If you want praise of Leonardo daVinci’s Mona Lisa as art, you can find it.
But what if you think it’s just…. fine?
What’s the cynic’s explanation for the Mona Lisa? Why is the Mona Lisa so, so famous? Is it really that much better than da Vinci’s Lady with Ermine? That seems better. There’s one more ermine. But it’s Mona who is so famous that the director of the Louvre, where Mona Lisa lives, said 80% of their visitors are only there to see that one painting.
If you don’t think Mona Lisa is famous just because she’s somehow 10 times better than every other painting, her story reveals something more interesting, something about how art breaks into wider culture.
And it might never have happened if the Mona Lisa hadn’t disappeared. Before the painting became a mass culture star, before it vanished, one critic made her a work of art worth taking and he was so over-the-top insanely in love with “Mona Lisa” that he single-handedly made it a masterpiece.
Oscar Wilde thought the essay’s writing was great. He praised “the musical of the mystical prose.” And every general interest profile of the Louvre, from academic guidebooks to discussions clubs in Paducah, used Pater’s words to talk about Mona. Other critics jumped on — Mona was a popular, secular painting that they could analyze. Unlike da Vinci’s Last Supper, they could supply all the meaning. But even at her peak, Mona Lisa was just art world famous, not the most famous painting of all time.
Mona Lisa isn’t a portrait, but a blank face. A place for critics to paint meaning, and people to find mystery. That’s why she was so famous — not because of how she’s painted, but what we see in her. If that’s not art, then what is? I found one 1909 description of the Mona Lisa that seemed particularly prescient. The writer said: “Even those whose first expressions is ‘huh’ and proclaimed frankly that they cannot see her beauty or her interest find themselves disputing hotly over both.” That’s probably still the case today.
**Quick facts about “Monna Lisa”
- The original name of the painting was “Monna Lisa”, Monna in Italian closely relates to Madonna which means ‘My Lady’. Mona Lisa was actually a spelling error.
- A Bolivian National, in 1956 threw a piece of stone at the painting and that ended up in a small patch next to her left elbow.
- Mona Lisa painting is incalculable and so it cannot be insured by any company.
- Mona Lisa painting is the most expensive prison in the world. It has an exclusive chamber that costs the museum over 7 million USD. It is secured with a climate controlled environment and a bullet proof glass.
