“Unlocking the Enigma: Discover the Hidden Mysteries Behind the Mona Lisa’s Smile”
And if that wasn’t enough, Leonardo had plenty of wealthy patrons banging on his door – one of them being the King of France! Why would he have accepted a commission from a ‘relative nobody’ such as good old Francesco del Giocondo?
Greenstein concludes his paper by describing two alternative scenarios to Vasari’s version. The lady in the portrait may have been Lisa del Giocondo, née Gherardi. But she did not sit for a commissioned portrait, rather Leonardo painted her from memory as an idealised beauty.
But Greenstein’s preferred option is that the lady in the frame is not based on a real person: ‘La Gioconda was painted by Leonardo on his own initiative to show what art can do … Painted for display, not for a patron, La Gioconda is a showpiece of art. It represents a fictive smiling woman, who is so natural that she seems to have been taken from life.’
This would, of course, explain why Leonardo never delivered the painting to anyone.
Whatever the case there, we cannot but agree with his concluding statements: ‘Whether Leonardo employed a model or fashioned her from memory or imagination does not matter, since no knowledge of the model is needed to appreciate the painting.’
It is interesting to note that all this scholarly disquisition and any clicks to watch this video from our abnormally attractive and scholarly audience would be limited, if it weren’t for the event which arguably most contributed to Mona Lisa’s stellar fame amongst the general public: its headline-making theft in 1911. What is also most surprising in all of this and once again shows the universe is quirky is that Leonardo’s smiling lady only became a piece of loot by total chance according to the person who stole it.
