If you ask, say, a hundred people, taken at random, of any age, education, profession at once, without hesitation, to name the most famous picture of all times and peoples, the answer in 99 cases will surely be so: "The Mona Lisa. So why is this "Gioconda" so famous, what is it so famous for? Do the outstanding artists, but the same Leonardo, not find canvases no worse? Of course, there will be. But "Gioconda" has a special fate.
Has it always been like this?
Stunning fame fell on this picture is not suddenly and not immediately. Even in the XIX century in the Louvre, much more valued was the "Holy Family" of Raphael - the museum inventory is ten times more expensive! And the true "star" of the Louvre of those times has to recognize a very sentimental canvas by the Spaniard Murillo "The Assumption of the Virgin Mary". (It is interesting to note that nowadays the interest of the public in this work has fallen to almost zero - so much so that the French decided to send it to their homeland, Spain, in the Prado Museum without much regret and hesitation.) And in "Gioconda" saw only a portrait of a coquettish and partly funny Italian beauty, no more. Perhaps the first to "see" Gioconda, strange as it may seem, the famous American inventor, who invented the telegraph alphabet, Samuel Morse. It happened in 1833, but "one swallow of spring did not do", and the universal recognition was still far away.
A decisive step towards a turnaround was made by romantic writers. Walter Pater (by the way, inspired Oscar Wilde's "Portrait of Dorian Gray") wrote about Gioconda as follows: "This is the beauty to which the soul, which seeks to escape, all the experience of the world is gathered here and embodied in the form of a woman - the animal beginning in relation to life in ancient Greece, the passion of the world, the sins of the Borgia ... She is older than the rocks, among which sits like a vampire; she died many times and learned the mysteries of death; she plunged into the depths of the seas and traveled behind precious stones with Eastern merchants like Leda; and all this was for her no more than the sound of a lyre and flute.
The smile "became" mysterious.
And in 1855, Theophilus Gaultier "awarded" Gioconda her main advantage - the "mysterious smile". Before him, no one noticed this - the smile of Mona Lisa was called "pleasant". And Gaultier found in Gioconda (quote) "mysteriously smiling from the painting by Leonardo sphinx beauty ... It is dangerous to fall under the charm of this ghost... Her smile promises unknown pleasures, she is so divinely ironic... If Don Giovanni had met Gioconda, he would have recognized her all three thousand women from his list.
Jules Verne also contributed to the legend of Gioconda. With his easy hand spread the story told in his play about the romantic love between the artist and his model. The love triangle is the beautiful Gioconda, an old husband, and a young artist. Although in fact, Leonardo was much older than his husband's model.
So, in the early XIX century, "Gioconda", known mainly for its specialists, did not attract much attention and was not even considered the leading masterpiece of Leonardo himself. And only a century later, the whole world fell in love with her.
Kidnapping of the century.
In August 1911, in the salon of the Louvre, where he hung "Gioconda", entered a young artist who wanted to write a copy of this picture. To his surprise, he did not see the masterpiece. The servants calmed him down: "Probably the photographers will return it soon. However, no one was in a hurry to return, and the photographers stated that they were not aware of the case at all. Only then it became clear to everyone that the Mona Lisa was simply stolen.
An incredible scandal broke out. The director of the Louvre, who not so long ago boasted that it was easier to steal the Cathedral of Our Lady of Paris from France than from him "Gioconda", flew off his post with a crackle. And since there was already a big war, oil added to the fire and this. French newspapers accused German Kaiser Wilhelm, allegedly ordered his spies to steal the picture to show the weakness of France. The German press was not in debt. They called the "abduction of the century" a provocation of the French government against Germany. Of course, there were other versions, sometimes the most incredible. They talked about anarchists, about the lover of the Mona Lisa and the artist who kidnapped her portrait, about the American millionaire Morgan, who wanted to have a masterpiece in his collection.
to be continued in the next part...