MONA LISA ON THE RUN

Via Rick Steves: “Due to renovation works in the Louvre, the Mona Lisa has been temporarily moved to a different wing of the museum.”

Mona Lisa travels, gets a new wall, hides out.

Such a mystery.

“This new location is very difficult to visit as a group, so  your tour will focus on other important works in the collection instead.”

It’s in a closet?

A bathroom?

The most famous painting in the world is in a difficult location, not on stage like the rock star she is with huge video screen playing beside her.

Have you been the glassworks in Tacoma? Like that.

When Mona Lisa and I get together:

“If you would like to visit the Mona Lisa on your own, your guide will help explain where you can find the new location of the painting and please pack your patience!”

In case the new location is too difficult, too inconvenient, too time consuming, there’s always the other Italian beauty to consider.

Name this masterpiece.

Why is art so complicated?

First there’s the subject, the face, but it’s not enough, at least not enough for Leonardo daVinci. Oh no, then he has to go crazy on the background, the foreground, every ground in the frame.

Art is a chance to learn new words you’ll never use again, like high school algebra.

From wiki: Sfumato “is a painting technique for softening the transition between colours, mimicking an area beyond what the human eye is focusing on, or the out-of-focus plane.”

Does this sound like ‘soft focus?’ Does to me, too.

And Chiaroscuro: “in art, is the use of strong contrasts between light and dark, usually bold contrasts affecting a whole composition. It is also a technical term used by artists and art historians for the use of contrasts of light to achieve a sense of volume in modelling three-dimensional objects and figures.“

There’s a lots going on in a painting beyond the paint, the same as the image of my favorite movie actress, just without the new vocabulary. Mona Lisa needs help from the master; my girl is the master.

How would DaVinci improve Sophia? He couldn’t. Instead, she makes others try and improve.