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every hour about 1,500 people visit the louvre museum in paris with the specific intention of seeing one particular painting: the mona lisa by leonardo da vinci. most of these visitors look at the painting for about three minutes before they walk back to the tourist buses outside.
leonardo loved the painting very much and people say that he took it everywhere with him. the painting was originally ordered by a rich businessman in florence, who wanted a portrait of his wife, lisa. leonardo began the painting in 1503 and he finished it about three or four years later. the fact that leonardo wanted to keep the painting himself, adds to the mona lisa’s mystique.
mona lisa’s mysterious smile has fascinated everyone who has ever seen the painting. in his ‘lives of the artists’, written just a few years after leonardo’s death, giorgio vasari wrote, ‘while painting mona lisa leonardo employed singers and musicians to keep her happy and so avoid the sadness that painters usually give to portraits. as a result, there was a smile that seemed divine rather than human; and those who saw it were amazed to find how alive and real it appeared.’
modern art critics also emphasize how the portrait seems alive and real. ‘she is like a living person,’ writes art historian e.h. gombrich, ‘she seems to change before our eyes. even in photographs we can experience this strange effect. sometimes she seems to be looking down on us, and sometimes we can detect sadness in her smile. all this sounds rather mysterious, and it is; that is so often the effect of a great work of art.’
the mona lisa is certainly a masterpiece, a magnificent work of art, but it is also a part of modern popular culture. her image appears on plates, tshirts, mouse pads and in advertisements. perhaps for this reason, officials at the louvre museum placed the painting in a specially built area in a room with other great 16th century italian paintings. in this way, visitors have a better chance to appreciate the painting as a work of art rather than as a tourist attraction.
