Leonardo Da Vinci’s ‘Mona Lisa’ is the most famous painting in the Western world. Judging it on its appearance alone people often wonder why. Such universal iconic status, however, is never the product of aesthetics alone. It is various wider contexts which have promoted the picture to such fame. Initial context: Da Vinci and ‘intention’. In 1503 Da Vinci began painting the Mona Lisa. Vasari states that he carries on working on it for four further years, and implies it was left unfinished. Its unfinished state is disputable, but the possibility adds weight to its general position within the framework of Da Vinci’s aims.
For Da Vinci it was one piece of his broader fascination with the phenomenon of life. Da Vinci is the embodiment of the stereotypical view of the Renaissance genius. A man obsessed with the advancement of the human mind through an expansion of our knowledge and awareness of every facet of life. Painting was merely one aspect of this study, amongst literature, music science, astronomy and engineering. In the limited number of paintings made by Da Vinci a chief fascination seems to be the deconstructing of vision. Da Vinci seems interested in recording objects in paint as the eye records them on the retina. For him an object was the collection of light gathered together. The soft edges of the Mona Lisa attest to this notion of images as merely shadows of objects, the result of light hitting the object in space and then transferring into image be the light being re-gather onto a flat surface. The warm glow of the Mona Lisa also supports the notion of painting as a devise through which Da Vinci could challenge the nature of light and image making. If we believe these to be Da Vinci’s intentions then we can project such notions onto the original incarnation of the image. Save damage, vandalism and the ageing of time the painting itself has remained physical similar. Yet our reading of it has shifted, numerous times. The first significant shift happened within 100 years. From this point on it is no longer Da Vinci’s Mona Lisa.
Giorgio Vasari: idealism and bastardisation
Vasari is the first, and a great, Art Historian. Unfortunately such a status has allowed him to have to autocratic a role in the History of painting. His seminal text, ‘Lives of the Artist’s’, chronicles the Italian Renaissance in three stages. It is an incredible record of the times, yet it is not a text which we should take as gospel truth. Its construction, like any, is biased, and the History it creates therefore artificial. It splits the Renaissance into three clearly definable stages, suggests a chronological rise towards absolute end goals. The arrival at the final fulfilment of these goals is reached in Central Italy in the 16th Century. This is conveniently at the same time (and location) as Vasari was painting, running an art school and during the career of Michelangelo; for whom he was the chief apologist. This was a brilliant marketing strategy. If we judge the art by Vasari’s rules then his account rings true. These rules were; truth to nature, selection of the finest parts, the collection of figures in space to depict moral narratives and painting as a window onto another world. For Vasari design, as a masculine and intellectual qualitiy, was the key ingredient of such a repertoire. Yet this is presuming that all artists discussed desired the total fulfilment of these goals. The Venetian’s (Titian et al) gave paint itself a greater primacy. The early and mid renaissance artists were not so much incapable of creating deep perspectival stages but delighted in the ordering of form across the surface as much as through it. I digress. What is key to realise is where Da Vinci sits in Vasari’s account.
Vasari heralds Da Vinci as one of the key figures in the third, and greatest, stage of the Renaissance, perhaps only just behind Michelangelo. I am not suggesting history is totally false, there is plenty in Da Vinci’s work to justify such celebration by Vasari. What I am suggesting is that Da Vinci’s work, and thus the Mona Lisa, is shifted in its meaning by the role played by Vasari. Vasari’s celebration of Da Vinci means we begin to judge his work by the rules laid down by Vasari. These are rules which have survived as measuring tools in much, perhaps most, literature which follows. Yet when we analyse such a correlation in any detail it seems an uncomfortable fit. Vasari celebrated solid line as the foundation of great art. Da Vinci seemed keen to focus on soft lines, seeing objects as culminations of light, not forms idealised into solid shape by the god like mind of a genius. It is a different belief system in the progression of representation.
Da Vinci’s Millanese ways of seeing perhaps link more closely to the ideals of Venice than those of Vasari and Michelangelo. The impact of Vasari’s account is vast. The painters of the Renaissance were great enough to survive through history with or without him. Yet with him the structure of our memories is more firmly defined the shape of history more rigid. Da Vinci’s work is no longer read entirely on what is seen but through the eye of history tinted by Vasari. It does not matter if we have never heard of him. His ideas have helped clearly define canonical ideals which have filtered into our general understanding and analysis of such work. The Mona Lisa thus becomes misread as fitting too clearly into this picture.
Napoleon and repatriation
There is certainly an active history for the Mona Lisa between its creation and the opening of the Louvre; yet it is that moment which I see as the next significant shift in its reading. Louis XIV had already brought the Mona Lisa to France and had it housed in the Palace of Versailles. Yet the significance of its geographic location came with the rise of Napoloeon I. After the revolution Napoleon has the Mona Lisa moved to the Louvre. The regal building had been transformed into the first major art Museum opened to the public. It was a symbol of the French empire. Its collection was the cultural identity of French imperial civilisation. Housed in the Louvre were objects purchased, gathered and stolen from around the world, often as a by product of their imperial expansion. The Mona Lisa would prove to be the jewel in the crown; a symbol of the high point from the Italian Renaissance. By repatriating the work in Frnace it shifted from being a signifier of Italian creative heritage to a reference of French cultural dominance. It was positioned to be the high point in a museum hung to mirror a particular Vasarian narrative. Sat at the peak it represents the rise to powers of representation. It was exhibited in such a way to imply the French academicians which followed were an inevitable continuation of such perfection. It is a story told through the gaze of French imperial power.
Myth and fame: Symbolism to The Da Vinci Code.
By being housed in the Louvre, as the star attraction, the Mona Lisa attracted the sheer weight of numbers to create an iconic status. Responses to objects are as important as the object itself in form its status and meaning. By its sheer location the work ensured it had a weight of responses to out bid its rivals for lasting fame. It was during the mid 19th Century that creatives started to be drawn to the Mona Lisa as an image to respond too. The symbolist movement saw the Mona Lisa as a figure full of mystique, a notion supported by the enigmatic smile as well as the paintings own history. It started to take on magical and legendary status.
The theft of the work in 1911 was at first seen as an attack on tradition. Picasso and Apollinaire were suspected. Not surprising considering the later had publicly expressed his desire for the painting to be burnt. Eventually it was revealed that it was an Italian employee of the Louvre, Vincenzo Peruggia. He had wanted to have the worked rehoused in Italy. Despite his failed attempt the act added a new anecdote to the picture and thus another level of history to further aggrandise its status.
For Duchamp the image was a perfect vehicle for his Dada protests against tradition. Keen to attack tradition and convention Duchamp wanted to celebrate the irrational and illogical. Adding a fake moustache to a copy of the painting was a simple but effective subversion and parody of the image. Less political and intellectual puns have continued to be made. If you google the image you come across numerous humorous versions; from Lisa Simpson as the Mona Lisa to Banksy’s version of the Mona Lisa holding a rocket launcher. The iconic status of the image as a part of Western heritage is confirmed by its role in blockbuster books and films such as Dan Brown’s, ‘the Da Vinci Code’. The mass selling book and multi million pound grossing film take the image as the central selling point of their franchise. Regardless of any meaning it brings a certain weight of prestige and fame to the brand. This process of quotation and commentary alters our vision. It makes the Mona Lisa part of our very cultural fabric. It becomes a more detached, generalised, vague symbol of certain values we consider history and the masters attain too. It is Vasari’s doctrine filtered and modernised through the gaze of repetition. She has become a highly diverse actress in our cultural theatre. An empty vessel in the Louvre.
The most pressing incarnation of the Mona Lisa exists in the viewing of the work in its current location in the Louvre. The above readings seem to have become quieter, a far more depressing and empty noise has deafened the silence of the painting. Consider the mechanics of its current display. It has been given its own free standing, high rise wall in the middle of a room. It sits behind a bullet proof sheet of glass. Beyond this is an altarpiece like barrier and the obligatory guards. They stand like the bodyguards of some vacuous, superficial celebrity. This is exactly what the Mona Lisa has become. Behind this barrier are ropes for us to queue within, lining up like sheep’s for a few seconds of admiration of a secularised goddess; her iconic power drawing us in like moths to light or flies to shit.
Beyond the room is the paraphernalia that surrounds the modernisation of the Louvre; where the museum has moved conspicuously towards entertainment over value. In the shop and all around there is a plethora of Mona Lisa related merchandise, pens, notepads, t-shirts, posters, fridge magnets etc. etc. Is this the purest form of Kitsch? The work has become nothing more than the celebratory figure head of a business, merely a part of commerce. The irony, and its almost funny, is that its celebration leads to a total emptying of original meaning. That which got it to the heights is that which is lost. It’s like equivalent of celebrating reaching the top of a mountain by being pushed over the edge. In this current geographic and cultural context it has become a vacuous symbol of a capitalist societies need to consume and devour empty and quick experiences. The very mechanics of its presentation control the semantics of this new dimension of meaning. It is very hard to get beyond or transcend this. Thus it is possible to account for the fame and iconic status of the image. It is celebrated for numerous reasons which have shifted through history; each added a layer of weight and permanence. The irony is that such multiple refilling of the vessel has led to its eventual emptying.
