Caught Mona Lisa's Smile on Channel 5 yesterday before reunion dinner. Josh ever said the movie was the female version of Dead Poets' Society. I watched the former first hence i like the movie on its own. Even now after viewing the latter, the same preference stands :)
The show and Mona Lisa has near-zero bearing on each other...except that Julia Roberts was an art history teacher in the movie & Mona Lisa is a piece of art. Anyhow, i've always wondered what is so fascinating about the portrait. Cos seriously, i never thought the woman was smiling beautifully (no offence tho). So i hit the net (i'm so free these few days...).
Voila! Wikipedia has everything!
Some info abt the portrait
Mona Lisa (also known as La Gioconda) is a 16th century portrait painted in oil on a poplar by Leonardo da Vinci during the Italian Renaissance The work is owned by the French government and is on the wall in the Musée du Louvre in Paris, France with the title Portrait of Lisa Gherardini, wife of Francesco del Giocondo.
The portrait was not well known until the mid-19th century when artists of the emerging Symbolist movement began to appreciate it, and associated it with their ideas about feminine mystique
My own blabble after Wikipe-ing
Mr Leo started painting it in 1503 but left the portrait unfinished til shortly before he passed away in 1519.
A critic described the figure as a kind of mythic embodiment of eternal femininity, who is "older than the rocks among which she sits" and who "has been dead many times and learned the secrets of the grave." What a way to describe eternity...
Why named Mona Lisa? Well...the lady's name is Lisa and Mona is a form of Modern Italian address similar to Ma’am, Madam, or my lady in English. (In Italian, ma donna means "My lady". This became madonna and its contraction mona). I wonder if that was why the pop queen, Madonna named herself as such?
The portrait reflects some interesting traits of its time. Mona Lisa sits markedly upright with her arms folded, a sign of her reserved posture. And erm..the next comment was actually very refreshing to me cos i never noticed that before - Mona Lisa has no eyebrows and eyelashes! Apparently, it was considered unsightly hence it was common at this time for genteel women to pluck them out.
I was ignorantly oblivious to another observation since I always focused on her facial expression and forgot the other components. The sitter is depicted before an imaginary landscape of undulating valleys and rivers. Coupled the lady's faint smile, the portrait gives a calming feel -said to be characteristic of Leonardo's style & reflective of his idea of a link connecting humanity and nature.
Well.. after blogging so much, am i captivated to want to see the real mccoy? Nope. But i would check it out if i have a chance to visit Lourve...for all the paintings, not just this one.
