She’s been smeared with cake and doused with acid. Vigilantes have stolen her, and protesters have defaced her. She’s been lasered and prodded, displayed for the lots, and relegated to her personal basement gallery. Extra lately, 1000’s urged billionaire Jeff Bezos to purchase her, after which eat her.
There isn’t a backside, it appears, to the mysteries of the Mona Lisa, the Leonardo da Vinci portray that has captivated artwork lovers, tradition vultures and the remainder of us for hundreds of years. Who’s she? (More than likely Lisa Gherardini, the spouse of an Italian nobleman.) Is she smiling? (The quick reply — type of.) Did da Vinci initially intend to color her in a different way, together with her hair clipped or in a nursing robe?
Whereas a lot in regards to the artwork world’s most enigmatic topic has been relegated to the realm of the unknowable, now, in a wierd crossover of artwork and geology, there could also be one much less thriller: the place she was sitting when da Vinci painted her.
In accordance with Ann Pizzorusso, a geologist and Renaissance-art scholar, da Vinci’s topic is sitting in Lecco, Italy, an idyllic city close to the banks of Lake Como. The conclusion, Pizzorusso mentioned, is apparent — she figured it out years in the past, however by no means realized its significance.
“I noticed the topography close to Lecco and realized this was the placement,” she mentioned.
The nondescript background has some essential options; amongst them, a medieval bridge that almost all students have held as the important thing to da Vinci’s setting. However Pizzorusso mentioned it’s quite the form of the lake and the gray-white limestone that betrays Lecco because the portray’s religious residence.
“A bridge is fungible,” mentioned Pizzorusso. “You must mix a bridge with a spot that Leonardo was at, and the geology.”
Such options have been so clear to Pizzorusso that she had concluded years in the past on a visit to Lecco that the quaint, lakeside village was the setting for da Vinci’s masterpiece. She assumed, she mentioned, that such details have been self-evident. It was not till a colleague approached her, in search of data on the Mona Lisa’s attainable settings, that Pizzorusso realized her conclusions had scholarly benefit.
“I might inform folks, however I simply by no means did something,” she mentioned. Now although, mapping expertise has made her thesis extra palatable.
“All the pieces has conspired to actually make my concept way more provable and presentable,” she mentioned, talking from Lecco, the place she is going to formally current her conclusions at a geology occasion.
Nonetheless, such secrets and techniques have turn into inherent to the intrigue surrounding the holy canvas. For hundreds of years, the Mona Lisa has confounded, delighted, dissatisfied and befuddled artists and artwork lovers. As her famously delicate edges develop existentially sharper, maybe we should ask: Is it the portray we love, or its mysteries?
“In Lecco they’ve been mentioning this for years,” Donald Sassoon, a professor of comparative European historical past, mentioned. He pointed to a 2016 article in an area Italian information web site by a scholar from Lecco who recognized related geographical options to these famous by Pizzorusso.
“I might not hassle,” Professor Sassoon mentioned when requested about reporting Pizzorusso’s discover. “Figuring out the placement would don’t have any impression.”
For Pizzorusso, although, the conclusion is much less in regards to the artwork than the person. Within the discrete clues of the Mona Lisa, da Vinci reveals himself not solely as a talented painter, she mentioned, but in addition as a tediously cautious pupil of science and geology.
“Any time he paints a rock,” Pizzorusso mentioned, “it’s correct.”
