Smile of Gioconda

Chapter 2 Leonardo da Vinci Leonardo da Vinci (Leonardo da Vinci) - Italian painter, sculptor, encyclopedist, engineer, inventor, one of the most outstanding representatives of the culture of the High Renaissance, was born on April 15, 1452 in the city of Vinci near Florence (Italy).

Recently I accidentally read an excerpt from G. Chicherin’s book about Mozart.
The author, comparing Mozart's fortieth symphony with the painting of Leonardo da Vinci, gives his commentary on the portrait of Mona Lisa.

“This portrait depicts a young woman either with a smile on her lips or with some special facial expression similar to a smile. But it is not joy or fun that this face expresses: one feels something tender, deep and at the same time passionate and sensual in this amazing portrait.” “A matte face emerges from the haze.< ...>The look of brown eyes produces a dual impression. He is both chaste and seductive, languor and irony, slyness and charm shine in him. An incomprehensible smile plays on the lips.” - G. Chicherin.

In G. Chicherin’s commentary, I drew attention to this dual impression produced by the eyes and smile of Mona Lisa. And I remembered that I once wrote about this too.
Here's my version.

I have always believed that any art is accessible to an ordinary and slightly developed person - in any case, to determine whether it is “beautiful” or whether it is aesthetically impressive...
However, you can read a lot of such horror stories about the Mona Lisa, and about Mozart’s fortieth symphony, and about other masterpieces of art. And not only among philosophers, but also among art critics.
Do not forget that a real artist, first of all, tends to see colors, tones, harmony of colors, image... Just like a musician - purity, timbres of sounds, harmony and musical image... And each genre has its own specific aesthetic and professional criteria .

Therefore, regarding Mona Lisa, it is more advisable to refer to the comments of portrait painters...

I myself, like a common person, having looked at several versions of the Mona Lisa image on the Internet, I noticed that in classic version The painting of Mona Lisa's face has some fullness. And this detail creates the impression of a modest woman. In other interpretations this is lost.
In others, the smile restrained on the lips still remains, but the fullness disappears and disappears this effect. Fullness gives greater meaning and uniqueness to a portrait... where said modesty is the basic impression and conveyed vision of the artist.

It is interesting that as you approach the picture, the strict features change to simply feminine attractiveness.
A smile, on the contrary, when approaching the image, most emphasizes its restraint, at times returning to the image, namely, the non-smiling nature of a serious woman.

The eyes (when approaching the image) more convey clarity of vision and inner joy...
However, this joy and smile of the eyes in this sideways and slightly ironic look is also conveyed as “forced” and rare.

That is, this nature does not tend to smile often and openly, as is common among artists, pop stars and ordinary simple-minded (open-minded) people. modern girls and women.

Open and Hollywood smiles are undoubtedly always beautiful on a pretty woman. And apparently, that’s why such smiles are characteristic of the pretty ones.

And Mona Lisa looks like an ordinary woman, not used to admiration and male attention. Her adornment, like many other women of similar appearance, is seriousness.

However, the Mona Lisa looks more than just a smile (and modesty in psychological portrait) is quite feminine - she already has plump hands and facial features, an ordinary woman’s chin.
The folds at the bottom of the eyes add personality to her look. They might not have gone to others.

This painting could be jokingly called: "Mona Lisa or not" beautiful women can not be".
The same idea is duplicated against the background by the landscape, the natural nature of which cannot but attract people.

But in the end, I would like to return to the main thing: the smile of the Mona Lisa is like a clear sun in cloudy weather.
A similar smile is when a woman is a little offended by her man and suddenly forgives. Or when he finally likes a stranger...

Most likely, Leonardo da Vinci knew this woman and was able to reflect the beauty of her personality.

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. Collected under one cover literary portraits nine famous artists West and five Russians, 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. It's almost Detective story about how the painting was created, who is depicted in it, how attempts to unravel the mysterious smile of Gioconda have been going on for 500 years, how the painting was stolen, and about many other things that are 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 drawn 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 a canvas railway, 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 public life, where humanity can manifest its inextinguishable 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...

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 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 paintings by an Italian 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. Changed under the influence chemical reactions and the properties of pigments, binders and varnish over the years.

The honorary right to create a series of photographs of the "Mona Lisa" in highest resolution was given to the French engineer Pascal Cotte, 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 and 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 female portrait, on which the master worked in 1503-1506, is considered to be 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 so loved. The artist worked slowly, carefully detailing the details, especially the face and eyes. Pacifica (if it is 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 that one 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 for him an experimental laboratory, where he constantly searched for more and more new expressive means. 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 mention the master’s favorite subtle chiaroscuro (sfumato), which was a kind of halo for him, replacing 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. General laws drawing, constructing perspective 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. Long 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. WITH late XIX 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 published a sensational headline: "La Gioconda" has been stolen!" The painting was energetically searched for. They mourned over it. They feared that it had died, burned by an awkward photographer who was photographing it with a magnesium flash under open air. In France, even street musicians mourned La Gioconda. “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 magazine Dada, 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 in this case no good. 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 British psychologist Digby Questeg, a proponent latest 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 relaxed than those of 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 modern world There is a real cult of Giocondo worship. There were many attempts on Gioconda's life; several years ago there were even attempts to throw stones at her - a clear resemblance to aggressive behavior in relation to his own mother. If we remember what Freud wrote about Leonardo da Vinci, as well as everything that his paintings say about the artist’s subconscious, then we can easily conclude that when Leonardo was working on La Gioconda, he was in love with his mother. Completely unconsciously, he wrote a new being, endowed with all possible signs motherhood. At the same time, she smiles somehow ambiguously. The whole world saw and still sees today in this ambiguous smile a very definite shade of eroticism. And what happens to the unfortunate poor spectator, who is in the grip of the Oedipus complex? He comes to the museum. A museum is a public institution. In his subconscious it’s just a brothel or simply a brothel. And in that very brothel he sees an image that represents a prototype collective image 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 level 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 neuroscientist Margaret Livingston believes that the reason for this is not the magic of Leonardo da Vinci’s art, but the peculiarities human vision: the appearance and disappearance of a smile depends on which part of Gioconda’s face the 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, the advice follows modern women: think 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’s group member.

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 group used 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 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 along left hand from the Mona Lisa (that is, from the viewer’s point of view, on the right side of the picture), the numbers “72” were revealed. 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 pupils of the Mona Lisa, nothing more than cracks that formed on the canvas over the centuries... However, no one can exclude the possibility 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 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 how human eye processes visual information, says the 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 only well perceived 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...