Mona Lisa, her story.

            

A month ago, i finally got a chance to visit Louvre museum. Louvre museum is located in Paris, France. Louvre museum itself, is one of the world’s largest museum and the most visited art museum in the world. Other than that, this museum is also a historic monument. Louvre museum has so many collections, from time to time. This museum is also famous by the pyramid outside the museum building.

With more than 380,000 objects and 35,000 works of art, Louvre museum gets more than 15,000 visitors for a day, and 65 percent of those visitors are foreign tourists. This museum maybe will remind you with one famous, Da Vinci Code. Louvre museum has eight curatorial departments, there are:

· Egyptian antiquities
· Near eastern antiquities
· Greek, etruscan and roman
· Islamic art
· Sculpture
· Decorative arts
· Painting
· Print and drawings

Do you remember the famous Mona Lisa painting? This museum has it. Surprisingly, if any of you think that the Mona Lisa painting is so big and all, you are all wrong. The Mona Lisa painting is actually a bit small, unlike any other paintings in Louvre (many of them are really big, like wall size painting).

Mona Lisa painting is being permanently displayed in Louvre Museum. Mona Lisa, or also known as La Gioconda or La Joconde or Portrait of Lisa Gherardini, wife of Fransesco del Giocondo). Mona Lisa is a portrait made by the famous Leonardo Da Vinci. It is a painting in oil on poplar panel, completed circa 1503-1509. The painting is a half length portrait that shows a seated woman, Lisa Del Giocondo, whose facial expression has been frequently described as enigmatic. The ambiguity of the subject's expression, the monumentality of the composition, and the subtle modeling of forms and atmospheric illusionism were novel qualities that have contributed to the continuing fascination and study of the work. The image is widely recognised, caricatured, and sought out by visitors to the Louvre, and it is considered the most famous painting in the world.

Leonardo da Vinci began painting Monalisa in 1503 or 1504, in Florence, Italy. According to Da Vinci's contemporary, Giorgio Vasari, "...after he had lingered over it four years, left it unfinished...." It is known that such behavior is common in most paintings of Leonardo who, later in his life, regretted "never having completed a single work". He is thought to have continued to work on Mona Lisa for three years after he moved to France and to have finished it shortly before he died in 1519. There has been much speculation regarding the painting's model and landscape. For example, that Leonardo probably painted his model faithfully since her beauty is not seen as being among the best, "even when measured by late quattrocento (15th century) or even twenty-first century standards." Some art historians in Eastern art, such as Yukio Yashiro, also argue that the landscape in the background of the picture was influenced by Chinese paintings; however, this thesis has been contested for lack of clear evidence.

Mona Lisa was not well known until the mid-19th century when artists of the emerging Symbolist movement began to appreciate it, and associated it with their ideas about feminine mystique. Critic Walter Pater, in his 1867 essay on Leonardo, expressed this view by describing the figure in the painting as a kind of mythic embodiment of eternal femininity, who is "older than the rocks among which she sits" and who "has been dead many times and learned the secrets of the grave

THE SUBJECT
Mona Lisa is named for Lisa Del Giocondo, a member of Gherardini family of Florence and Tuscany. She is the wife of wealthy Florence merchant, Francesco Del Giocondo. The Mona Lisa painting was commissioned for their new home and for celebrate the birth of their second son, Andrea. Over the years, there have been several opinions and alternative views on Mona Lisa. Some scholars have argued that Lisa Del Giocondo was the subject of a different potrait, identifying at least four other paintings as Mona Lisa referred to by Vasari. Several other individuals have been proposed as the subject of the painting. Sigmund Freud believed that the famous half-smile was a recovered memory of Leonardo's mother. Other suggestions have been Isabella of Naples, Cecilia Gallerani, Costanza d'Avalos, Duchess of Francavilla‎, Isabella d'Este, Pacifica Brandano or Brandino, Isabela Gualanda, Caterina Sforza, and Leonardo himself. Today the consensus of art historians is that the painting depicts Lisa del Giocondo, which has always been the traditional view.

The painting's title stems from a description by Giorgio Vasari in his biography of Leonardo published in 1550, 31 years after the artist's death. "Leonardo undertook to paint, for Francesco del Giocondo, the portrait of Mona Lisa, his wife...." In Italian, ma donna means my lady. This became madonna, and its contraction mona. Mona is thus a polite form of address, similar to Ma’am, Madam, or my lady in English. In modern Italian, the short form of madonna is usually spelled Monna, so the title is sometimes Monna Lisa, rarely in English and more commonly in Romance languages such as French and Italian. At his death in 1525, Leonardo's assistant Salai owned the portrait named in his personal papers la Gioconda which had been bequeathed to him by the artist. Italian for jocund, happy or jovial, Gioconda was a nickname for the sitter, a pun on the feminine form of her married name Giocondo and her disposition

Leonardo used a pyramid design to place the woman simply and calmly in the space of the painting. Her folded hands form the front corner of the pyramid. Her breast, neck and face glow in the same light that models her hands. The light gives the variety of living surfaces an underlying geometry of spheres and circles. Leonardo referred to a seemingly simple formula for seated female figure: the images of seated Madonna, which were widespread at the time. He effectively modified this formula in order to create the visual impression of distance between the sitter and the observer. The armrest of the chair functions as a dividing element between Mona Lisaand the viewer. The woman sits markedly upright with her arms folded, which is also a sign of her reserved posture. Only her gaze is fixed on the observer and seems to welcome him to this silent communication. Since the brightly lit face is practically framed with various much darker elements (hair, veil, shadows), the observer's attraction to it is brought to even greater extent. The woman appears alive to an unusual measure, which Leonardo achieved by his new method not to draw the outlines. Mona Lisa has no clearly visible eyebrows or eyelashes. Some researchers claim that it was common at this time for genteel women to pluck these hairs, as they were considered unsightly. In 2007, French engineer Pascal Cotte announced that his ultra high resolution scans of the painting provide evidence that Mona Lisa was originally painted with eyelashes and with better visible eyebrows, but that these had gradually disappeared over time, perhaps as a result of overcleaning. For modern viewers the nearly-missing eyebrows add to the slightly semi-abstract quality of the face.

The Mona Lisa painting now hangs in the Musée du Louvre in Paris. The painting's increasing fame was further emphasized when it was stolen on 21 August 1911. The next day, Louis Béroud, a painter, walked into the Louvre and went to the Salon Carré where the Mona Lisa had been on display for five years. However, where the Mona Lisa should have stood, he found four iron pegs. Béroud contacted the section head of the guards, who thought the painting was being photographed for marketing purposes. A few hours later, Béroud checked back with the section head of the museum, and it was confirmed that the Mona Lisa was not with the photographers. The Louvre was closed for an entire week to aid in investigation of the theft. French poet Guillaume Apollinaire, who had once called for the Louvre to be "burnt down," came under suspicion; he was arrested and put in jail. Apollinaire tried to implicate his friend Pablo Picasso, who was also brought in for questioning, but both were later exonerated.

At the time, the painting was believed to be lost forever, and it was two years before the real thief was discovered. Louvre employee Vincenzo Peruggia had stolen it by entering the building during regular hours, hiding in a broom closet and walking out with it hidden under his coat after the museum had closed. Peruggia was an Italian patriot who believed Leonardo's painting should be returned to Italy for display in an Italian museum. Peruggia may have also been motivated by a friend who sold copies of the painting, which would skyrocket in value after the theft of the original. After having kept the painting in his apartment for two years, Peruggia grew impatient and was finally caught when he attempted to sell it to the directors of the Uffizi Gallery in Florence; it was exhibited all over Italy and returned to the Louvre in 1913. Peruggia was hailed for his patriotism in Italy and served six months in jail for the crime.

And here is a picture of me and Mona Lisa;


Me and Mona Lisa (it was really crowded, so you cant really see it)

inside louvre museum