“MONA LISA”

Wairarapa Times-Age, 6 May 1939, Page 11

“MONA LISA”

THE MYSTERY OF A SMILE. Most widely discussed, perhaps, ol all paintings in the literature of art is Leonardo da Vinci’s famous masterpiece. “Mona Lisa," a priceless possession of the Louvre. Mellowed and darkened with age, but still triumphant over decay and devastation, this celebrated painting today occupies a rather inconspicuous place on a wall of the historic Paris gallery—yet thousands seek it out annually to observe for themselves the woman’s face which has presented a mystery to the world for more than 400 years.

Gossip and fable have made this remarkable woman a subtle and uncanny charmer, a veritable sphinx whose trace of a smile long ago ensnared the soul of a notable artist and caused him little by little to create an unfathomable riddle. It is this trace of a smile that no one yet to this day has been able to explain with any great degree of certainty. Enigmatic is the term most often applied to it. What is back of the smile no one knows, yet volumes have been written about it. Perhaps much has been discovered in this famous painting that was outside the thoughts of the artist himself. We do know, however, that da Vinci treasured the masterpiece, that it actually represented the expressions and perhaps the yearnings of his own soul, and that he refused to part with it to the very moment of his death. . Leonardo da Vinci, as virtually everyone knows, was one of the great est of the old masters. Born in Vinci, near the city of Florence, in 1452, he died in France, where he was in the employ of King Francis 1, in 1519. It was in 1502 that he began painting “Mona Lisa,” a task that stretched over a period of four years —some authorities say six years. According to an oft-repeated story, da Vinci met Mona Lisa, a Florentine lady of Neapolitan birth, the third wife of Francesco de Giocondo, and found her beautiful and fascinating. She was young and her spouse was elderly, and he had forced her to pawn her jewels ■and put on mourning so that she would not appear too attractive to other men. When da Vinci wished to paint her portrait she fell in with his plan, cast a spell upon him, and eventually, so the old story goes, became his mistress. Her only daughter had died and she was grieving; so, it is told, da Vinci hired musicians to play as she posed, with the idea of dispelling hei sadness. Dulcet strains from string and reed may have conjured up the inscrutable smile that appears in the painting. Doubt has been cast upon some parts of this old and popular story. For one thing, da Vinci was 50 years old and old for his age at the time he met the young wife of the wealthy merchant of Giocondo. His all-absorbing interests then, according to those who have written about him, were his art and his scientific investigations. He was not only a painter, it should be pointed out, but a sculptor, an architect, a musician, an art critic, a mechanical, civil, and military engineer, a botanist, an anatomist, an astronomer, and a geologist.