Talk:Mona Lisa/Archive1

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Contents

A few Notes

A) The 'uses in popculture' part is reduntant and only put in by people who want to add redunant infromation in. I am too lazy to read the wiki rules on good articles, but I would say having a massive section that has nothing to do with the article constitutes as a bad article. Remove it or section it off to another article. (seriously fellows, why do you guys make these reduntant 'uses in popular culture' sections?

B) The majority of this talk is from years before... can someone archive it?

2006, sep 13.

Copy edit of 14 March 2005

Hi,

I did quite a few copy edits tonight. I removed the vague, nonsensical (and unsupported) comments on aesthetics that had been inserted twice -- once in the intro, and once in the section on aesthetics. I moved up the explanation of La Gioconda to the intro from the section on the identity of the model. I collapsed the two different references to Lisa Gherardini into a single reference, and linked it to the Da Vinci comment (any source for that?) and noted that it could easily have applied to one of the other 2 Da Vinci portraits of women -- Lady With An Ermine and Ginevra di Benci. Am happy to change if anyone can provide a reference indicating that it definitely applied to Mona Lisa.

I also trimmed back the long, new paragraph on a recent theory of the identity of the model from an avid German self-publisher in Adeliade. I reduced it to the basic theory, but am not even sure it should be given space in the article given that it was most likely inserted into the article by the author herself, and she is not a university-affiliated researcher of good standing.

Also various other grammar fixes and readability improvements, plus removal of links to pages that aren't in the Wikipedia.

mjlodge 06:49, 14 Mar 2005 (UTC)

Mona Lisa copyright ok?

There is realy no copyright on this Picture?

The Image of Mona Lisa just says "(Automated conversion)". Who uploaded it? Is the copyright ok? Fantasy 22:08, 11 Aug 2003 (UTC)

It's a bit too dark anyway, so a replacement image could be better in both senses. Any Louvre tourists lately? --Menchi 22:14, Aug 11, 2003 (UTC)

I doubt they allow tourists to use flash photography. It can bleach paintings. Some museums don't even allow photographs since a lot of people can't figure out how to turn off their flash. Daniel Quinlan 04:20, Aug 12, 2003 (UTC)
... since that way they can sell more postcards and official reproductions. Bleaching paintings is just a handy PR line. Martin 21:37, 12 Aug 2003 (UTC)
My wife was there last week, but she is not yet fully Wikified... ;-)
But my question was more: Are there people hiding their names? I would like to know, WHO contributed something to Wikipedia. How can I find out? Fantasy 22:25, 11 Aug 2003 (UTC)
Last week! Mmm.. I do envy the convenience and accessibility of Europeans to such stuff.
That Automated conversion, a mysterious Wiki-force now dead, hid people's name, but people couldn't (and definitely cannot now) hide their login names. I asked about Automated conversion a few months ago, but am still not very clear. I think it is an unintentional, noted, but unavoidable result/bug that took place when developers upgraded the website some time last year. --Menchi 00:10, Aug 12, 2003 (UTC)
I don't have anything to say about the copyright question, but I did make it a good deal lighter - perhaps too much so; tell me if it needs to go darker again. -Smack 22:57, 11 Aug 2003 (UTC)
I took the liberty of fixing it. ミハエル (MB) 03:34, Aug 12, 2003 (UTC)
"It was accomplished between 1503 and 1506." Even US copyright hasn't been retroactively extended that long yet ;-).—Eloquence 23:15, Aug 11, 2003 (UTC)
Mbecker, here's an image — it looks like we might be able to copy it (or at least get permission to copy)
http://www.paris.org/Musees/Louvre/Treasures/gifs/Mona_Lisa.html
terms for copying are here: http://www.paris.org/copyright.html &mdash Daniel Quinlan 04:25, Aug 12, 2003 (UTC)
Much better. Lady M. Lisa deserves better. I can see her smiling more brightly now. --Menchi 04:30, Aug 12, 2003 (UTC)
Please, just ignore those bogus copyright claims. The painting is in the public domain and the digitization process is not creative.—Eloquence

Ok, I have uploaded a bigger version to Image:Mona_Lisa.jpg, but I like the color on the current smaller version better. What do you think? ミハエル (MB) 04:59, Aug 12, 2003 (UTC)

Value

How much is the painting insured for? Is this information public? Edward 21:19, 16 Jul 2004 (UTC)

Moved from todo list

In the interests of keeping the to-do list as brief as possible, I've moved Shibboleth's comments here:

  • I haven't been able to find the insurance information on the web despite quite extensive searching. I would guess it's not public. --Shibboleth 01:08, 31 Aug 2004 (UTC)
    • Oh, wait, I found this. It's not the current valuation, though. --Shibboleth 04:32, 31 Aug 2004 (UTC)

Thank you very much for your research work, Shibboleth. I added the info you dug up into the article. I have also posted a request for an answer to this question on Wikipedia:Reference desk#Mona Lisa mysteries. • Benc • 07:51, 31 Aug 2004 (UTC)

Who coined the name?

Hey if the Italian name of the Mona Lisa is La Gioconda, who coined the English name of the painting? Was da Vinci fluent in English and therefore coined the name himself, or did someone else did? If so who? -anon

Read the article. --Cantus 19:09, Aug 30, 2004 (UTC)
And yet it is not mentioned in the current version of the article --WhiteDragon 18:16, 6 February 2006 (UTC)
Someone vandalised it. Section restored. Paul B 18:33, 6 February 2006 (UTC)
The discussion of Isis and Amon in the Title section of this article is a reference to the idea proposed in the Da Vinci Code which lacks credibility based on the simple fact that Da Vinci never named the painting Mona Lisa, regardless of the many other reasons why it is a ridiculous assertion. It seems that this theory should remain in the pop culture section and not as a serious discussion of the title as I am not aware of any scholarly opinion that supports this idea. Lord Red Snake 21:20, 24 May 2006 (UTC)

Role in popular culture and avant-garde art

This section is current a chronological list (which I organized), but I'm not entirely sure I like it as a list. I'm generally against lists in articles except when they're obviously necessary; I prefer prose. However, I'm ambivalent about changing this section — the chronological ordering is kind of nice, but the bulleted list somehow make this look less like an encyclopedia article. Thoughts? • Benc • 06:35, 5 Sep 2004 (UTC)

To borrow a phrase, this ain't our parents' encyclopedia. Bulleted lists are quite appropriate for a set of short items in a Wikipedia article. Prose is desirable, but if you get enough prose for each item on this list, it would probably make more sense to convert the list into a separate article, like List of pop culture references to the Mona Lisa, so it doesn't overwhelm the main topic. But a list of short citations with appropriate Wikipedia links makes more sense to me. Chronological strikes me as the most logical ordering, too. — Jeff Q 02:21, 13 Sep 2004 (UTC)
Chronological is not appropriate, because we are not chronicling any developments. How a song by Counting Crows is relevant to that of Nat King Cole. It's not better, it's not a development of the latter, it doesn't really compares in any way, so a chronological order is not needed. It's needed even less for works in different genres. For example, why should Dali's portrait go after La Gioconda? Was it influenced by it, should people watch the film first? No and no. As for being a list, it's not too bad, but prose would be better. I am going to reedit the bulleted list into text now. Paranoid 12:27, 3 Dec 2004 (UTC)

Slashdotty

On the Village pump, our Mona Lisa article recently (14 Sep 2004) had the dubious honor of being nominated for the periodic "Encylopedia that Slashdot Built Awards". This "award" just one contributor's opinion about perceived imbalances in the Wikipedia. It is an attempt at constructive criticism.

The full discussion is archived at Talk:Mona Lisa/Slashdot.

To do list

The people who drew up this list have been a bit over-zealous. "Where was the painting between 1507 and 1516?". Da Vinci took it with him on his travels. I think it's clear from the article that he didn't part from it until he sold it to François Ier. "Where was it during WWI?" In the Louvre, probably. I don't think there was a need to remove it, since Paris was never really threatened. - Karl Stas 13:41, 16 Sep 2004 (UTC)

Good call. I was intentionally nitpicky when I first drew up the list — it's simple to clarify and remove items, as you've done. Thanks, • Benc • 21:23, 16 Sep 2004 (UTC)

Trivia / numerology

In gematria (a form of numerology), the name "Mona Lisa", as well as "La Giocconda" and "Leonardo", results in the number 84.
MONA LISA = (13+15+14+1) + (12+9+19+1) = 84.
LA GIOCONDA = (12+1) + (7+9+15+3+3+15+14+4+1) = 84.
LEONARDO = 12+5+15+14+1+18+4+15 = 84.
Also, "Mona Lisa" if anagrammatized gives "Anima Sol", an (ungrammatical) Latin phrase translated as "wind sun", "breath sun", or "life sun".

Someone recently added the above as a trivia section. I'm failing to see the value in it, so moved it here. There is no firm reason why the painting is called Mona Lisa in English language countries, and if I recall it wasn't used during Leonardo's life time. If you mis-spell 'La Gioconda' you can probably get the numerology to give you any number you like. Similarly an odd translation of an anagram giving phrases of no obvious relevance - why?

Leonardo is known to be interested in codes and ciphers, so it is worth looking for hidden meanings, but you have to do it properly. Perhaps this all comes from The Da Vinci Code book. Can anyone make a case for keeping these? -- Solipsist 09:18, 21 Sep 2004 (UTC)

These numerologic "theories" are as relevant as suggesting that da Vinci was abducted by aliens. Both titles are "apocryphical". The painting was never known as either "Mon(n)a Lisa" or "La Gioconda" during da Vinci's lifetime. The latin phrase "anima sol" ("soul sun") is meaningless. Karl Stas 09:50, 21 Sep 2004 (UTC)
Also note that in the Italian language (and therefore alphabet) there are no 'J' and 'K', so that 'L' is the 10th letter, and so on. So the numerical totals are (using the spelling used by Vasari): for MONA LISA = 74, LA GIOCONDA = 73 and LIONARDO = 78. StefanoC 14:10, 21 August 2006 (UTC)

'expensive painting'

Not sure that such a straight comparison between an insurance valuation and the actual sales price of a painting is really valid. Would it be better if the Picasso price was given as a context for the valuation? After all, until it is sold, the ML cannot be described as an expensive painting. Filiocht 10:07, 21 Sep 2004 (UTC)

the digitalmonalisa.com link

...appears to be inserting by a self-promo vandal. Please go to Talk:ASCII art for a single location of this incident discussion. BACbKA 22:15, 1 Dec 2004 (UTC) Moved it here from the article page:

BACbKA 11:47, 3 Dec 2004 (UTC)

Which picture?

There are a number of versions of the Mona Lisa floating around. The Commons has at least two:

version 1
version 1
version 2
version 2


Version 1 is currently used in the article. Which of them is better? dbenbenn | talk 03:49, 31 Jan 2005 (UTC)

Version 1 comes from the Louvre Museum web site and it is markedly the better of the two. And coming from the Louvre we know for sure it is the true Mona Lisa and not a copy. —Cantus…☎ 11:04, Jan 31, 2005 (UTC)
Superficially, Version 2 is more attention grabbing and a little larger, but I prefer version 1. Version 2 is more vivid due to increased contrast and brighter highlights, but I don't think this is faithful to the original. Admittedly its been I while since I saw the original (and you can't see it that well behind all the glass and tourists, and it may have been restored in the meantime) but I remember it as being tonally subdued and possibly slightly green tinged. Besides Version 1 has better shadow detail and sfumato is all about subtle graduations of tone. -- Solipsist 11:41, 31 Jan 2005 (UTC)
Are those JPEG artifacts in version 1, especially around the neck? dbenbenn | talk 01:18, 21 Mar 2005 (UTC)

Her eyes are really red in the second one....--71.156.120.118 03:08, 15 March 2006 (UTC)

Wow...

... it appears our self healing nature is not so good as we first thought - even on well known articles such as this one. User:68.204.190.83 added a huge slab of text to the start of the article (possibly a copyvio) and it has stayed in there for 2 days. I have just reverted. For the edits made, see [1]. - Ta bu shi da yu 02:55, 16 Jun 2005 (UTC)

The changes made to this article do not appear on my watchlist for those dates. Yours is the first change that has appeared for several days. It seems there may have been a glitch of some sort in the "watch" system. Paul B 09:40, 16 June 2005 (UTC)

Mona Lisa in Pink Panther cartoon

Mona Lisa was center of theme of the Pink Panther cartoon episode named "Pink DaVinci". In this episode Pink Panther keeps changing the smile of ML while DaVinci tries to revert it back. In the end DaVinci gets frustrated and kicks the tower of Pisa and the tower leans.

Is this relevant?--68.89.189.240 21:50, 13 March 2006 (UTC)

Mona Lisa Overdrive

the painting also appeared in the title of "Mona Lisa Overdrive," a novel by William Gibson ("neuromancer," "blade runner," etc.), and--although i have not read that book myself--i wonder what the relevence is to the title, and whether or not that reference should be included in the article.--Whiteknight 04:57, 22 August 2005 (UTC)

Simply referencing the name "Mona Lisa" doesn't seem to be enough to warrant a mention in this section (the examples for Britney Spears and Max Payne notwithstanding), otherwise the list could probably expand greatly, overbalancing the page. In the William Gibson (novelist) book Mona Lisa Overdrive it's possible that the reference is to Molly Millions being a living work of art due to her body modifications, but that is definately speculative and tenuous. YojimboSan 04:09, 20 June 2006 (UTC)
Probably the Britney Spears and Max Payne references should be removed from the list, thinking about it. Any other points of view here? YojimboSan 04:09, 20 June 2006 (UTC)
It might be desirable to add a hidden warning that the list should not become too long, so that mere mentions of NL should be deleted. Paul B 10:45, 20 June 2006 (UTC)

question about the mona lisa?

whats so popular about it?

Pece Kocovski 09:06, 27 September 2005 (UTC)

read the article! Paul B 09:40, 27 September 2005 (UTC)

"new fact"

I have deleted the following passage:

German and Russian students have seen a new fact: the correspondence between the face of Mona Lisa and the face of Caterina Sforza in a portrait by Lorenzo di Credi [2]. Caterina Sforza was the Lady of Forlì and Imola when Cesare Borgia and Leonardo went in Romagna. The portrait by Lorenzo di Credi is now in the Museum of Forlì, in Italy and is known also as "La dama dei gelsomini".

Who are these "German and Russian students"? No reference is given.

Well: You was right. Now here is the name: Magdalena Soest.

Why is it a "new fact"? New theory, more like - not even that. Apart from "seeing" this resemblance there does not seem to be any other evidence connecting the two images. I can't see much of a resemblance meesel'. Paul B 16:21, 25 October 2005 (UTC)

The fact is the correspondance made by a computer work between thw two faces. By that fact the theory is "Mona Lisa is Caterina Sforza".

Don't you agree?

notice: the real image of Caterina Sforza is wrong (left-right twisted).

What computer? Well Magdalena, if this new theory has been published by a reputable publisher, then it can go in (see WP:RP). If not, then it's WP:OR. Paul B 16:17, 31 January 2007 (UTC)

What about the Da Vinci Code?

I was refered to this page from the page about Da Vinci Code, and i was extremely suprised to find no reference to the book except at the end when they talk about movies, songs and books that the Mona Lisa is mentioned in. Maybe I am just guilable and very easily influenced, but i found the descriptions of Mona Lisa in the book Da Vinci Code to be in fact very accurate and likely. For those of you who have read the book, you will be farmiliar with the theory that the right side is meant to be man and left woman and when examining the painting you can see the left side of the painting is larger, as if representing the male half of the painting. The book also explains that Da Vinci was a believer of needing both male and female to be complete, which I believe is what he was depicting in this painting. Also, the name Mona Lisa does fit the theory that it is an ananogram of Amon (the egyptian god of fertility) and l'Isa (the egyptian godess of fertility.) I must admit that this takes art to whole new level, especially with such a controversial artist, but a bit of debate never hurt anyone...

Natalia

Well the book is not an authoritative source of information about the painting is it? It's a novel. Apart from Dan Brown making it up, no scholar has ever suggested that the name is an anagram of Amon and the French for Isis. As the article makes clear, the title was not invented by Leonardo (people did not give titles to paintings in his day). It simply derives from Vasari's identification of the sitter. There is no evidence that I know of to support the view that Leonardo was a believer in the sacred union of masculinity and femininity I don't know what you mean when you say that the left hand side of the painting is 'larger'. The landscape on the right hand side is higher up - a fact already discussed, albeit briefly, in the article.
Many of these issues are discussed in the Da Vinci Code page. Paul B 09:28, 4 November 2005 (UTC)

'Amon' and 'Isa' are both true names for Egyptian Gods. Though I do not accept the bit in the book aboutn Mary Magdelene and Jesus' marriage, The Mona Lisa is not the book's main theme. I would say the information is accurate. racooon

Emotion computer software finds Mona Lisa is indeed smiling

"According to the latest computer results, the subject, thought to be the Florentine wife of Francesco del Giocondo, was 83% happy, 9% disgusted, 6% fearful and 2% angry, the New Scientist was told."

See: http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/entertainment/4530650.stm

It cost a dutch university some millions of euros to research this tremendously important topic. What a great achievement for the entire world, where there are no more wars, diseases, famine and global warming worth fixing. L'art pour l'art!

The article says nothing about it having cost "millions of euros" to use the program to analyse the expression. The use of the "Mona Lisa" is just a very cheap PUBLICITY STUNT to advertise the software program, which will have many commercial applications. l'art pour l'industrie! Paul B 11:01, 16 December 2005 (UTC)
Agreed. This is a press release that has successfully snuck into international headlines. These statistics are meaningless. NTK 16:05, 16 December 2005 (UTC)
How about mentioning the opinion of facial expression expert Paul Ekman? I'd certainly be more swayed by his thoughts than in the software mentioned. http://www.sfgate.com/cgi-bin/article.cgi?f=/c/a/2002/09/16/MN241376.DTL&type=science "Mona Lisa's smile is very interesting because it involves just the lips," Ekman said. "And she is facing one way and looking slightly the other way. That's one of the things that happens in flirtation. There's a slight smile, you flick your eyes to look at someone and flick them back. You could say that she was flirting." Ff123 00:25, 7 January 2006 (UTC)

Duchamp

From Duchamp:

Research published in 1997 by art historian Rhonda Roland Shearer indicates that Duchamp's supposedly 'found' objects may actually have been created by Duchamp. Exhaustive research of items like snow shovels and bottle racks in use at the time has failed to turn up any identical matches. The urinal, upon close inspection, is non-functional. (However, there are accounts of Walter Arensberg and Joseph Stella being with Duchamp when he purchased the original Fountain at J. L. Mott Iron Works.) The artwork "L.H.O.O.Q." which is supposedly a poster-copy of the Mona Lisa with a mustache drawn on it, turns out to be not the true Mona Lisa, but Duchamp's own slightly-different version that he modelled partly after himself. If Shearer's findings are correct then Duchamp was creating an even larger joke than he admitted. [1]

Should this be mentioned here? Has this been verified or is this still a fringe viewpoint? NTK 16:00, 16 December 2005 (UTC)

non-reflective glass

It is displayed in a purpose-built, climate-controlled enclosure behind unbreakable, non-reflective glass

To the right of this sentence is the picture of the painting under the glass, with reflections of the visitors clearly visible in the glass. Someone should explain what non-reflective glass means in this case (I can't as I don't know). Nevfennas 09:52, 23 December 2005 (UTC)

The surface of non reflective glass has been etched in such a way that reflections are diffused; the only drawback is that the covered artwork looks slightly duller.

Also, a photo I took on April 13 2005 shows that there is still a reflection to be seen, although it is not as prominent as the previous protection when it was installed in another room. When I learn how to upload photos, I will send a copy. [(User:Dorvaldude)] 10:58 27 December 2005 (UTC)

I'm really not sure, but it would be reflective glass due to the fact light can fade the paintings colors, making it less original. --70.132.148.20 00:32, 12 March 2006 (UTC)

The picture beside the statement is clearly labelled to say that it illustrates how the picture was displayed before it was moved last year. It was displayed in a box made of reflective bullet-proof glass (which actually made it notoriausly difficult to see). As for fading, that's not really a big problem, but the photo flash guns don't help. The painting has been exposed to view for 400 years, so the effects of normal light are not really a big issue. Colours fade or remain stable for a variety of reasons. The problem of colour in the Mona Lisa is due to the varnish and Leonardo's habit of applying very very thin glazes.Paul B 01:01, 12 March 2006 (UTC)

Cut / Copied

At some point after Leonardo's death the painting was cut down by having part of the panel at both sides removed. Originally there were two columns on either side of the figure, as we know from early copies.

This part needs more work. It is actually about the original painting itself, how Leonardo composed it, and not about tangents like insurance value, acid attacks and bulletproof glass. At the least a source needs to be cited. Ideally I'd like to see a picture of one of those early copies.
--BjKa 09:04, 7 February 2006 (UTC)

Well we don't know when this cut occurred, but the early copies are reproduced in a number of books on Leonardo. You can see a repro of one of the copies here.[3] Paul B 11:41, 7 February 2006 (UTC)

finished or not?

In The Mark Steel Lectures, it is said that the mona lisa was never officially finished; Leonardo always thought there is just one more thing needed to be added. Any comments? --UVnet 19:18, 8 March 2006 (UTC)

Mark Steel's a comedian. He likes to exaggerate. I'm sure there's a Marxist message in the painting somewhere too. However, he never gave it to Mr Giocondo, that's for sure. But it's impossible to say it was never finished. There's no evidence of incompletion in the painting, unlike other Leonardo works and we have no recorded statements from Leo saying that he still needed to do more work on it. Paul B 19:34, 8 March 2006 (UTC)


Question??

This is a copy of a box above in this article: "This article is a former featured article candidate. Please view its sub-page to see why the nomination failed. For older candidates, please check the archive." That 'subpage' is a link, but to nothing that is now in Wikipedia. I would like to see the nomination and failure, but cannot seem to find it. --Dumarest 14:35, 15 April 2006 (UTC)

This page was defaced recently...

I removed the vulgar text, but don't know how to restore the previous page.

[Looks like someone took care of it]

New Facts

Well, I am a fan of Leonardo and I admire his work. One day I was checking something about Gematria, a Hebrew Transliteration System, I entered the name Mona Lisa and it came up with the number 262. Also consistent with that number was name Sara and the definition for name Sara was Princess. As far as I know in Dan Browns Book "The DaVinci Code" the name Sara is mentioned as the daughter of Christ. If you want to you can check it by yourself: http://www.mysticalinternet.com/gematria/lookup.php?system=hebrew&word=MONA+LISA

Wow! This is proof at last! Does it work with Monna Lisa, or La Giaconda, or La Joconde?? Paul B


Well, I tried the other names and name Monna Lisa consist to number 312 and the transliteration of the word YASHUA. in hebrew had that same number and it's definition was JESUS CHRIST. You check it yourself http://www.mysticalinternet.com/gematria/lookup.php?system=hebrew&word=Monna+Lisa

Promoted as Good Article

Congratualations to all significant editors, I have promoted this article to Good Article status. However, I would like to also comment that I consider the article (although wonderful prose) to have barely scraped through the nomination, as it needs more references. Should you wish to improve the article rapidly, please find more references for the facts within. I would also strongly recommend changing the references to the <ref> tag format. Inspiring work, I may be back to help later. — Estarriol talk 16:46, 7 June 2006 (UTC)

"Eyes follow you"

This article makes the claim that the Mona Lisa's eyes follow the viewer. This claim is made about many paintings, but the truth is that ANY image in which the subject is looking at the viewer will appear this way from any angle, unless the image is some sort of 3-D hologram that actually looks at a specific point in space. So the fact that Mona Lisa's eyes "follow" you is not unique, and in my opinion should be removed. Tulane97 22:33, 9 June 2006 (UTC)

Absence of Facial Hair

The article seems to imply that either the model (or the artist in depicting a contmeporary lady on canvas) had removed all the facial hair. And yet there is no citation for this and no reference to other paintings where this is so. The paintings I came across of paintings for this period from catalogues of the L.A. County Museum and the Norton Simon, for example, compared with other periods, all reflected this idea of minimilzing but not entirely eliminating all facial hair.

I found this curious (and some might even say farfetched) not so much for the eyebrows which even some modern women may pluck to some degree, but especially when going so far as to claim what was fashionalbe for women to do in those times as a way to explain the lack of eyelashes. If then this is merely the opinion of that particular wikipedia author, I might offer a more plausible explanation. Namely, that da Vinci was exercising his artistic license to depict an idealized of woman (taking the idea of minimal facial hair some degree further than what was actually possible or likely) , rather than that he had used a model who actually had removed every single eyelash, or for that matter, that any woman of that day would actually have done so, as the article says was so.

Raphael's "Madonna and Child with Book" (1502-3) seems to be taking the ideal to the very edge where only the finest vestiges of eyebrow and eyelashes remain and in a way that is not even realistic and seem obviously to be editorializing or stylizing what he actually saw. (Although this is hard to confirm in the online photos; and even in my book with a much higher resolution, of course, it takes more than a casual glance to make this out). And then da Vinci a fews later completed his own painting pushing the idea over that edge by simply eliminating any trace of this hair all together. WC June 13, 2006.

Absence of eyebrows is quite common in paintings of women at this time. See, for example, the portrait of Caterina Sforza illustrated above. Plucking of these hairs is mentioned by Castiglione, who objects to effeminate men who imitate women by "plucking their eyebrows". Roy McMullin discusses this in his book Mona Lisa: The Picture and the Myth. Paul B 15:32, 14 June 2006 (UTC)

LASHES

Paul, you may have reacted a little too hastily. I was mainly referring to eyeLASHES, not eyeBROWS. If you would like to know why I question (the LASHES) this, try even tugging on one of your own lashes and see how it feels. Your own reference though may help prove my point in (for you) an unintended way in the sense that one attempting to rebut a premiss about eyelashes and putting forth his best effort could only produce a citation about eyebrows. Most references to plucking eyeLASHES I came across have only to do with abberant neurotic behavior, not fashion or beauty.

I thought it was clear above that i was not focusing on the brows as that is easy enough to accept and can be seen not only in many paintings but also in women in 2006 as nothing exceptional.

If I may, I might suggest you either offer a citation specicially about lashes or at least discuss here how you made the jump from eyebrows to eyelashes as regards history (not the painting in question as that may have simply to do with artistic license on the part of one particular artist.) Another way you could support your claim would be by providing some references to other paintings in which not only eyeBROWS but eyeLASHES were in total absense to the extent they are in the Mona Lisa.

Barring that, I might suggest you consider revising your text slightly to separate the two. Or alternatively, if you leave a message for me here to that effect I can begin the process by adding my above speculation, separating the part about brows from lashes in the process. Then you could do any revisions you see fit on top of that. While not "factual" I think such speculaton would be of interest to readers in exploring to what degree artistic license might have been extended by Leonardo and by painters in general.

However, my first reaction was that you and others who worked on this section about the details of the painting may well know more than I about the painting and that you could produce some kind of hint at least to me as to how you arrived at including eyeLASHES to you observation about actual practices of facial removal. Does McMullin as with Castiglione discuss only brows and not lashes? If so, what does he say?

It could be that Leonardo himself--and for men as well as women subjects in many cases--or artists in general of the time tended to omit the eyelashes for practical reasons (for convenience as it might be considered tedious to go into that much detail) or aesthetic (that it made a better painting to omit certain details). Da Vinci certainly minimized them more than other artists or completely omitted eyeLASHES regardless of gender in a number of works[4]. Compare this also to a Raphael from the same period [5]. It is hard to tell with these photos. One really needs to see fine printed photographs on paper to see that level of detail but from those references one might then go on to inspect images of higher resolution elsewhere. And weather they are absolutely omitted or simply extremely minimized isn't really my point. My point is that license may have been used by one or more artists of this time in a way not typical of other periods based not on the customs of actual women about them, but rather based on how they translated what they saw in a model per se and how they systematically (according to artists'--not the women themselves or the men who made comments about how they looked--conventions for depicting ideal beauty) translated that, omitting or minimalizing some features or exagerating others as they made there way onto the canvas. 218.218.61.59 22:27, 15 June 2006 (UTC)

I don't know what you are getting so excited about. You referred to both eyebrows and eyelashes. In a sense it doesn't matter whether she physically removed one or other or both of them, or whether Leonardo simply chose not to depict them. Since no other pictures of Ms Gerhardini exist, we can't say. What matters is that facial hair on women was considered unsightly at the time, and the painting reflects that. Paul B 23:07, 15 June 2006 (UTC)

Paul, honestly, please do describe your "theory" for us of how you propose women "shaved" eyelashes!

Existing text from the wikipedia article:
"...no eyebrows and eyelashes. This is probably because it was common at this time for genteel women to shave them off"

"Them" would include eyelashes in this construction. If you want to contend, that it doesn't matter, that people will "get it", that's a poor excuse for a sloppy error in construction that went uncorrected. It simply ought to be revised just from the point of view of proper English.

But the problem with rectifying this is that you'd end up having to delete the novelty point of "ALL facial hair" and it just becomes something much less remarkabe.

As for the brows, authors such as Stendahl, Vasari, and Cassiano have commented on them, for example, in their writings about the Mona Lisa. Although in several citations which include these authors (Sassoon, 2003, p. 19, 27, 32, 86, 129, 206, 210), the possiblity of attributing it to fashion is mentioned only once, with most others treating the eyebrows as either "missing" or having "vanished" possibly due to cleaning or fading of the painting, or writing thus from having read Vasari's description which seems unreliable (that he was describing a painting he had never seen) to modern scholars but might have mislead earlier writers to have believed the painting at one time had eyebrows. Of those several citations, the notion you appear still to be clinging to of "shaving eyelashes" is never touched upon, however.

I did not find any listings anywhere for the source you mentioned above for McMullin.

You wrote:
“You referred to both eyebrows and eyelashes. In a sense it doesn't matter whether she physically removed one or other or both of them, or whether Leonardo simply chose not to depict them. Since no other pictures of Ms Gerhardini exist, we can't say.”

I think you mean that all we can do is speculate. That’s OK as that is what must be done with a lot of are from centuries ago if no other documentation exists. And what you are saying and what is in the wikipedia text there is a speculation, too. In the absence of other paintings or written descriptions of Ms Gerhardini, we also have the proxies to turn to of depictions of other women of the time in paintings by comtemporaries of da Vinci to indicate to us what might have been likely for women of that status. Plus we (except you) have common sense to tell us that "shaving eyelashes" is highly improbable and most assuredly an artistic choice.

“What matters is that facial hair on women was considered unsightly at the time, and the painting reflects that.”

Ah, now we are getting somewhere. But that isn’t quite what the wikipedia text says as it is worded now. Would you care to revise it in that light? Would you mind if largely cutting and pasing what you have just written above that I did so myself?

Sassoon, D. 2003 (reprint edition). Becomng Mona Lisa. Harvest Books. ISBN 0156027119

218.218.61.59 13:58, 16 June 2006 (UTC)

Anyone can edit Wikipedia, so go ahead. I don't know why "common sense" tells us that "shaving eyelasses" is highly improbable. Common sense tells me that the idea that sticking a black spot on your face would be attractive is "highly improbable", but evidence indicates that it assuredly existed as a fashion ("beauty spots"). Clipping eyelashes would not be painful. Women wax their legs and shave their armpits etc etc all the time to this day. Perhaps "common sense" will tell people of future generations that leg shaving is "highly improbable" behaviour.
It's very very unlikely that any cleanings in the past could have led to disappearence of visible hairs. Any such interventions would have to have been so severe that other delicate touches would have disappeared, but this is not so. It's unlikely that Vasari actually saw the painting, as it was in France. Even if he had, he'd be writing from memory. Paul B 14:26, 16 June 2006 (UTC)
By the way, the current wording states "It is also notable that Mona Lisa has no visible facial hair at all - including eyebrows and eyelashes. This is probably because it was common at this time for genteel women to shave them off, since they were considered to be unsightly." The first sentence simply states a fact: the there is no visible facial hair in the painting. The second statement explains it by reference to codes of beauty. At no point is the claim made that this particular lass actually shaved the pesky little fuzz off. Perhaps "shaved them off" could be replaced by "remove them" if the concept of "shaving" lashes disturbs you so much. Paul B 14:41, 16 June 2006 (UTC)
Paul wrote:
“You referred to both eyebrows and eyelashes. In a sense it doesn't matter whether she physically removed one or other or both of them, or whether Leonardo simply chose not to depict them. Since no other pictures of Ms Gerhardini exist, we can't say.”

I suggest you try both yourself and you will see why common sense would dictate that the pain or danger (holding a blade fractions of an inch from your eyeball in order to shave these lashes) is something entirely different from simply applying a beauty spot. Common sense would tell most people that you would not have to actually attempt both processes to realize that. But if you lack THIS KIND of common sense, it will become necessary to actually to try it out to discover what I meant.

“Clipping eyelashes would not be painful. Women wax their legs and shave their armpits etc all the time to this day. Perhaps "common sense" will tell people of future generations that leg shaving is "highly improbable" behaviour.”

That is the problem in the writing of the article. It doesn’t say clipping. The common sense of the kind I was mentioning had less to do with choices of hair removal than with the danger, aversion to putting a blade up to your eye, etc. that the use of the word “shaving” in the text brings with it. You persist in evading the issue of the word “shaving” by going off on a tangent about hair removal in general which is not really the point (said point being about the choice of the word “shaving”.)

It's very very unlikely that any cleanings in the past could have led to disappearance of visible hairs. Any such interventions would have to have been so severe that other delicate touches would have disappeared, but this is not so. It's unlikely that Vasari actually saw the painting, as it was in France. Even if he had, he'd be writing from memory.

Well, even the article contradicts you in the section about the X-rays. It is indeed possible (it is a documented fact), according to this view that only certain portions might deteriorate at different rates than other portions. The degree to which this might have been from cleaning alone is not clear, but it also depends on what the cleaner had in mind and how he went about the process. And deterioration and the vanishing of certain features need not only be restricted to cleanings. Your understanding of paint and deterioration appears to be too simplistic then in this regard.

However, for now, I would tend to agree that they were not there to begin with, too. Da Vinci drew some men without eyelashes, too. That had nothing to do with shaving or clipping or ideas about beauty. Artists have always simplified minor or minute features they did not think the viewer would need to see. They don’t paint every single brick of a castle in the distance. They don’t paint every single leaf in a forest. That’s another common sense thing you seem be missing.

You interpret paintings too literally as if they were clinical photographs taken to document what was actually seen by an almost objective image recording machine if there were one. And so you proceed from that point to build a case in a sort of errant reverse engineering style around the notion that since there were no eyelashes in a certain work of art, a work of fiction, after all, that indeed there were none in real life and that now clipping or some other removal process must surely be how this was done. Overlooking the more likley idea that it simply was not done at all. That it is absent from the painting because the artist probably chose to make it so.

Basically, the eyelashes should probably have been left out all together (from the two sentences in question, at least), as was the case with Sassoon, Stendahl, Vasaari, Cassione, etc. who were content with just writing about the eyebrows being absent. What caused the problem for you was that you started with the novel premiss of NO FACIAL HAIR as a fact of the painting and then tried to combine that with SHAVING (now clipping or removing) EYELASHES which is not supported by anything and is easily refuted by common sense (not only the pain and danger, but that artists always have the option of omitting such things as with bricks, leaves, etc.)

By the way, the current wording states "It is also notable that Mona Lisa has no visible facial hair at all - including eyebrows and eyelashes. This is probably because it was common at this time for genteel women to shave them off, since they were considered to be unsightly." The first sentence simply states a fact: the there is no visible facial hair in the painting. The second statement explains it by reference to codes of beauty. At no point is the claim made that this particular lass actually shaved the pesky little fuzz off. Perhaps "shaved them off" could be replaced by "remove them" if the concept of "shaving" lashes disturbs you so much.

No, the second sentence does not ONLY explain codes of beauty. The second part of that sentence does this. But the first part LINKS the whole sentence to the Mona Lisa “eyebrows AND eyelashes" of the previous sentence in its use of "them" which can not be properly taken "selectively" by the reader (to mean only for eyebrows), especially as this was introduced by an observation of there being NO FACIAL HAIR (which forced you into a corner of having to try, unsuccessfully to explain away ALL of those features, even the ones you could not really "explalin" (by providing no support (a quote about eyeBROWS isn't satisfactory for this) for "shaving eyelashes").

In addtion, the first part of the second sentence SPECULATES on the CONNECTION between BOTH of those facial features and codes of beauty and specifies precisely the practice SHAVING in the society of those days. If we accept that SHAVING of eyeLASHES was a practice of that day (your argument) it goes beyond just an abstract code, to someone actually carrying out the process of SHAVING eyeLASHES--I mean thats how it reads, look at it. In other words, not only does your sentence conjure the image of a single lass holding a razor up right next to her eyeball (as opposed to safely and painlessly on the more distant brow), but plural lasses, to boot, and in fact as many lasses as there were genteel ladies of the day.

"Remove" would solve the problem if it were true that the latter object of that verb, "eyelashes", were likely to have been removed circa 1500 to the same degree eyebrows, the former object, were so removed. Most people are probably familiar with practices similar to the former, but no one here so far, not even you, are actually familiar with the latter (despite your tendency to SPECULATE about it). Speculations have their place of interest I would agree, but it confuses issues and muddies things to structure them into the same pair of sentences as the text stands now where the former item (eyebrow shaving) is a widely accepted notion, whereas the latter (eyeLASH shaving, clipping or removal) not, and yet not calling attention to that distinction. Separating the two items will probabably be the best way to go about revising this part.218.218.61.59 18:13, 16 June 2006 (UTC)

Your graphomaniacal obsession with these minor problems of wording is beginning to seem pathological. Please calm down and put your CAPITALS away.Paul B 19:55, 16 June 2006 (UTC)

A gruding admission of your problem with writing finally.

You began by being unable to distinguish between eyebrows and eyelashes, and your reading abiity only returned to you after caps were used. So very normal for one, based on your change in understanding, to contiue with caps. If you don't like caps then next time I might suggest you learn to read words with common beginnings and differnt endings a little more carefully from the start.

Also, you followed that up with a number of facile bluffing defenses of your eyelash shaving notion. They deserved rebuttal. I think if it were as minor as all that of a (now acknowledged by you finally giving up the bluffing defense all together) problem, you could easily revised the passage by simply editing what you (I assume it was you) wrote under Aesthetics. You began by seeing it not as a "problem" but something you thought you had some kind of citation for (Castiglione, but no, that did not work after all as a bluff). At that point it wasn't a problem to you yet.

As for my part, I was seeking to confirm whether or not there was other information supporting your statement. (No one can read your mind to know your intentions or possessoin or lack of pertinent background information so discussing it here becomes necessary.) If there was such support, it wouldn't be a "wording problem". As it turns out, though, you came up empty-handed in finding anything to support that wording, tried to bluff you way through it anyhow, and finally ended giving up the bluff when found out and then grudgingly calling it a "minor wording" problem instead, but at least a problem.

When someone makes such a basic level mistake in the use of language (i.e., errors between the plural pronoun and the things it refers to) such as you did, they should just revise the wording problem they created. Trying to bluff your way around it by trying to spin facile but unacceptable defenses of the content instead isn't very honest and in the long-term usually doesn't work as you found. 218.218.61.59 21:00, 16 June 2006 (UTC)

Listen you [blip], [blip] person, I am fed up with reading your [blip][blip] and [blip][blip][blip] over a minor issue. You dare to comment on my "problem [Paul B's own choice of words for describing this passage in his writing - see above] of writing", while you display a [blip] [blip] with [blip][blip] and ungrammatical sentences in abundance. Read some books. Start perhaps with Plucked, Shaved and Braided: Medieval and Renaissance Beauty and Grooming Practices 1000-1600, by Daniela Turudich and Laurie J. Welch. It clearly indicates that removal of both eyebrows and eyelashes was commonplace. I resent having to do research for you just to avoid more paragraphs of verbal [blip]. I would have been happier to make minor revision to the wording myself if you had not been behaving like someone who was both proud of their [blip]' of Renaissance culture and so obsessed that you would consider any acceptance of an utterly trivial point as the equivalent of the Fall of Rome. Paul B 01:05, 17 June 2006 (UTC)

You are tired of hearing from me? Well, tough. That section needed revision and I guess being persistent (to the tune of almost 4200 words) is what it takes to get you to admit that that is so and to do something about it.

Writing for a discussion page and writing for the article are two different things. And it doesn't excuse the need for revision of the article.

Minor? Hmmm...if this (your orginal argument in the discussion above, that shaving eyelashes was OK) is "minor", and it took so much to finally get you to admit to the truth and revise one word, one can only wonder how much more it would have taken to get you to admit to "major" problem. I think we should abstain from trying to judge how major or not a problem is and just fix things as best we can.

Ignorance? Isn’t that why people turn to Wikipedia? To find out something they did not already know? I thought one of the principles was that knowledgeable people such as yourself were supposed to share their expertise with others. Not to hoard a particular reference (about plucking) and bluff about how shaving is sufficient enough wording for you. Or did you have that last reference earlier? I think not. Or you would have used it. You just found it because your bluff was called by me and you were forced to admit that "shave" would not work in that construction.

Read some books? You must have no background in scholarship. It is universally accepted that the burden of responsibilty when putting forth claims lies squarely on you, the writer of those claims, to provide credible citaitions. It is not the responsibilty of the reader to search for those obscure books, but that of the author(s), as you will see in any of the featured Wikipedia articles where susbtanial reference lists have been been made by the authors.

It must have been pretty hard for even you to find that book which is out of print and pretty obscure. I mean if it were so easy to find I don't think you would act so irritated as if it were some great burden for you to do, and regarding a sentence that you had originally written in the first place and ought to be held responsible for.

By the way, your footnote for those references also needed to be revised. I'd better state in advance that I'm not saying here whether the revisions are to be classified as major or minor (it doesn't really matter after all), but merely that the revisions would improve the article and ought to be done. You misspelled McMullen's name (perhaps your speller's ear getting confused with the sound of his publisher's name) in the discussion here and in the note for the artilce as well. A minor thing (or two minor things, actually) you may say, but then it causes trouble when doing a search on his name as computers don't seem to care whether people who commit errors think the errors are minor or major. Also, you made two references to support this statement but used only a single set of reference brackets with which to enclose them. Next time you might try to bracket each reference individually instead of putting them together as one reference. That way they'll display properly in the notes. I've already given you some help with this. 218.218.61.59 00:09, 20 June 2006 (UTC)

Ever After

The Mona Lisa is also featured in the movie "Ever After," in which Leonard da Vinci is also a character. In the movie he carries the painting with him to France rolled and placed in a container, which would not be possible, according to the Wikipedia article. The French prince comments about her enigmatic smile and the Leonardo character says, when the painting has been stolen, that "she is my life," which prompts the prince to rescue the painting and return it to Leonardo.


Human Presence?

"Winding paths and a distant bridge give only the slightest indications of human presence." What about the pillars? In my opinion, that gives a big indication of human presence. ViperBite 02:08, 22 June 2006 (UTC)

The voice of Mona Lisa

A while ago I was watching Reuters newsvideos online and there was a story about a team of scientists (I think they were japanese), who were able to simulate the voice of Mona Lisa by examining her bone structure and anatomy in the picture, I think. I believe this is a new technology in crime investigations, to be able to reproduce the voice of a person just by examining his/her photograph.

Anyway, my point is that it would be awesome if someone would attach this simulated voice of Mona Lisa to this article as an audio file. Also, they had simulated the voice of Leonardo Da Vinci, which would be a great and fun addition to the Leonardo article as well

Why do we have nothing on the studies and reproductions?

There are multiple duplicates and even one assumed "study". I'll give some info on the "study" as I just recently saw its display in the Portland Museum of Art.

The Portland copy/study officially titled La Gioconda (I dont know if this is because its the name of the finished work) is thought to either be a preperatory study or a copy painted by one of DaVinci's followers, if it is a copy it would be the oldest known to exist since it has been dated to before 1510, however they have been unable to confirm or deny if Leonardo was involved in its creation. In a section of the painting (a river near a bridge) the characteristic left handed stroke of Leonardo seems to be present. All they know of the history of the "study" is that it was given to the Portland Museum in 1983 by Henry H. Reichhold of Prouts Neck, Maine who purchased the work in the 1960s after the death of its European owner.

Analysis via infrared, uv, microscope and x-ray radiography was conducted by the Straus Center for Conservation and Technical Studies at Harvard University. Pigment analysis was done with scanning electron microscopy, x-ray diffraction and polarizing microscopy. Analysis of the basic structure of the painting shows that the original 16th century canvas was later mounted onto a wood panel, so that on top of the panel there are now layers of adhesive, gauze, deteriorated canvas (the original support), red-brown ground, white ground, and the surface layer of pigment. Analysis of paint samples from various locations showed that the horizontal strip (looks to be some sort of gilded wooden strip approximately 5cm in height) at the bottom was added sometime around 1820 (probably the same time the canvas was panel mounted). Otherwise the testing showed nothing inconsistant with an early 16th century date. The museums study stated: "Definitive conclusions about the original state of the painting are difficult to arrive at because of the present overall poor condition of the painting and the extreme restoration it has undergone"

Other differences between the "study" and the original are:

  • The original is 53 x 77 centimeters, the study is 54 x 64 centimeters.
  • The study colors are less bright
  • The study figure is positioned differently in the space
  • The study landscape has less detail
  • The study figure has a less defined smile

Can somebody clean my data dump up into decent prose and add some more info on the other known copies? ALKIVAR™ 02:10, 26 June 2006 (UTC)

Mona Lisa/Archive1 removed from Wikipedia:Good articles

Mona Lisa/Archive1 (edit|talk|history|links|watch|logs) was formerly listed as a good article, but was removed from the listing because the Role in popular culture and avant-garde art section is substandard - all bullet points and short paragraphs with no flow whatsoever, and telling the reader very little about the painting. The bit about avant-garde art is interesting, the rest is really just trivial. The Scream has a very good example of how a work of art's influence on popular culture can be discussed rather than listed.

Also, writing throughout the article needs work: signifying Leonardo's erotic attraction to his dear mother is unencyclopaedic in tone, and making this painting an enduring record of Leonardo's vision and genius. expresses a point of view, for example. There is also a 'citation needed' tag present. Worldtraveller 10:18, 15 July 2006 (UTC)

Question about alternative identity

In the book "The Mammoth Encyclopedia of the Unexplained" (2000), there is a section about two La Gioconda paintings, the famous one and the one for for Giuliano de Medici. This is mentioned in the wiki under the section "Identity of the model".

The book suggests that Mona Lisa correctly applies to the de Medici painting (which is located in a private residence in England) and the more famous one is more accurately called "La Gioconda". Should this book be cited as an additional reference for the related wiki paragraph? Crystalattice 07:29, 2 August 2006 (UTC)

I don't think it's a really legitimate source. The two titles are simply interchangable, because it is thought to depict Mona Lisa Gioconda. It like a painting of, say, Renée Zellweger, being called both "Miss Renée" and "Ms Zellweger". (It doesn't quite work in English because we wouldn't add the definite article to a name, since we don't have gendered nouns and inflected names). Paul B 09:07, 2 August 2006 (UTC)

The speciality

What's so great about this ruddy pic. of a smiling woman?

Read the ruddy article. Paul B 12:14, 20 August 2006 (UTC)


Painting Recently analyzed

If you are interested: http://www.cbc.ca/story/arts/national/2006/09/26/mona-lisa-research.html and the source: http://www.nrc-cnrc.gc.ca/highlights/2006/0610monalisa_e.html

Identity of the model

The Identity of the model section of the Mona Lisa entry has dropped to the bottom of the page. What happened?

My fault. I accidentally left the <"/ref"> sign off the end of a footnote, so the system interpreted all following text until the next "ref" sign as part of a footnote. Paul B 08:44, 27 September 2006 (UTC)

Veil

Let's not get carried away by news reports. The fact that she is wearing a transparent veil is not a new discovery. Anyone can see the line across her forehead, and follow the veil down her hair. It's just that it then disappears for modern viewers into the general dark blur of her clothing. The claim that this veil is specific evidence of pregnancy is an interpretation, not a simple fact. Paul B 17:31, 27 September 2006 (UTC)

low spatial frequencies?

??? --Gbleem 20:22, 27 September 2006 (UTC)

Can you be more specific? High spatial frequencies are fine details and sharp edges, low spatial frequencies and broad brush stokes or shading. Effects like sfumato would largely be composed of low spatial frequencies, as would vignetting in a photograph. -- Solipsist 21:22, 27 September 2006 (UTC)
I used the plural form when looking for the article. Purhaps you could add something about art and painting to the spatial frequency page. --Gbleem 21:30, 27 September 2006 (UTC)
Well to be honest, I don't think spatial frequencies are much discussed in artistic circles. They are more the sort of thing that scientists (especially physicists) talk about. They also crop up in computing circles in image analysis and image manipulation software (e.g. unsharp masking increases high spatial frequencies). So it probably wouldn't be appropriate to expand the spatial frequency article with artistic discussion. The corollary is that in many ways you are right to question why they are being mentioned in this article. I guess the passage in question is in practice discussing a scientific analysis of the painting.
We can however put in a redirect for spatial frequencies. -- Solipsist 18:50, 30 September 2006 (UTC)
Would it be useful to add a footnote on spatial frequencies on this page? -- Solipsist 20:47, 30 September 2006 (UTC)

Section Hierarchy

I moved the Second World War and Post-war sections to be subordinate to the 20th century section. Changed the name of the 20th century section to 20th century to present, since there is mention of some 21st century events. Bear475 02:37, 24 October 2006 (UTC)

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