She’s been smeared with cake and doused with acid. Vigilantes have stolen her, and protesters have defaced her. She’s been lasered and prodded, displayed for the plenty, and relegated to her personal basement gallery. Extra not too long ago, hundreds urged billionaire Jeff Bezos to purchase her, after which eat her.
There is no such thing as a backside, it appears, to the mysteries of the Mona Lisa, the Leonardo da Vinci portray that has captivated artwork lovers, tradition vultures and the remainder of us for hundreds of years. Who’s she? (Almost certainly Lisa Gherardini, the spouse of an Italian nobleman.) Is she smiling? (The brief reply — type of.) Did da Vinci initially intend to color her in a different way, along with her hair clipped or in a nursing robe?
Whereas a lot in regards to the artwork world’s most enigmatic topic has been relegated to the realm of the unknowable, now, in an odd crossover of artwork and geology, there could also be one much less thriller: the place she was sitting when da Vinci painted her.
In accordance with Ann Pizzorusso, a geologist and Renaissance-art scholar, da Vinci’s topic is sitting in Lecco, Italy, an idyllic city close to the banks of Lake Como. The conclusion, Ms. Pizzorusso mentioned, is apparent — she figured it out years in the past, however by no means realized its significance.
“I noticed the topography close to Lecco and realized this was the situation,” she mentioned.
The nondescript background has some necessary options; amongst them, a medieval bridge that almost all students have held as the important thing to da Vinci’s setting. However Ms. Pizzorusso mentioned it’s moderately the form of the lake and the gray-white limestone that betrays Lecco because the portray’s non secular residence.
“A bridge is fungible,” mentioned Ms. Pizzorusso. “It’s important to mix a bridge with a spot that Leonardo was at, and the geology.”
Such options had been so clear to Ms. Pizzorusso that she had concluded years in the past on a visit to Lecco that the quaint, lakeside village was the setting for da Vinci’s masterpiece. She assumed, she mentioned, that such information had been self-evident. It was not till a colleague approached her, in search of data on the Mona Lisa’s doable settings, that Ms. Pizzorusso realized her conclusions had scholarly benefit.
“I’d inform individuals, however I simply by no means did something,” she mentioned. Now although, mapping expertise has made her thesis extra palatable.
“All the things has conspired to actually make my concept way more provable and presentable,” she mentioned, talking from Lecco, the place she’s going to formally current her conclusions at a geology occasion.
Nonetheless, such secrets and techniques have turn into inherent to the intrigue surrounding the holy canvas. For hundreds of years, the Mona Lisa has confounded, delighted, dissatisfied and befuddled artists and artwork lovers. As her famously smooth edges develop existentially sharper, maybe we should ask: Is it the portray we love, or its mysteries?
“In Lecco they’ve been mentioning this for years,” Donald Sassoon, a professor of comparative European historical past, mentioned. He pointed to a 2016 article in a neighborhood Italian information website by a scholar from Lecco who recognized comparable geographical options to these famous by Ms. Pizzorusso.
“I’d not hassle,” Professor Sassoon mentioned when requested about reporting Ms. Pizzorusso’s discover. “Figuring out the situation would haven’t any affect.”
For Ms. Pizzorusso, although, the conclusion is much less in regards to the artwork than the person. Within the discrete clues of the Mona Lisa, da Vinci reveals himself not solely as a talented painter, she mentioned, but additionally as a tediously cautious scholar of science and geology.
“Any time he paints a rock,” mentioned Ms. Pizzorusso, “it’s correct.”
