left eyelid and the base of the nose, typical for such a disease. Which means: Mona Lisa didn't eat well.

Joseph Borkowski, an American dentist and painting expert, believes that the woman in the painting, judging by the expression on her face, has lost many teeth. While studying enlarged photographs of the masterpiece, Borkowski discovered scars around the Mona Lisa's mouth. “Her facial expression is typical of people who have lost their front teeth,” says the expert. Neurophysiologists also contributed to solving the mystery. In their opinion, it’s not about the model or the artist, but about the audience. Why does it seem to us that Mona Lisa's smile fades away and then appears again? Harvard University neurophysiologist Margaret Livingston believes that the reason for this is not the magic of Leonardo da Vinci’s art, but the peculiarities of human vision: the appearance and disappearance of a smile depends on which part of Mona Lisa’s face a person’s gaze is directed at. There are two types of vision: central, detail-oriented, and peripheral, less clear. If you are not focused on the eyes of “nature” or are trying to take in her entire face with your gaze, Gioconda smiles at you. However, as soon as you focus your gaze on your lips, the smile immediately disappears. Moreover, the smile of Mona Lisa can be reproduced, says Margaret Livingston. Why, when working on a copy, you need to try to “draw a mouth without looking at it.” But only the great Leonardo seemed to know how to do this.

There is a version that the artist himself is depicted in the picture. Photo: Wikipedia.

Some practicing psychologists say that the Secret of Mona Lisa is simple: it is smiling to yourself. Actually, this is the advice given to modern women: think about how wonderful, sweet, kind, unique you are - you are worth rejoicing and smiling at yourself. Carry your smile naturally, let it be honest and open, coming from the depths of your soul. A smile will soften your face, erase from it traces of fatigue, inaccessibility, rigidity that so scare men away. It will give your face a mysterious expression. And then you will have as many fans as the Mona Lisa.

THE SECRET OF SHADOWS AND TINTS

The mysteries of the immortal creation have haunted scientists from all over the world for many years. Scientists previously used X-rays to understand how Leonardo da Vinci created the shadows on his great masterpiece. The Mona Lisa was one of seven works by Da Vinci studied by scientist Philip Walter and his colleagues. The study showed how ultra-thin layers of glaze and paint were used to achieve a smooth transition from light to dark. An X-ray beam allows you to examine layers without damaging the canvas

The technique used by Da Vinci and other Renaissance artists is known as sfumato. With its help, it was possible to create smooth transitions of tones or colors on the canvas.

One of the most shocking discoveries of our research is that you will not see a single stroke or fingerprint on the canvas,” said Walter, a member of the group.

Everything is so perfect! That’s why Da Vinci’s paintings were impossible to analyze—they didn’t provide easy clues,” she continued.

Previous research had already established the basic aspects of the sfumato technology, but Walter's team has uncovered new details about how the great master was able to achieve this effect. The team used an X-ray to determine the thickness of each layer applied to the canvas. As a result, it was possible to find out that Leonardo da Vinci was able to apply layers with a thickness of only a couple of micrometers (thousandth of a millimeter), the total layer thickness did not exceed 30 - 40 micrometers.

A MYSTERIOUS LANDSCAPE

Behind Mona Lisa, the legendary canvas by Leonardo da Vinci depicts not an abstract, but a very concrete landscape - the outskirts of the northern Italian town of Bobbio, says researcher Carla Glori, whose arguments are cited on Monday, January 10, by the Daily Telegraph newspaper.

Glory came to such conclusions after the journalist, writer, discoverer of Caravaggio’s grave and head of the National Italian Committee for the Protection of Cultural Heritage Silvano Vinceti reported that he saw mysterious letters and numbers on Leonardo’s canvas. In particular, under the arch of the bridge located to the left of the Mona Lisa (that is, from the viewer’s point of view, on the right side of the picture), the numbers “72” were discovered. Vinceti himself considers them a reference to some mystical theories of Leonardo. According to Glory, this is an indication of the year 1472, when the Trebbia river flowing past Bobbio overflowed its banks, demolished the old bridge and forced the Visconti family, which ruled in those parts, to build a new one. She considers the rest of the view to be the landscape that opened from the windows of the local castle.

Previously, Bobbio was known primarily as the place where the huge monastery of San Colombano is located, which served as one of the prototypes for “The Name of the Rose” by Umberto Eco.

In her conclusions, Carla Glory goes even further: if the scene is not the center of Italy, as scientists previously believed, based on the fact that Leonardo began work on the canvas in 1503-1504 in Florence, but the north, then his model is not his wife merchant Lisa del Giocondo, and the daughter of the Duke of Milan Bianca Giovanna Sforza.

Her father, Lodovico Sforza, was one of Leonardo's main customers and a famous philanthropist.
Glory believes that the artist and inventor visited him not only in Milan, but also in Bobbio, a town with a library famous in those days, also subject to the Milanese rulers. However, skeptical experts claim that both the numbers and letters discovered by Vinceti in the pupils of the Mona Lisa, nothing more than cracks that formed on the canvas over the centuries... However, no one can rule out that they were specially applied to the canvas...

IS THE SECRET REVEALED?

Last year, Professor Margaret Livingston of Harvard University said that Mona Lisa's smile is visible only if you look at other features of her face rather than at the lips of the woman depicted in the portrait.

Margaret Livingston presented her theory at the annual meeting of the American Association for the Advancement of Science in Denver, Colorado.

The disappearance of a smile when changing the angle of view is due to the way the human eye processes visual information, says an American scientist.

There are two types of vision: direct and peripheral. Direct perceives details well, worse - shadows.

The elusive nature of Mona Lisa's smile can be explained by the fact that almost all of it is located in the low-frequency range of light and is well perceived only by peripheral vision, said Margaret Livingston.

The more you look directly at your face, the less your peripheral vision is used.

The same thing happens if you look at one letter of printed text. At the same time, other letters are perceived worse, even at close range.

Da Vinci used this principle and therefore the smile of Mona Lisa is visible only if you look at the eyes or other parts of the face of the woman depicted in the portrait...

Everything has its mysteries, and art is no exception. One of the unsolved mysteries is the painting “La Gioconda” (“Mona Lisa”) by Leonardo da Vinci.

There are numerous discussions around her regarding the beauty and smile of the character in the picture. All viewers and critics agree on only one thing - the picture makes an amazing and unusual impression. Explanations for the mysterious smile appear very often. There are those who believe that the flickering smile effect is due to the distinctive features of human vision. Others argue that the painting's smile is obvious when the observer looks at any detail of the girl's face other than her lips.

Be sure to visit the Louvre while in Paris and look at Leonardo da Vinci's masterpiece. However, try not to be alone with the painting, because many strange cases are associated with it. Some people felt melancholy, sad, or began to cry after looking at the painting for a long time. Although, it is almost impossible to be alone with this picture today; the hall is usually literally packed with tourists.

Leonardo da Vinci was called to Rome by Giuliano de' Medici to paint a portrait of Signora Pacifica Brandano. She was the widow of a Spanish nobleman, with a gentle and cheerful character, a good education and was an adornment to society. A workshop was set up for the artist. The girl had to maintain a constant expression on her face, for this purpose during the sessions music was played, songs were sung and poems were read.

The portrait was painted for a long time, carefully drawing out the smallest detail. That's why the girl in the picture looks like she's alive. Some people had a feeling of fear that a monster or something else might appear in the picture. The famous smile captivates with its mystery, evoking extraordinary sensations, it calls the viewer. Despite this, the picture has been replicated in the world more than any other; it is everywhere, including wallpaper for smartphones (there are such, for example, on appdecor.org).

Many claim that Leonardo himself had a similar smile. This can be seen in the painting of his teacher, where Da Vinci served as the model. It is because of this that some have suggested that Mona Lisa is a self-portrait of the artist in female form. A computer comparison of the painting with a self-portrait did not refute this assumption. However, despite this, it is too early to say that this is a true version.

Pacifica's fate cannot be called easy. The marriage was short-lived due to the death of her husband, Giuliano Medici did not want to take his mistress as his wife, and his son was poisoned. Soon the Medici had to marry for convenience; he did not want to upset the bride with a portrait of his mistress, so Leonardo had to change the painting, which was already completed.

Pacifica had a tendency to attract men and seem to take their lives. There is an assumption that her nickname was “Gioconda”. This word is translated as “playing.” Signora Pacifica left her mark not only on her lover, but also on the artist, who became increasingly worse after painting the portrait. Da Vinci begins to feel strange. Apathy, which was not there before, and fatigue fall upon him. The hand shakes more and more and it becomes more difficult to work.

After finishing the portrait and leaving for France, Leonardo created a new palace for the king, but the work was no longer of the same high level as before. He lost energy and became apathetic. Then for weeks he does not get out of bed, and his right hand ceases to obey. At the age of 67, the artist dies.

Initially, it was believed that the girl depicted in the painting was 25-year-old Lisa, the wife of the Florentine magnate Giocondo. Actually, that’s why the portrait in some albums and reference books had an ambiguous name - “La Gioconda. Mona Lisa."

A. Venturi in 1925 admitted that the portrait depicts Constanza d’Avalos, the mistress of Giuliano Medici. The assumption was based on a poem by the poet Eneo Irpino, but there is no other evidence of the veracity of this version.

It was only in 1957 that C. Pedretti proposed the idea of ​​Brandano's Pacifica. It is considered the most correct, thanks to the documents and the circumstances described above. There is an opinion that Pacifica was an energy vampire. These are people whose aura volume is smaller than that of ordinary people, as a result of which they can be absorbers of the vital energy of their relatives, causing apathy, weakening of the body and serious disturbances in well-being. That's why Pacifica's unusual portrait has such an impact on people who look at it for a long time.

We should not forget about the experiments of Leonardo, who wanted his paintings to evoke strong emotions. He dreamed of making the viewer horrified or, conversely, bewitching him. His knowledge of anatomy, “sfumato”, chiaroscuro, the mysterious smile of the woman in the portrait and drawing of the smallest details - all this created a living creation.

Destruction of “Gioconda’s Smile” would be a crime, because in the world there are many paintings that affect people. We just need to take measures to ensure that these paintings influence people less. For example, limit the time spent near them, or warn visitors.