Mona Lisa 'was a new mom'
2006-09-27 08:13
Ottawa - Mona Lisa, the mysterious woman
immortalised in Leonardo da Vinci's 16th century masterpiece,
had just given birth to her second son when she sat for the
painting, a French art expert said on Tuesday.
The discovery was made by a team of Canadian scientists who
used special infrared and three-dimensional technology to peer
through hitherto impenetrable paint layers on the work, which
now sits in the Louvre museum in Paris.
Bruno Mottin of the French Museums' Centre for Research and
Restoration said that on very close examination of the painting
it became clear that the Mona Lisa's dress was covered in a
thin transparent gauze veil.
"This type of gauze dress ... was typical of the kind worn
in early 16th century Italy by women who were pregnant or who
had just given birth. This is something that had never been
seen up to now because the painting was always judged to be
dark and difficult to examine," he told a news conference.
"We can now say that this painting by Leonardo da Vinci was
painted to commemorate the birth of the second son of the Mona
Lisa, which helps us to date it more precisely to around
1503."
The young woman with the ambiguous half smile has been
identified as Lisa Gherardini, wife of Florentine merchant
Francesco de Giocondo. She had five children.
'In a league of his own'
Mottin also said that, contrary to popular belief, the
subject had not let her hair hang freely but in fact wore a
bonnet from which only a few curls managed to escape.
"People always wrote that the Mona Lisa had allowed her
hair to hang freely over her shoulders. This greatly surprised
historians because letting your hair hang freely during the
Renaissance was typical of young girls and women of poor
virtue," he said.
The experts from Canada's National Research Council said
the painting was in a fragile condition but should not suffer too
much damage if taken care of properly.
"The 12 cm split on the top half of the
painting, which was probably due to the removal of the original
frame and repaired between the middle of the 18th and beginning
of the 19th century, appears to be stable and has not worsened
over time."
The council had hoped to discover more details about
Leonardo's "sfumato" technique of subtly blending one tone into
another, which the artist used to create a hazy effect. But
scientist John Taylor said the team had been frustrated by the
lack of brush stroke detail on the painting.
"It's extremely thinly painted and extremely flat, and yet the details of the curls of hair, for example are extremely
distinct. So the technique is unlike anything we've ever seen
before. Leonardo was in a league of his own," he said.