The Painting:
Despite her monumental reputation, the Mona Lisa is a mere thirty-one inches by twenty-one inches smaller even than the posters of her sold in the gift shops. Painted on a poplar wood panel, her ethereal, mist-filled atmosphere is attributed to Da Vinci’s mastery of the sfumato style, in which forms appear to evaporate into one another.
Since taking up residence in the Louvre, the Mona Lisa or La Jaconde as they call her in France had been stolen twice, most recently in 1911, when she disappeared from the Louvre’s “satte imp n trable” Le Salon Carre. Parisians wept in the streets and wrote newspaper articles begging the thieves for the painting’s return. Two years later, the Mona Lisa was discovered hidden in the false bottom of a trunk in a Florence hotel room.
Fame:
The Mona Lisa’s status as the most famous piece of art in the world has nothing to do with her enigmatic smile. Nor was it due to the mysterious interpretations attributed her by many art historians and conspiracy buffs. Quite simply, the Mona Lisa was famous because Leonardo da Vinci claimed she was his finest accomplishment. He carried the painting with him whenever he travelled and, if asked why, would reply that he found it hard to part with his most sublime ex-pression of female beauty.
Da Vinci's Reverence:
Even so, many art historians suspected Da Vinci’s reverence for the Mona Lisa had nothing to do with its artistic mastery. In actuality, the painting was a surprisingly ordinary sfumato portrait. Da Vinci’s veneration for this work, many claimed, stemmed from something far deeper: a hidden message in the layers of paint. The Mona Lisa was, in fact, one of the world’s most documented inside jokes. The painting’s well-documented collage of double entendres and playful allusions had been revealed in most art history tomes, and yet, incredibly, the public at large still considered her smile a great mystery.
The Mystery:
You may notice “that the background behind her face is uneven. Da Vinci painted the horizon line on the left significantly lower than the right. Da Vinci didn’t do that too often. Actually, this is a little trick Da Vinci played. By lowering the countryside on the left, Da Vinci made Mona Lisa look much larger from the left side than from the right side; a little Da Vinci inside joke. Historically, the concepts of male and female have assigned sides left is female, and right is male. Because Da Vinci was a big fan of feminine principles, he made Mona Lisa look more majestic from the left than the right.
Androgynous?
Da Vinci was a homosexual. Actually, Da Vinci was in tune with the balance between male and female. He believed that a human soul could not be enlightened unless it had both male and female elements.
Da Vinci was a prankster, and computerized analysis of the Mona Lisa and Da Vinci’s self-portraits confirm some startling points of congruency in their faces. Whatever Da Vinci was up to, his Mona Lisa is neither male nor female. It carries a subtle message of androgyny. It is a fusing of both.
What is in a name?
Actually Da Vinci left a big clue that the painting was supposed to be androgynous. Has anyone here ever heard of an Egyptian god named Amon? Amon is indeed represented as a man with a ram’s head, and his promiscuity and curved horns are related to our modern sexual slang ‘horny.’ And do you know who Amon’s counterpart was? The Egyptian goddess of fertility?” It was Isis. So we have the male god, Amon. And the female goddess, Isis, whose ancient pictogram was once called L’ISA.
AMON L’ISA
Not only does the face of Mona Lisa look androgynous, but her name is an anagram of the divine union of male and female. And that, my friends, is Da Vinci’s little secret, and the reason for Mona Lisa’s knowing smile.
[The series continues]
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