"Sorry, Dan Brown: The Mona Lisa
Is Not Leonardo Da Vinci
Dressed As A Woman"
by Richard Abanes


An exclusive article for abanes.com
One of the most bizarre claims made by Dan Brown in his bestseller The Da Vinci Code relates to the famous Mona Lisa painting by Leonardo Da Vinci. According to Brown's novel, the Mona Lisa "is neither male nor female. It carries a subtle message of androgyny. It is a fusing of both." Brown additionally claims that that it may actually be a self-portrait of Leonardo Da Vinci, writing: "[C]omputerized analysis of the Mona Lisa and da Vinci's self-portraits confirms some startling points of congruency in their faces.

Brown offers an interesting theory, but it is one without any substance. In fact, it contradicts various factual points.

First, it is clear to any observer that the woman in the Mona Lisa is just that—a woman.

 Second, although the true identity of the woman in the Mona Lisa has been debated for many years, it was always thought to be Lisa Gherardini del Giocondo, the wife of Francesco del Giocondo, who was a wealthy Florentine merchant. As for Brown's oddball opinion, this was addressed in Leonardo: The Artist and the Man by biographer Serge Bramly, who matter-of-factly stated: "The most far-fetched theory is that this is a portrait of a man, or indeed a self-portrait by the artist."
Third, with regard to Brown's so-called "startling points of congruency" between the Mona Lisa and various "self-portraits" of the artist that were confirmed via computerized analysis of the images, this would have been difficult to achieve since there exists only one undisputed self-portrait of Leonardo—it was sketched in about 1512 and shows Leonardo as a gray-haired, long-bearded, sixty-year-old man (and it doesn't look very much like the Mona Lisa). And X-rays of the Mona Lisa reveal no congruency at all between it and the Leonardo's sketch of himself. The X-rays only show that the Mona Lisa's face was worked on repeatedly by the artist before he settled on the final version.

Finally, and most compelling, is the recent discovery at the Heidelburg University Library of a book from the sixteenth century. "[D]ated notes scribbled in the margins of a book by its owner in October 1503 confirm once and for all that Lisa del Giocondo was indeed the model for one of the most famous portraits in the world" (Reuters, Jan. 14, 2008). According to library authorities, the notes were made by Agostino Vespucci, a Florentine city official and acquaintance of Leonardo.


A photograph of the page from Cicero's letters where Agostino Vespucci noted in October 1503 that Leonardo was currently working on three pictures. One was a portrait of Lisa del Giocondo.


"'All doubts about the identity of the Mona Lisa have been eliminated by a discovery by Dr. Armin Schlechter,' a manuscript expert, the library said in a statement on Monday" (Reuters).

"'There is no reason for any lingering doubts that this is another woman,' Leipzig University art historian Frank Zoellner told German radio. 'One could even say that books written about all this in the past few years were unnecessary, had we known'" (Reuters).

And so the mystery is solved. The Mona Lisa is not a self-portrait of Leonardo Da Vinci.

Interestingly, one fact that Brown neglected to mention in his book is that the Mona Lisa has also been known for many years in art circles as "La Gioconda," a title which not only means happy or joyful woman in Italian, but also reflects the married name of person who turned out to be the subject of the famous painting.

about
me		 my
articles		 home wordpressblog

crosswalk.com
(a blog) 		in the
media