The drawing is based on the correlations of ideal human proportions with geometry described[4] by the ancient Roman architect Vitruvius in Book III of his treatise De Architectura. Vitruvius described the human figure as being the principal source of proportion among the Classical orders of architecture. Leonardo's drawing is traditionally named in honor of the architect.
According to Herodotus' rationalizing approach, Europa was kidnapped by Minoans who were seeking to avenge the kidnapping of Io, a princess from Argos. His variant story may have been an attempt to rationalize the earlier myth; or the present myth may be a garbled version of facts — the abduction of a Phoenician aristocrat — later enunciated without gloss by Herodotus.
ZURICH (AP) — A frantic search for four stolen Impressionist paintings led to a most unlikely place: the parking lot of a mental hospital just a few hundred yards from the scene of the crime. There, in the back seat of an unlocked car, a painting by Monet and another by van Gogh were found Monday in perfect condition, the authorities said Tuesday. The paintings, together worth $64 million, were still under the display glass used by the private museum from which they were stolen in a Feb. 10 armed robbery, director Lukas Gloor said. “I am incredibly relieved that two paintings have returned,” Mr. Gloor said. “We’re very happy that both the paintings are in absolutely impeccable shape.” The other paintings taken from the from the E. G. Bührle Collection — by Cézanne and Degas — remain missing, the police said. In all, the four paintings are worth an estimated $163 million. Art experts have suggested that the robbers took advantage of what appeared to be an easy target — a low-security museum — without knowing much about art or how difficult it can be to sell such well-known works. The robbers took the first four paintings they came across when they raided the museum shortly before closing on a Sunday afternoon. Although they managed to take the most valuable painting in the collection, Cézanne’s “Boy in a Red Vest,” they passed over the second most valuable picture, another Cézanne. Mr. Gloor said he suspected that the robbers abandoned the two paintings, which were the largest of the four, because their size complicated transporting them. They were discovered Monday in the back seat of a white sedan in a parking lot in front of the University Psychiatric Clinic. It was not known how long the car had been there, the police said. An employee of the clinic making a check of the lot noted the car because it was unlocked. The police sealed off the area, examined the car and hauled it away. The police had said initially that a white vehicle might have been used by the three robbers when they made their escape. The clinic is about 500 yards from the museum. The recovered paintings — Monet’s “Poppies Near Vétheuil” and van Gogh’s “Blossoming Chestnut Branches” — will be returned to the museum in the coming days, Mr. Gloor said. “But we must not forget,” he added, “that two more paintings of our collection are still missing,” including the “Boy in a Red Vest,” which is worth $91 million.From The Guardian: Cezanne masterpiece believed recovered by Serbian police Police in Serbia believe they have recovered an impressionist masterpiece by Paul Cezanne worth at least £68m that was stolen at gunpoint in one of the world's biggest art heists four years ago, a police official has said. "We believe the painting is Cezanne's Boy in a Red Waistcoat and three suspects were detained in connection with that," said a police official. "Experts in Serbia and abroad are trying to ascertain whether the painting is an original. This painting is worth tens of millions of euros," the official added. The canvas was one of four paintings stolen from a Swiss art gallery in 2008 by a trio of masked robbers who burst in just before closing time and told staff to lay on the floor. The paintings were reportedly worth over £100m at the time and the heist was the biggest art theft in Swiss history and one of the largest in the world. The painting was stolen in 2008 from the Emil Georg Bührle gallery in Zurich, a private collection founded by a second world war arms dealer and entrepreneur. Two of the stolen canvasses, one by Claude Monet and the other by Vincent van Gogh, were recovered days later abandoned in a car, but the other two – the Cezanne and a painting by Edgar Degas, have been missing for the last four years. Cezanne's Boy in a Red Waistcoat is thought to have been painted around 1888 and depicts a boy in traditional Italian dress – a red waistcoat, a blue handkerchief and a blue belt. Three other versions of the painting are in museums in the United States. Last October, Serbian police recovered two paintings by Pablo Picasso stolen in 2008 from a gallery in the Swiss town of Pfäffikon, near Zurich. The police official said law enforcement agencies from several countries had co-operated in the investigation that led to the apparent recovery of the Cezanne masterpiece. Serbia's state prosecutor is expected to issue a statement or give a press briefing on the case later on Thursday.
On the morning of March 18, 1990, thieves disguised as police officers broke into the museum and stole The Storm on the Sea of Galilee and 12 other works. It is considered the biggest art theft in US history and remains unsolved. The museum still displays the paintings' empty frames in their original locations.
The Card Players is a series of oil paintings by the French Post-Impressionist artist Paul Cézanne. Painted during Cézanne's final period in the early 1890s, there are five paintings in the series. The versions vary in size and in the number of players depicted. Cézanne also completed numerous drawings and studies in preparation for The Card Players series.
Overview
The series is considered by critics to be a cornerstone of Cézanne's work during the early-to-mid 1890s period, as well as a "prelude" to his final years, when he painted some of his most acclaimed work.
Each painting depicts Provençal peasants immersed in smoking their pipes and playing cards. The subjects, all male, are displayed as studious within their card playing, eyes cast downward, intent on the game at hand. Cézanne adapted a motif from 17th century Dutch and French genre painting which often depicted card games with rowdy, drunken gamblers in taverns, replacing them instead with stone-faced tradesmen in a more simplified setting.
Whereas previous paintings of the genre had illustrated heightened moments of drama, Cézanne's portraits have been noted for their lack of drama, narrative, and conventional characterization. Other than an unused wine bottle in the two-player versions, there is an absence of drink and money, which were prominent fixtures of the 17th century genre. A painting hung in an Aix-en-Provence museum, near the artist's home, by one of the Le Nain brothers that depicts card players is widely believed to have been an inspiration for the works by Cézanne.
The models for the paintings were local farmhands, some of whom worked on the Cézanne family estate, the Jas de Bouffan. Each scene is depicted as one of quiet, still concentration; the men look down at their cards rather than each other, perhaps the cards being their sole means of communication outside of work. One critic described the scenes as "human still life", while another speculated the men's intense focus on their game mirrors that of the painter's absorption in his art.
Paintings
While there are, in total, five paintings of card players by Cézanne, the final three works were similar in composition and number of players (two), causing them to sometimes be grouped together as one version. The exact dates of the paintings are uncertain, but it is long believed Cézanne began with larger canvases and pared down in size with successive versions, though research in recent years has cast doubt on this assumption.
The largest version, painted between the years 1890-1892, is the most complex, with five figures on a 134.6 x 180.3 cm (53 × 71 in) canvas. It features three card players at the forefront, seated in a semi-circle at a table, with two spectators behind. On the right side of the painting, seated behind the second man and to the right of the third, is a boy, eyes cast downward, also a fixed spectator of the game. Further back, on the left side between the first and second player is a man standing, back to the wall, smoking a pipe and presumably awaiting his turn at the table. It has been speculated Cézanne added the standing man to provide depth to the painting, as well as to draw the eye to the upper portion of the canvas.
As with the other versions, it displays a suppressed storytelling of peasant men in loose-fitting garments with natural poses focused entirely on their game. Writer Nicholas Wadley described a "tension in opposites", in which elements such as shifts of color, light and shadow, shape of hat, and crease of cloth create a story of confrontation through opposition. Others have described an "alienation" displayed in the series to be most pronounced in this version. The painting is owned and displayed by the Barnes Foundation museum in Merion, Pennsylvania.
A more condensed version of this painting with four figures, long thought to be the second version of The Card Players, is in the Metropolitan Museum of Art in New York. At 65.4 x 81.9 cm (25 3/4 x 32 1/4 in), it is less than half the size of the Barnes painting. Here the composition remains virtually the same, minus the boy, with viewers' perspective slightly closer to the game, but with less space between the figures. In the previous painting, the center player as well as the boy were hatless, whereas this version has all the men hatted. Also gone are the shelf to the left with vase and lower half of a picture frame in the center of the wall, leaving only the four pipes and hanging cloth to join the smoking man behind the card players.
The painting is brighter, with less focus on blue tones, than the larger version. X-ray and infrared studies of this version of The Card Players have shown layers of "speculative" graphite underdrawing, as well as heavy layers of worked oil paint, possibly suggesting it was the preliminary of Cézanne's two largest versions of the series, rather than the second version as historically believed. The underdrawing has also led analysts to believe Cézanne had difficulty transferring the men, previously painted individually in studies, onto one canvas.
It has been speculated Cézanne solved this "spacial conundrum" in the final three versions of The Card Players, by eliminating spectators as well as any other "unnecessary detail" and displaying only the "absolute essentials": two players immersed in their game. The scene has been described as balanced but asymmetrical, as well as naturally symmetrical with the two players being each other's "partner in an agreed opposition". The man on the left is smoking a pipe, wearing a tophat with a downcast brim, in darker, more formal clothing, seated upright; the man to the right is pipeless, in a shorter hat with upcast brim, lighter, more loosely fit clothing, and hunched over the table.
Even cards themselves are contrasting light and dark hues. In each of the two-player paintings, a sole wine bottle rests in the mid-part of the table, said to represent a dividing line between the two participants as well as the center of the painting's "symmetrical balance".
Of the three versions, perhaps the best known and most often reproduced is in the Musée d'Orsay in Paris. It is also the smallest at 47.5 x 57 cm (17 3/4 x 22 1/2 in). The Orsay painting was described by art historian Meyer Schapiro as "the most monumental and also the most refined" of the versions, with the shapes being simpler but more varied in their relationships. It is the most sparsely painted, and generally considered the last of the Card Players series.
There is a shift of axis to the scene, in which the player to the left is more completely in the picture, chair included, with the appearance of being nearer to u His partner to the right is cut off from the scene at his back, and the table is displayed at an angle to the plane. Critics have described a "deception of restraint" in Cézanne's use of color; gradated area of thinly applied, "priming" color used for solid forms and their appearance of structure is met with lilac and green used to "liven" the canvas, as well as the bright, deep color used on the lower half for the tablecloth. This version of the series was also part of a high-profile theft of eight Cézanne paintings from a traveling show at Aix in August 1961. The most valuable of the stolen works, The Card Players was released as a four-color postage stamp by the French government in recognition of the loss, all of which were recovered after a paid ransom several months later.
The other two-player paintings are in the Courtauld Institute of Art in London and in a private collection. In February 2012, Vanity Fair reported that the royal family of Qatar had, during 2011, purchased their version of the painting for a record 250 million USD from the private collection of Greek shipping magnate George Embiricos. The report has yet to be confirmed by outside sources.
Studies and sketches
Cézanne created a substantial number of studies and preparatory drawings for "The Card Players" series. While it had long been believed he began the series with the largest paintings and subsequently worked smaller, 21st century x-rays of the paintings as well as further analysis of preparatory sketches and studies has led some scholars to believe Cezanne used both the studies and the smaller versions of "The Card Players" to prepare for the larger canvases.
Over a dozen initial sketches and painted studies of local farm workers were made by Cézanne in preparation for the final paintings. It has been speculated his models sat for the studies rather than the finished works themselves, and the painter possibly sketched preliminary work in an Aix cafe.
Some of the studies have been well regarded as stand-alone works of their own volition, particularly the accompaniment piece "Man with a Pipe", displayed alongside "The Card Players" at the Courtauld Gallery in London. The former, along with two similar paintings of smokers undertaken in the same period, are considered by many to be some of Cézanne's most masterful portraits.
Exhibitions
In 2010-11, a joint exhibition was curated by the Courtauld Gallery in London and Metropolitan Museum of Art in New York to display The Card Players paintings, early studies and sketches of the series, and accompanying works. The exhibition ran in London from October 21, 2010 to January 16, 2011 and in New York from February 9, 2011 to May 8, 2011.
It was described as the first exhibition devoted to the series as well as the largest collection of Cézanne's Card Players paintings to ever be exhibited together. The exhibition included the paintings owned by the Courtauld, Metropolitan, and Musée d'Orsay. The versions at the Barnes Foundation and in a private collection were displayed as prints, due to the Barnes' policy of not lending and the private collector declining to release the work.
The mini-series of men smoking pipes sometimes referred to as "The Smokers" was also included with over a dozen other studies and sketches, however a legal dispute also prevented the Hermitage Museum's version of "Man with a Pipe" from traveling to New York
The painting, thought to be a portrait of Lisa Gherardini, the wife of Francesco del Giocondo, is in oil on a poplar panel, and is believed to have been painted between 1503 and 1506. It was acquired by King Francis I of France and is now the property of the French Republic, on permanent display at the Musée du Louvre in Paris. The ambiguity of the subject's expression, frequently described as enigmatic, the monumentality of the composition, the subtle modeling of forms and the atmospheric illusionism were novel qualities that have contributed to the continuing fascination and study of the work.
Subject and title
A note by Agostino Vespucci 1503 in a book at Heidelberg University states that Leonardo was working on a portrait of Lisa del Giocondo.
The painting's title Mona Lisa stems from a description by Giorgio Vasari: "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 was thus a polite form of address, similar to Ma’am, Madam, or my lady in English. Though traditionally spelled "Mona" (as used by Vasari), in modern Italian, this short form of madonna is now usually spelled Monna. The title is therefore sometimes given as Monna Lisa, but this is rare in English. "Monna Lisa" is the normal spelling in modern Italian.
Vasari's account of the Mona Lisa comes from his biography of Leonardo published in 1550, 31 years after the artist's death, and which has long been the best known source of information on the provenance of the work and identity of the sitter. That Leonardo painted such a work, and its date, were confirmed in 2005 when a scholar at Heidelberg University discovered a margin note in a volume of Cicero printed in 1477. It had been written by Leonardo's contemporary Agostino Vespucci and likened Leonardo to Apelles, who is mentioned in the text.
The margin note states that Leonardo was at that time working on a painting of Lisa del Giocondo and is dated October 1503. At his death in 1525, Leonardo's assistant Salai owned a portrait named in his personal papers as la Gioconda which had been bequeathed to him by the artist. Italian for "jocund", "happy" or "jovial", La Gioconda ("the jocund one") was a pun on the feminine form of the sitter's married name Giocondo.
In French, the title La Joconde has the same meaning.
The sitter, Lisa del Giocondo, was a member of the Gherardini family of Florence and Tuscany and the wife of wealthy Florentine silk merchant Francesco del Giocondo. The painting is thought to have been commissioned for their new home and to celebrate the birth of their second son, Andrea.
Over the years there have been several alternative views. Some scholars have argued that Lisa del Giocondo was the subject of a different portrait, identifying at least four other paintings as the Mona Lisa referred to by Vasari. Several other individuals have been proposed as the subject of the painting including 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.
History
Leonardo da Vinci began painting the Mona Lisa in 1503 or 1504 in Florence, Italy. According to Leonardo's contemporary, Giorgio Vasari, "...after he had lingered over it four years, left it unfinished...." Leonardo, later in his life, is said to have regretted "never having completed a single work".
In 1516 Leonardo was invited by King François I to work at the Clos Lucé near the king's castle in Amboise. It is believed that he took the Mona Lisa with him and continued to work after he moved to France. On his death the painting was inherited, among other works, by his pupil and assistant Salai. The king bought the painting for 4,000 écus and kept it at Palace of Fontainebleau, where it remained until given to Louis XIV. Louis XIV moved the painting to the Palace of Versailles. After the French Revolution, it was moved to the Louvre, but spent a brief period in the bedroom of Napoleon in the Tuileries Palace.
During the Franco-Prussian War (1870–1871) it was moved from the Louvre to the Brest Arsenal. During World War II, the painting was again removed from the Louvre and taken safely, first to Château d'Amboise, then to the Loc-Dieu Abbey and Château de Chambord, then finally to the Ingres Museum in Montauban.
Theft and vandalism
The painting's fame was 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 whose copies of the original would significantly rise in value after the painting's theft. After having kept the Mona Lisa 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.
During World War II, the painting was again removed from the Louvre and taken safely, first to Château d'Amboise, then to the Loc-Dieu Abbey and Château de Chambord, then finally to the Ingres Museum in Montauban. In 1956, the lower part of the painting was severely damaged when a vandal doused the painting with acid. On 30 December of that same year, a young Bolivian named Ugo Ungaza Villegas damaged the painting by throwing a rock at it. This resulted in the loss of a speck of pigment near the left elbow, which was later painted over.
The use of bulletproof glass has shielded the Mona Lisa from more recent attacks. In April 1974, a handicapped woman, upset by the museum's policy for the disabled, sprayed red paint at the painting while it was on display at the Tokyo National Museum. On 2 August 2009, a Russian woman, distraught over being denied French citizenship, threw a terra cotta mug or teacup, purchased at the museum, at the painting in the Louvre; the vessel shattered against the glass enclosure. In both cases, the painting was undamaged.
Aesthetics
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 Lisa and 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, "mainly in two features: the corners of the mouth, and the corners of the eyes" (Gombrich), as firmly as that had been the use, before (sfumato).
There is no indication of an intimate dialogue between the woman and the observer as is the case in the Portrait of Baldassare Castiglione (Louvre) painted by Raphael about ten years later, and undoubtedly influenced by the work.
The painting was among the first portraits to depict the sitter before an imaginary landscape and Leonardo was one of the first painters to use aerial perspective. The enigmatic woman is portrayed seated in what appears to be an open loggia with dark pillar bases on either side. Behind her a vast landscape recedes to icy mountains. Winding paths and a distant bridge give only the slightest indications of human presence. The sensuous curves of the woman's hair and clothing are echoed in the undulating imaginary valleys and rivers behind her. The blurred outlines, graceful figure, dramatic contrasts of light and dark, and overall feeling of calm are characteristic of Leonardo's style. Owing to the expressive synthesis that Leonardo achieved between sitter and landscape it is arguable whether Mona Lisa should be considered as a traditional portrait, for it represents an ideal rather than a real woman. The sense of overall harmony achieved in the painting—especially apparent in the sitter's faint smile—reflects the idea of a link connecting humanity and nature.
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 abstract quality of the face.
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.
Conservation
The Mona Lisa has survived for more than 500 years, and an international commission convened in 1952 noted that "the picture is in a remarkable state of preservation." This is partly due to the result of a variety of conservation treatments the painting has undergone. A detailed analysis in 1933 by Madame de Gironde revealed that earlier restorers had "acted with a great deal of restraint."
Nevertheless, applications of varnish made to the painting had darkened even by the end of the 16th century, and an aggressive 1809 cleaning and revarnishing removed some of the uppermost portion of the paint layer, resulting in a washed-out appearance to the face of the figure. Despite the treatments, the Mona Lisa has been well cared for throughout its history, and although the panel's warping caused the curators "some worry", the 2004–05 conservation team was optimistic about the future of the work.
At some point in its history, the Mona Lisa was removed from its original frame. The unconstrained poplar panel was allowed to warp freely with changes in humidity, and as a result, a crack began to develop near the top of the panel. The crack extends down to the hairline of the figure. In the mid-18th century to early 19th century, someone attempted to stabilize the crack by inlaying two butterfly-shaped walnut braces into the back of the panel to a depth of about 1/3 the thickness of the panel. This work was skillfully executed, and has successfully stabilized the crack. Sometime between 1888 and 1905, or perhaps at some point during the picture's theft, the upper brace fell out. A later restorer glued and lined the resulting socket and crack with cloth. The flexible oak frame (added 1951) and cross braces (1970) help to keep the panel from warping further.
The picture is currently kept under strict, climate-controlled conditions in its bulletproof glass case. The humidity is maintained at 50% ±10%, and the temperature is maintained between 18 and 21 °C. To compensate for fluctuations in relative humidity, the case is supplemented with a bed of silica gel treated to provide 55% relative humidity.
Frame
Because the Mona Lisa's poplar support expands and contracts with changes in humidity, the picture has experienced some warping. In response to warping and swelling experienced during its storage during World War II, and to prepare the picture for an exhibit to honor the anniversary of Leonardo's 500th birthday, the Mona Lisa was fitted in 1951 with a flexible oak frame with beech crosspieces. This flexible frame, which is used in addition to the decorative frame described below, exerts pressure on the panel to keep it from warping further. In 1970, the beech crosspieces were switched to maple after it was found that the beechwood had been infested with insects. In 2004–2005, a conservation and study team replaced the maple crosspieces with sycamore ones, and an additional metal crosspiece was added for scientific measurement of the panel's warp.
The Mona Lisa has had many different decorative frames in its history, owing to changes in taste over the centuries. In 1909, the Comtesse de Béhague gave the portrait its current frame, a Renaissance-era work consistent with the historical period of the Mona Lisa. The edges of the painting have been trimmed at least once in its history to fit the picture into various frames, but no part of the original paint layer has been trimmed.
Cleaning and touch-up The first and most extensive recorded cleaning, revarnishing, and touch-up of the Mona Lisa was an 1809 wash and revarnishing undertaken by Jean-Marie Hooghstoel, who was responsible for restoration of paintings for the galleries of the Musée Napoléon. The work involved cleaning with spirits, touch-up of colour, and revarnishing the painting. In 1906, Louvre restorer Eugène Denizard performed watercolour retouches on areas of the paint layer disturbed by the crack in the panel.
Denizard also retouched the edges of the picture with varnish, to mask areas that had been covered initially by an older frame. In 1913, when the painting was recovered after its theft, Denizard was again called upon to work on the Mona Lisa. Denizard was directed to clean the picture without solvent, and to lightly touch up several scratches to the painting with watercolour. In 1952, the varnish layer over the background in the painting was evened out. After the second 1956 attack, restorer Jean-Gabriel Goulinat was directed to touch up the damage to Mona Lisa's left elbow with watercolour.
In 1977, a new insect infestation was discovered in the back of the panel as a result of crosspieces installed to keep the painting from warping. This was treated on the spot with carbon tetrachloride, and later with an ethylene oxide treatment. In 1985, the spot was again treated with carbon tetrachloride as a preventive measure. Display On 6 April 2005—following a period of curatorial maintenance, recording, and analysis—the painting was moved to a new location within the museum's Salle des États. It is displayed in a purpose-built, climate-controlled enclosure behind bulletproof glass. The renovation of the gallery where the painting now resides was financed by the Japanese broadcaster Nippon Television. About 6 million people view the painting at the Louvre each year. A charcoal and graphite study of the Mona Lisa attributed to Leonardo is in The Hyde Collection, in Glens Falls, New York.
Fame
Historian Donald Sassoon catalogued the growth of the painting's fame. During the mid-19th century, Théophile Gautier and the Romantic poets were able to write about Mona Lisa as a femme fatale because Lisa was an ordinary person. Mona Lisa "...was an open text into which one could read what one wanted; probably because she was not a religious image; and, probably, because the literary gazers were mainly men who subjected her to an endless stream of male fantasies." During the 20th century, the painting was stolen, an object for mass reproduction, merchandising, lampooning and speculation, and was reproduced in "300 paintings and 2,000 advertisements". The subject was described as deaf, in mourning, toothless, a "highly-paid tart", various people's lover, a reflection of the artist's neuroses, and a victim of syphilis, infection, paralysis, palsy, cholesterol or a toothache. Scholarly as well as amateur speculation assigned Lisa's name to at least four different paintings and the sitter's identity to at least ten different people.
Visitors generally spend about 15 seconds viewing the Mona Lisa. Until the 20th century, Mona Lisa was one among many and certainly not the "most famous painting" in the world as it is termed today. Among works in the Louvre, in 1852 its market value was 90,000 francs compared to works by Raphael valued at up to 600,000 francs. In 1878, the Baedeker guide called it "the most celebrated work of Leonardo in the Louvre". Between 1851 and 1880, artists who visited the Louvre copied Mona Lisa roughly half as many times as certain works by Bartolomé Esteban Murillo, Antonio da Correggio, Paolo Veronese, Titian, Jean-Baptiste Greuze and Pierre-Paul Prud'hon.
From December 1962 to March 1963, the French government lent it to the United States to be displayed in New York City and Washington, D.C. In 1974, the painting was exhibited in Tokyo and Moscow.
Before the 1962–1963 tour, the painting was assessed, for insurance purposes, as valued at $100 million; the insurance was not bought. Instead more money was spent on security. As an expensive painting, it has only recently been surpassed, in terms of actual price, by four other paintings: the Portrait of Adele Bloch-Bauer I by Gustav Klimt, which was sold for $135 million, the Woman III by Willem de Kooning sold for $138 million in November 2006, and No. 5, 1948 by Jackson Pollock sold for $140 million in November 2006 and one painting from The Card Players series by Paul Cezanne sold for a record of more than $250million.
Although these figures are greater than the 1962 figure at which the Mona Lisa was valued, the comparison does not account for the change in prices due to inflation – $100 million in 1962 is approximately $720 million in 2010 when adjusted for inflation using the US Consumer Price Index.
Speculation
Although the sitter has traditionally been identified as Lisa del Giocondo, a lack of definitive evidence has long fueled alternative theories, including Leonardo's mother Caterina in a distant memory and the possibility that Leonardo used his own likeness. Other aspects of the painting that have been subject to speculation are the original size of the painting, whether it is the original, why it was painted, and various explanations for how the effect of an enigmatic smile was achieved.
Legacy
The avant-garde art world has made note of the undeniable fact of the Mona Lisa's popularity. Because of the painting's overwhelming stature, Dadaists and Surrealists often produce modifications and caricatures. Already in 1883, Le rire, an image of a Mona Lisa smoking a pipe, by Sapeck (Eugène Bataille), was shown at the "Incoherents" show in Paris. In 1919, Marcel Duchamp, one of the most influential modern artists, created L.H.O.O.Q., a Mona Lisa parody made by adorning a cheap reproduction with a moustache and a goatee, as well as adding the rude inscription, when read out loud in French sounds like "Elle a chaud au cul" literally translated: "she has a hot ass". This is a manner of implying the woman in the painting is in a state of sexual excitement and availability. This was intended as a Freudian joke, referring to Leonardo's alleged homosexuality. According to Rhonda R. Shearer, the apparent reproduction is in fact a copy partly modelled on Duchamp's own face.
Salvador Dalí, famous for his surrealist work, painted Self portrait as Mona Lisa in 1954. In 1963 following the painting's visit to the United States, Andy Warhol created serigraph prints of multiple Mona Lisas called Thirty are Better than One, like his works of Marilyn Monroe (Twenty-five Coloured Marilyns, 1962), Elvis Presley (1964) and Campbell's soup (1961–1962)
Pop-up types
Design and creation of such books in arts is part of paper engineering, a term not to be confused with paper engineering- the science of paper making. It is akin to origami in so far as the two arts both employ folded paper. However, origami in its simplest form doesn't use scissors or glue and tends to be made with very bendy paper, pop-ups rely on glue, scissors and stiff card. What they have in common is folding.
Transformations
Transformations show a scene made up of vertical slats. By pulling a tab on the side, the slats slide under and over one another to "transform" into a totally different scene. Ernest Nister, one of the early English children's book authors, often produced books solely of transformations. Many of these have been reproduced by the Metropolitan Museum of Art.
Volvelles
Volvelles are paper constructions with rotating parts. An early example is the Astronomicum Caesareum, by Petrus Apianus, which was made for the Holy Roman Emperor Charles in 1540. The book is full of nested circular pieces revolving on grommets.
Tunnel books
Tunnel books (also called peepshow books) consist of a set of pages bound with two folded concertina strips on each side and viewed through a hole in the cover. Openings in each page allow the viewer to see through the entire book to the back, and images on each page work together to create a dimensional scene inside. This type of book dates from the mid-18th century and was inspired by theatrical stage sets. Traditionally, these books were often created to commemorate special events or sold as souvenirs of tourist attractions. (The term "tunnel book" derives from the fact that many of these books were made to commemorate the building of the tunnel under the Thames River in London in the mid-19th century.) In the United States, tunnel books were made for such attractions as World's Fairs and the New York Botanical Gardens.
Recently the tunnel book format has been resurrected by book artist Carol Barton and others as a sculptural book form. Artists are interested not only in the book's interior views, but also in treating the side accordions and covers as informational and visual surfaces.
History
The audience for early movable books were adults, not children. It is believed that the first use of movable mechanics appeared in a manuscript for an astrological book in 1306. The Catalan mystic and poet Ramon Llull, of Majorca, used a revolving disc or volvelle to illustrate his theories.[1] Throughout the centuries volvelles have been used for such diverse purposes as teaching anatomy, making astronomical predictions, creating secret code, and telling fortunes. By 1564 another movable astrological book titled Cosmographia Petri Apiani had been published. In the following years, the medical profession made use of this format, illustrating anatomical books with layers and flaps showing the human body. The English landscape designer Capability Brown made use of flaps to illustrate "before and after" views of his designs.
While it can be documented that books with movable parts had been used for centuries, they were almost always used in scholarly works. It was not until the 18th century that these techniques were applied to books designed for entertainment, particularly for children.
The first real pop-up books were produced by Ernest Nister and Lothar Meggendorfer. These books were popular in Germany and Britain during the 19th century.
The great leap forward in the field of pop-up books came in 1929 with the publication of the Daily Express Children's Annual Number 1 "with pictures that spring up in model form". This was produced by Louis Giraud and Theodore Brown. Four more Daily Express Annuals followed and then Giraud setup his own publishing house, Strand Publications, this produced the groundbreaking series of Bookano books. There were seventeen Bookanos before the series came to an end with the death of Giraud in 1949. In the United States, in the 1930s, Harold Lentz followed Giraud's lead with the production of the Blue Ribbon books in New York. He was the first publisher to use the term "pop-up" to describe their movable illustrations.
The next advance in the field was made by the astoundingly prolific Vojtěch Kubašta working in Prague in the 1960s. His lead was followed by Waldo Hunt in the USA with his founding of Graphics International. He and two companies he established, Graphics International and Intervisual Books, produced hundreds of pop-up books for children between the 1960s and 1990s. Although intended for U.S. audiences, these books were assembled in areas with lower labor costs: initially in Japan and later in Singapore and Latin American countries such as Colombia and Mexico. Hunt's first pop-up book was Bennett Cerf's Pop-Up Riddle Book, published by Random House as a promotion for Maxwell House Coffee and showcasing the work of humorist Bennett Cerf, who was then president of Random House.
The team of Waldo Hunt and Christopher Cerf created a total of 30 more children's pop-up books for publication by Random House, including books that featured Sesame Street characters. According to Bennett Cerf (in his book At Random), pop-up books were profitable for Random House.[2] In addition to his collaborations with Christopher Cerf at Random House, Hunt produced pop-up books for Walt Disney, a series of pop-up books based on Babar, and titles such as Haunted House by Jan Pienkowski and The Human Body by David Pelham.
Notable works
Some pop-up books receive attention as literary works for the degree of artistry or sophistication which they entail. One example is STAR WARS: A Pop-Up Guide to the Galaxy, by Matthew Reinhart. This book received literary attention for its elaborate pop-ups, and the skill of its imagery, with the New York Times saying that "calling this sophisticated piece of engineering a 'pop-up book' is like calling the Great Wall of China a partition"
The 1967 Random House publication Andy Warhol's Index, was produced by Warhol, Chris Cerf and Alan Rinzler, and included photos of celebrities together with pop-up versions of Warholesque images such as a cardboard can of tomato paste, as well as a plastic tear-out recording, an inflatable silver balloon, and other novelties.
And now it's Easter, so more family matters.
Will get back on track Monday.
Thanks for your patience.
