Post by Willow on Dec 9, 2015 11:58:41 GMT 9.5
The best known smile in history may finally be letting us in on the joke
Innovative analysis of Leonardo da Vinci’s Mona Lisa has revealed another portrait underneath the 500-year-old masterpiece.
It is this hidden woman, according to a BBC documentary, that is the real Mona Lisa.
And the painting that has beguiled for centuries and would be impossible to price should the Louvre ever decide to sell up? That is really Mona Pacifica, one-time lover of Leonardo patron Giuliano di Lorenzi de Medici, according to an acclaimed art historian.
The Mona Lisa
The documentary, which is due to be broadcast on BBC2 in the UK tonight, shows the results of a new form of spectroscopic analysis conducted on the painting over the past decade. A “ghostly outline” of a distinctly different female who is looking in a different direction is shown emerging from the analysis.
This Layer Amplification Method — which projects a series of intense lights on to a painting before a camera measures the lights’ reflections — can “analyse what is happening inside the layers of the paint” according to its creator, the French physicist Pascal Cotte.
The presenter of the documentary, the art historian Andrew Graham-Dixon, said it was clear that the “hidden image” was the original Lisa Gherardini, the wife of a Florentine silk merchant.
He said the digital image created from the analysis was a “perfect match for the historical record” adding the documentary evidence on the visible part of the painting had never tallied with it being a portrait of Lisa Gherardini.
For years there has been speculation that another “Mona Lisa” from Leonardo’s hand existed.
The main authority that the work hanging in the Louvre shows Lisa was an account written by Giorgio Vasari written 30 years after Leonardo’s death. Yet the artist is recorded as having said the finished painting was not of Lisa and was of a “certain Florentine woman”.
Mr Graham-Dixon said the existence of a second painting had been confirmed — Lisa had been sitting under the nose of the painting hanging in the Louvre. “Leonardo did indeed paint two versions of the Mona Lisa, but they are both on the same panel of wood. The first version was painted beneath the picture we see today.”
The Louvre declined to comment.
There was scepticism from other quarters. Martin Kemp, emeritus professor of the history of art at the University of Oxford, said the “idea that there is that picture as it were hiding underneath the surface is untenable”.
Mr Graham-Dixon was unrepentant. He said the “circle of the picture’s mystery has finally been squared”.
He added: “There will probably be some reluctance on the part of the authorities at the Louvre in changing the title of the painting because that’s what we’re talking about — it’s goodbye Mona Lisa, she is somebody else.”
The Times
Innovative analysis of Leonardo da Vinci’s Mona Lisa has revealed another portrait underneath the 500-year-old masterpiece.
It is this hidden woman, according to a BBC documentary, that is the real Mona Lisa.
And the painting that has beguiled for centuries and would be impossible to price should the Louvre ever decide to sell up? That is really Mona Pacifica, one-time lover of Leonardo patron Giuliano di Lorenzi de Medici, according to an acclaimed art historian.
The Mona Lisa
The documentary, which is due to be broadcast on BBC2 in the UK tonight, shows the results of a new form of spectroscopic analysis conducted on the painting over the past decade. A “ghostly outline” of a distinctly different female who is looking in a different direction is shown emerging from the analysis.
This Layer Amplification Method — which projects a series of intense lights on to a painting before a camera measures the lights’ reflections — can “analyse what is happening inside the layers of the paint” according to its creator, the French physicist Pascal Cotte.
The presenter of the documentary, the art historian Andrew Graham-Dixon, said it was clear that the “hidden image” was the original Lisa Gherardini, the wife of a Florentine silk merchant.
He said the digital image created from the analysis was a “perfect match for the historical record” adding the documentary evidence on the visible part of the painting had never tallied with it being a portrait of Lisa Gherardini.
For years there has been speculation that another “Mona Lisa” from Leonardo’s hand existed.
The main authority that the work hanging in the Louvre shows Lisa was an account written by Giorgio Vasari written 30 years after Leonardo’s death. Yet the artist is recorded as having said the finished painting was not of Lisa and was of a “certain Florentine woman”.
Mr Graham-Dixon said the existence of a second painting had been confirmed — Lisa had been sitting under the nose of the painting hanging in the Louvre. “Leonardo did indeed paint two versions of the Mona Lisa, but they are both on the same panel of wood. The first version was painted beneath the picture we see today.”
The Louvre declined to comment.
There was scepticism from other quarters. Martin Kemp, emeritus professor of the history of art at the University of Oxford, said the “idea that there is that picture as it were hiding underneath the surface is untenable”.
Mr Graham-Dixon was unrepentant. He said the “circle of the picture’s mystery has finally been squared”.
He added: “There will probably be some reluctance on the part of the authorities at the Louvre in changing the title of the painting because that’s what we’re talking about — it’s goodbye Mona Lisa, she is somebody else.”
The Times