To date, Leonardo da Vinci's painting "Mona Lisa" or "Gioconda" is one of the most recognizable and valuable in the world.
Agree, her name will be remembered even by someone who understands painting, like a first-grader in applied mathematics. Yes, and this mysterious smile of a woman from the canvas crashes into memory once and for all ...
And if several decades scientists have tried to unravel this captivating detail of the masterpiece, then today we can safely say - we know why Lisa Gerardini - the wife of the textile merchant and the Florentine official Francesco del Giocondo - so smiled at the artist!
She posed for Leonardo da Vinci topless!
It turns out that in France a portrait of a naked woman named "Monna Vanna" was found, which was reliably hidden from prying eyes in one of the museums more than 150 years ago. Early it was believed that this drawing was made in the studio of Leonardo da Vinci, but today the art experts are ready to make a shocking statement - Monna Bath was not just "born" in his studio, but was another of his creations!
After careful examinations held in the Louvre, the curators have no doubt - Monna Bath or "Joconde nue" ("Naked Gioconda") was either partially painted by Leonardo or was completely the creation of a great master, like the sketch of the Mona Lisa herself.
"The drawing is done very qualitatively," says the curator of the museum, Conde Mathieu Deldik, "It has a beautifully written face and hands. And this picture does not seem to us just a copy. No, this is something that was worked on in parallel with the writing of the "Mona Lisa". And this is very similar to the preparatory work before the beginning of oil painting ... "
This assumption was also confirmed by the restorer from the Louvre, Bruno Motten:
"The quality of the drawing is very high and the time of its creation coincides with the time of Leonardo's life and activity (the turn of the 16th century)"
To date, experts have already found out that the hands and the body of women from two portraits are almost identical, the portraits of the same size, and on the coal sketch were found small punctures, which most likely helped to combine the contours with the portrait when it was written with oil ...
The only fact that does not allow experts to be 100% sure is that the strokes of the top of the sketch were made by the right-hander, although in fact, Leonardo before Vinci was left-handed. But they promise the authenticity of the artist to be established for two years already, in order to have time to announce it at an exhibition in Chantilly timed to the 500th anniversary of the death of the great Florentine genius.
Well, let's compare the sketch with the original?