Tag Archives: Mona Lisa

Ravels in Review Friday: Atlanta Edition

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Well, my dreams of travel have taken me somewhere after all: home to Georgia for a long weekend. And guess what? It’s hot and humid, just the way I like it. (As opposed to cold and rainy New York).

Georgia O’Keefe’s Peach and Glass [Georgia…Peach. Get it? The humidity makes me punny]

I felt like Santa Claus comig down with my backpack full of presents yesterday. It’s my mom’s birthday Saturday, Father’s Day Sunday, and my sister’s birthday Wednesday. Most of my old friends are here somewhere, and hopefully I’ll be able to see some of them athough it looks like I have a pretty jam-packed schedule AND I want to go the High Museum of Art. But we’ll see.

As to the ravels in review, we covered our cultural bases this week. We started with poetry, ala the life of Edna St. Vincent Millay, then got a dose of theater, with the Public Theater’s production of Twelfth Night, and rounding us off we talked about art old (nude Mona Lisa old, that is) and new (with Clay Ketter’s most recent work) with a dab of the wistful travelogue I mentioned.

Happy Friday!

A Nude Mona Lisa?

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Via the Discovery channel, “Leonardo da Vinci, in a Renaissance version of Mad Magazine, may have painted his famous Mona Lisa in a number of ways, including nude. Now, a painting has surfaced that looks much like the original, sparking debate over just how far the master took his iconic painting.

The newly revealed painting, hidden for almost a century within the wood wall of a private library, shows a portrait of a half-naked woman with clear links to the famous (and clothed) Mona Lisa. The work, which documents suggest was at least based on never-seen similar work by Da Vinci, is now on exhibit at the Museo Ideale in the Tuscan town of Vinci, where Da Vinci was born in 1452. The lady in the portrait does not exactly resemble the original Mona Lisa, but there is little doubt it has parallels with the painting hanging at the Louvre museum in Paris.”

While it’s not likely to have been painted by Leonardo, evidence suggests it may be a copy of his work. Leonardo painted the Mona Lisa between 1503-1506. This manner of protraying the female nude is not typical for the time. Although Renaissance painters were rediscovering the human body and looking back to Greek and Roman sculpture, their nude creations were ideal forms representing gods or virtues. This is a woman, rather than a reclining Venus or a weak, defenseless Eve. And she’s looking looking straight at you. How bold.

Maybe that’s what she was smiling about.