This week we talked about...*drumroll*...The Mona Lisa!
So, just what is all the fuss about this painting? What's so special about this woman with weird a looking background?
When I was a kid, my dad used to play Nat King Cole on our car radio. One of the songs I liked from that tape was the Mona Lisa. I used to sing along the tape whenever it was played. As a kid, I just liked that song because I liked the tune and I was also amused in the painting. I didn't really think about what it meant though. All I knew was that, the painting was famous for the woman's smile. I have seen a picture of the painting a thousand times before and I used to think it was overrated. It was either she was about to smile or was coming from a smile, what was so special about that? I found it funny the way people venerated the painting so much. I read about the painting as well. There were books in our school library when I was in grade school and highschool about 100 famous women in history and other trivia books where the Mona Lisa was included. That was where I first encountered the descriptions abou how it was painted, like the pyramid shape of the body and that ever-famous smile. It also discussed the identity of the Mona lisa and, if i remember it correctly, it agreed with the La Gioconda version.
When I got to highschool, I found out about more conspiracy theories about the Mona Lisa. Things like, it was supposedly Da Vinci (because he was gay), he painted himself as a woman, and things like what some of those in class said about the Mona Lisa. Of course, there was renewed interest for the Mona Lisa with the release of Dan Brown's The Da Vinci Code (renewed interest for all of Leonardo's paintings, actually). The rise of even more conspiracy theories about the Mona Lisa made it even more famous.
Those things being said (written), when we were warned for a week or two of thorough discussion of the Mona Lisa, I have to admit I wasn't so thrilled. Sure she's famous, the painter was famous, the smile is enchanting, but I sort of felt that there wasn't anything more to learn about it.
Of course, this is the part where I have to say I was wrong.
There was more to it, really.
Sure the conpiracy theories were present but these were exactly the reasons why the Mona Lisa was so famous. It's a mystery that has to be told (and not solved). Her smile draws the people to her. Leonardo Da Vinci is a great painter but I don't think his other paintings (except maybe the Last Supper), hold as much mystery as the Mona Lisa. His style is great but when you look at the painting, you don't really think about the painter's style. People don't usually look at the Mona Lisa and say, "ah, it's the sfumatto style!". No, people look at it, and they see the smile. And when they look at it, all these questions begin to emerge.
Then after the smile, everything else sort of follows. Everyone has their own interpretations of it. Even the background has varying explanations. For me, I think the background was also a painting. What made me think of it as such was that, when I looked at a picture of the Mona Lisa in one of the books in the library, I saw that there was something behind her. A shelf/table, like the kind you usually see beneath paintings. It has a round vase-like thing one each side, which was sort of cut in the painting.
It was said over and over in the discussion that its the questions a painting generates that makes it a classic. Its the mystery that makes the Mona Lisa so famous through the centuries and I daresay through the generations to come.