Mystery? Millions of visitors come for the picture with Mona

Happy Birthday, Mona, Urbi and Orbi,(30/07/03)

The portrait is the painters' challenge?
Mona is the challenge for portraitists !

Other articles written to celebrate the 500th anniversary.

Introduction 0. MONA, as a SOFT BLACK TUBE
    0.1 Mona's puzzle solved by a "prosop"?
    0.2 "Vinci top-autist"?
1. MENTAL TRAINING to START
    1.1 Kick that official Mona!
    1.2 "Autistic mania for definitions"
    1.3 Primary and secondary expressions
    1.4 Real versus imaginary portraitism
2. SHAKING ANY FACT
    2.1 Last Will and Testament ?
    2.2 The most copied portrait
    2.3 Has Leonard reused his "smile"?
    2.4 Do try and copy Mona

   2.5 A Smile in the Eye?
3. BREAK!
    3.1 Guessing "who's who?"
4. A CHALLENGE FOR THINKERS
    4.1 Freud de la Mirandole
    4.2 hiStorian more Freudian than Freudy!
    4.3 "Scribbling hiStorian of Art"
    4.4 Docteur-ès-lettres
5. Ask the Judge of Peace
    5.1 "Half Blind-Sighted Poet"
6.HOW DID VINCI'S MIND WORK?
7. JUST AN INTRODUCTION!
Post-Scriptum 1 - Post-Scriptum 2

For a long time, I thought Mona the result of a "push-pull" between two mysteries, master and masterpiece.

Therefore, to the question: "*Is Mona Vinci as a girl?*", I draw frames, (this will be clearer after recontitution of Monna by Computer...)

Leonard's portrait ?	Frames are different,	Skulls and Noses are different.

      Autism doesn't exist: each autist is different! Some don't recognise moods. I'm not so perfect, so I could propose a decent theory, easily comprobable by any visitor.
     Any portraitist knows that a small change at the corner of the mouth will change the look in the eyes. It is probable that Vinci knew this more than anybody and he chose an "ABOUT TO" expression. Therefore people are right to see so many expressions in Monna.   Monna is "GOING TO", about to smile, to speak, (to sneer?), to be tired, fed up, sure of herself... ( lend her your own moods). The portrait that lives. The challenge to next generations of painters!
        At least, I discovered an extraordinary use for her "mystery": MONA, as a SOFT BLACK TUBE, (thanks Spencer de Bono!); Mona as a course of problem-solving!

0. Mona, as an extraordinary soft Black Tube!

No masterpiece has received so many visitors.
No masterpiece was so much explained.

I know three ways to visit the PhenoMona:

-"Petit Lever de la Reine"
To check Mona's magic, queue early at the Louvres; then run like mad across HER immense palace, asking: "Joconde? Joconde?".When I entered her big room, I thought: "How dare they! Leaving her without a guard! Anybody could rob her again! The Italian lesson was no use?" Ten minutes alone in a religious silence; delirium Monans!

-"High Mass", when the room is full, you look at Peeping-Toms, rewarded after a long journey like pilgrims at the Kaaba. They remind me of the visitors of the Gold Mines in front of the 28 carats liquid gold falling into boxes. Mona seems distant, careful. Last, "late but not least",

-"Petit Coucher de la Reine": on days closing very late, when guided visitors have gone to their hotel, few lovers, not obliged to "shut up". Mona becomes "present" as an actor can be. Winning reflexion: "She's going to speak"

May I introduce you to my queen?

Come for the "Petit Lever", (with a ticket bought the day before at FNAC-Châtelet); take the escalator of DENON entrance and immediately on your right "LIFT K". Turn around the Elizabethan Captain, entering on your right.

Welcome by Nani Veronese and la Tiziana; say "hello" to both, putting in your mind a standard, a reference of perfect Italian beauties.

Go slowly along the wall, at the distance when you don't recognise a person but guess her mood. Then go slowly at 5 meters between Monna and Tizianita looking in a Mirror. Appreciate the art of Vinci: the strange background is surely a message but also a mastering of "aerial perspective", using cold colours to push Sunny Monna in front. Maybe the warm colours of her skin are original, (I don't imagine pink turning to yellow orange with time; have another look at "bellezze italiane", of the same epoch).

My painting teacher taught cold and warm colours. But inside, no classification? Vinci knew them: blue is colder than green. But is red 'warmer' than yellow? Red is rare. I remember an extraordinary sunset in the marshes of South-Tunisia: nearly three hours, in two times. NO REDs! mauve, violet, some reddish orange, pastel yellow, and the "skin" of Monna Lisa, lemon-orange, a natural colour, a sunny colour. Red is just fire and Mona is not a portrait, just a challenge to future portraitists. And Leonard, instinctively choose the right colour to push Monna in front. Which word do you choose?

I propose "Presence"? like Jouvet o sir Laurence-Hamlet? o la Magnani-Perichole? Monna really pins all her sisters to the wall! Some are flat Dover Soles, others are just "existing"?

I have a dream: some far away century, when the right to meet Beauty will be in the right of all children of the world, Monna will travel. Her sisters in each museum will receive her, just to proclaim that Dad Vinci realised the most advanced use of a human brain...

Monna's ordeal during the Last War prepared her to such journeys...

Therefore, no masterpiece heard so many stupidities. So, Mona could be, for my course on creativity, the soft-replica of Spencer de Bono's Black Tube, ("Practical Thinking", Pelican Books, 1976)
This is immediately confirmed by the "names" she received: "chimera, sphinx, homo, hermaphrodite, femme fatale..." I will easily get 200 "explanations", and the Top World Intelligentzia, Bergson, Freud, Valéry will contribute a chapter on:

"The Art of fulfilling hollow sentences with empty words"! What could solve a course on Vincian creativity? I will push it to the extreme: "chain! chain! chain!" It could solve the crucial, central, "aspergerian" problem of "Thinking in Pictures", and, maybe, the mystery inside the mystery: "How did Vinci's brain work?"

Apparently, I've solved the most difficult problem in Creativity-Teaching: "Creativity starts with a shock"? OK, Mr Spencer de Bono. But IF I shock my audience on their religious, political, (or any other), opinions, I'll be kick out?

0.1 The puzzle of Mona's face solved by a "face-forgetter"?

        Why I discovered? I don't know: I can't solve a problem and look at myself solving.
       Maybe I found, because of my "sense of details", (I was labelled-asperger for it, but I pretend to be as good at synthesis and this document will prove both). In my course on creativity I insist on two details that changed our lives: "Branly's glow" and "Fleming's dust". The capacity to note valueless detail is the minimum to be creative.
       Maybe I found, because I put "rules" in my right brain, like "don't search for an explanation, but for strange details..."
       Maybe I found, because I tried, because I failed, (I won't show my first Lisa!), and because I dropped my will to solve immediately; and because I "walked" my failure, (three years, with a hundred other problems!). That's 5000 hours on the easel, inventing, trying to solve, (at least to explain), the impossible problem of "resemblance", decided to kill my "curse". But I never wanted to be cured, to be "normal"!
       Maybe I found, because I have some points in common with Leonard, ambidextricity, indifference, even need and taste for solitude...

0.2 "Vinci Top-Autist"?
I therefore desperately repeat to low-middle-class autists:
"Instead of claiming Leonard as yours, try and understand why you're not Vincis!" Before claiming Ludwig, and Albert, and Isaac, document their biographies and begin serious researches on "genius". And I thank Daniel Arasse, (Leonard de Vinci, HAZAN, 1995), who brings water to our mill, describing perfectly the opposites for which we are called "cyclothymic":

"... repeatedly Leonard insists on the necessity on being alone to meditate on his art: "The painter must be alone, to consider what he sees, to speak with himself"... so that the health of the body doesn't make wrong to the one of the mind, the painter must remain alone, especially when he is carried to speculations and considerations that, emerging continually before him, provide ample reserves to the memory... »
"Leonard was, otherwise, of a refined sociability... This mind... possessed such a vigour of reasoning supported by intelligence and memory..., that it dominated and confounded anybody... In his liberality, he welcomed and fed all friend, rich or poor.... But, with this charming urbanity, Leonard stayed fiercely independent to the point "to live from day to day"... This double attitude— sociability and solitude —constituted a strategy aiming to assure the artist's vital space while developing around the pictorial operation a whole peripheral activity of defence... Leonard's sociability could have been therefore that mask in the middle of grotesques,toward 1510 and proclaiming: "SUA CUIQUE PERSONA" ("To each his/her mask")...

Daniel Arasse's "Leonard de Vinci", (Hazan, 1995), contains most of the drawings used for my "discovery". I even say: "He was very near to the secret, (page 103): "In the portrait in Louvre, all the, anatomical knowledge is collected to fascinate: above all, by the AGREEMENT of MOUTH AND EYES, THE ESSENTIAL PHYSIOGNOMIC COUPLE." (But the author rapidly disappears in the 7th dimension: "At the same time, the relation of the face to a discolored landscape, lunar, modeled by the waters and the humid air... "

1. MENTAL TRAINING to START:
If you start on a wrong way, no chance to find! Therefore,
1.1 Kick that official Mona!
A course of creativity begins with a "purgation", (usually useless: most "students" feel empty and turn silent). Imagine yourself in the time of Vinci, crushing materials, till you realised: that any painting is a mixture of pigments, (with some oil, wax, yoke...) on a support. Therefore "sorcery" has no place even for the marvel of marvels. I repeat: painting a masterpiece is just, and first of all, expanding colours on a canvass with a brush and the palette for Mona is almost as reduced as for a Fayoum portrait.

<<< Duchamp's resentful spite shows that a small modification under the nose hardens eyes and look.

Lisa's mouth has not been modified: maybe the smile in the corners is not the secret... Look ! she's plain, isn't she? >>

     In fact, the first point to see: SHE HAS NO EYEBROWS!          I gave you my solution rapidly? Not sure! have you forgotten that these pages are an INTRODUCTION TO A COURSE ON CREATIVITY.
        In my course of creativity I call such a detail a "Branly's glow" or "Fleming's dust", two "details" that changed our lives). The capacity to note "details" is the minimum to be "creative").
    Easy explanation: "According to Balthazar Castiglione, (portrait in Louvres), it was then of fashion to depilate the eyebrows and even to pull out some hair in order to show a bare forehead..."
therefore, I hope you ask him:
                1/ does he mean total depilation?
                2/ Show me portraits with
                3/ Try and reconcile with Vasari, (the first biographer of Vinci), writing "The eyebrows, sometimes thick sometimes rare, bending according to the slant of the pores, could not be truer", (Stendhal notes: "it is singular that this pretty woman had any eyebrows" but he saw the real Monna in Louvres and even notaed her inventary number!). Therefore,
                4/ Which Monna has Vasari seen?
                5/ "What could Castiglione know about the real Venus"?
      In that time, Pompei and Fayoum were ignored. Balthazar could know statues only.
        As a portraitist, I know the problem of teeth in Painting but Sculpture has another, "eyebrows".

E-mail
to a
Friend

Most statues have no eyebrows: they are obtained by the shadow of the light, (coming from the sky). Therefore, if you flash, eyebrows disappear.

But, when paintings appeared, they did have eyebrows!

1.2 A "top-autist" is a maniac of definitions:
We are interested in the secret of the "smile", not in comments, descriptions of this smile, personnal feelings in presence of the Diva. In that case, Diderot would get the ptize immediately: "Being attracted and rejected at the same time, you feel "mal à l'aise". We should check regurlarly:

"Does this argument explain the mystery?" "Du Visage", P.U.L. 1982, page 157 à 162:
The Angel, the Léda, the Saint Jean look mysteriously, defiantly at us, as if they knew a big happiness but must say nothing about; the spellbinding smile let us guess it is about a love secret... " (Freud)... "what fascinates the spectator, it is the demonic charm of this smile. Hundreds of poets and writers wrote on this woman, who at times seems to bewitch us with her smile, at times to fix the emptiness with a cold look and without
soul, but no one deciphered her smile nor interpreted her thoughts. Even the landscape, is mysterious and as quivering of a heavy and stormy sensuality. (Muther, mentioned by Freud); W. Paternoster sees again in the Mona Lisa the incarnation of all the experience in love with the civilised humanity and speak of "this impenetrable smile that seems a constant ally of Leonard for some fatal omen, (quoted by Freud); Freud, quoting Paternoster will say "the double sense of this smile, promise of tenderness and of misfortune without boundary-marks...
(WHAT PROGRESS IN THE "SMILE-PROBLEM"?)
And a perfectionnist":

1.3 Primary and secondary facial expressions?
Smile is "culture", (secondary); while joy is "primary", (natural like wrath, disgust, fear); monkeys and puppies show a kind of joy in ... but a dog doesn't "smile". Smile is an momentary indication, (like YES or NO!), it can't last: it would rapidly appear stupidity or sneer. We have a lot of "cultured smiles", most created by novelists: "simulated", "dissimulated", "forced", "with tears"... Make a drawing for each one, and name them: I agree. Change the names. Still OK, every body agrees. Most "secondary expressions" depend on our interpretation. At a distance, we guess a "primary" mood before recognising the person, because we have to guess: "Foe or Friend". A face must be read, interpreted... Therefore, errors of drawing in portraits, (like "greuzeries", never met in nature), are rarely perceived.

1.4 "Real portraitism" versus "imaginary portraitism"
I call "imaginary portraitism", the "portrait ad lib", even when Murillo paints a Virgen. In "real portraiting", the artist is free from any condition. The very patient demands his own defects, to avoid finishing in a granary, (the only to rectify a personal defect was David for his auto-portrait). The family wants to preserve the impression they carry inside themselves. That's the art of the true artists: guessing this intimate image. The only variance is to impose one, like caricaturists do...

Is Mona "real"? Yes, in the middle of imaginary sisters

Is she "imaginary"? Yes, in the middle of her sisters

Water to our mill:
"Why among all ever painted smiling faces, it is the most mysterious? The reason is maybe that as the portrait, the picture doesn't correspond maybe to our waiting. The features are too personal, therefore Leonard merely, depicted an ideal type and yet, the element of idealisation is so strong that it hides the character of the model. Here the artist again achieved the harmonious balance of two irreconcilable elements . Therefore the smile can beinterpreted of two manners: as the reproduction of a temporary expression and as a timeless symbolic expression... Evidently, the Joconde embodies a quality of motherly tenderness that was for Vinci the very essence of the femininity... ", (H. W. JANSON, "History of Art", ARS MUNDI, 1977).

Corollary: what about this "manerism" appearing just after the death of Vinci,
Titien, Lotto, end even Raphaël, all mannerists! Only Vinci escaped "mannerism". While following lectures on this "period", our guide commented:

"Sometimes, I wonder if the same painters made the portraits..." I propose a category of "religious painting" , when the hungry painter accepts the supervision of a Franciscan deciding about gaudy blues and crimson reds, contortions and impossible positions of eyes... "Mannerism" covers from Gothic, (that wanted "a book of stone for the illiterate"), to the Baroque of Bernini, both linked, in the time of Vinci, by Michelangelo's muscular paintings.
In fact, painting fell into "academism" as soon as "academies" were created. If an apprentice doesn't comply, I take another. A "paying-student" is useful by itself.

2. SHAKING ANY FACT:
Any neglected fact could appear later and contradict our theory, pushing us towards the greatest error, the temptation to reject it... Let's continue discovering "details".
For instance:

2.1 Why this landscape?
Comment by Walter Pater: "She is more decrepit than the rocks that surround it; similar to the vampire, she died more than once and knew the secrets of the tomb; she lived in the sea depths and collected the declining lights", (in Leonard of Vinci, Nathan, 1995). "Beware of symbols"! I admire the critics that see a lot of symbols in indifferent objects and explain all of them: they could compete with Freud.
If Vinci wanted to leave a "message", he could have drawn his machines, helicopter, submarine, bicycle, tank, bridge in Turkey. Maybe, he left a message for Mr. Cuvier: "When you'll dig these hills, remember I was there, three centuries before..."

2.2 The most copied portrait in the world.
We know some 70 copies. But modern techniques are adding much more everyday, see: <http://www.monagallery.com>
Why do these "artistes du dimanche" ridiculise the Top-Model. Though I would get a lot of explanations "ad majorem autoris gloriam".

The first copyist was none less than Raphaël. Copy surely perfect but strange: she has eyebrows! and no "smile"! Raphaël was fascinated by the "composition":

"The pose of the hands is inseparable of this effect. More than twenty-five years were necessary to Leonard to finalize this pose, apparently simple yet with elegant nonchalance (the very sprezzatura). Considering the position of the hands on all Leonard's portraits, from Ginevra de'Benci to Mona Lisa, one notes the difficulties that he met on this detail indeed..."

Daniel Arasse who continues: "Rafael's drawing shows that Leonard had not done all his work of «idealisation" on the face of Mona Lisa... She probably "resembled" more to the woman drawn by Rafael that to the one painted by Leonard..."
Therefore the real Mona never saw the world-known Lisa?

<< Raphaël used the pose of Mona for his Doni,
(not an ideal model for a great painter,
but 1400 florins of dowry against 170 for Mona).

Some painters have produced their own "Mona".
Bottero's Lisa seems a copy of the Doni
"Didon dînant dit-on de dodus dindons", >>

"In fact, Leonard, with the Joconde... establishes this way besides the absolute formal model of the portrait, for centuries. Rafael immediately pulls the findings of it... Lorenzo Lotto and Hans Holbein the Young took advantage of it in the years 1510".

           "Copying Mona" seems submitted to strange laws; noted by
            "One can conclude reasonably with Kenneth Clark: 'as soon as an imitator takes some liberty with the pose, the creation accomplished of Leonard loses its character. A curious example, maybe inexplicable, is the "naked Joconde"... " (Daniel Arasse, in "Leonard of Vinci", Nathan, 1995).
        Strange! some copies have eyebrows!
        Is "La Fille à la Perle" in Louvres, Corot's variation on a theme of Vinci ?
(Mona's plain ?   Spanish saying: Comparar es odioso)

That's the Vinci challenge to any painter: "Either you copy stupidly; and you're a "copier", or you miss the target. Any way you're under me!".
The child humiliated, forbidden of priesthood, law-courts, medicine, took revenge. He is now more that any king's painter: the king of painters. But who deserves to be second? Maybe Baron Gros, with "Madame Pasteur", (Louvres). La Marseillaise is to be found in many master-pieces, (like in the Battle of Victoria by Beethoven. I suppose we could find Mona's influence in many portraits, for instance in Poussin's auto-portrait, (Louvres). SAme palette, same black cloth, no whig and a strange blue line behind to produce 3D impression...

2.3 Did Leonard reuse his "smile"?
Daniel Arasse, page 101, (that, unconsciously, places the Mona with "imaginary portraits"):

Mona has sisters, the Léda or Saint-Anne smiling as she does. They were probably undertaken around 1508, when the smile becomes a particularity, a Vincian speciality. No more the Florentine smile of the Quattrocento, that means a transparency of the soul, but another that proceeds from a calculated coldness. Aldous Huxley seized some in an atrocious tale precisely titled "The Gioconda Smile", where a cold criminal leads the game..."

Which human creatures have no eyebrows? Babies.

Any historian of art knows that painting children was different after Leonard. And the big books prove it. What about the legend of Leonard's angel on the painting of Verrochio and the old master stopping because he was surpassed by his pupil. I prefer the other story, that Vinci repainted his angel later. A palimpsest?

<<The definite proof could be comparing each Madonna with her child.

Most of them having the same eyebrows, not much. That's obvious for the Madonna Benois, in the Ermitage, maybe a sister, but not the mother. Good results with angels, >

and with young girls:

all with very different smiles. Apparently Leonard preferred oval faces. 2.4 Try and Copy Mona!
Personnally, I don't understand a critic on portraits unable to draw his own face. Seems to me a swimming teacher that never put on a bathing-suit.


	<<<The first step in painting is drawing, "reducing an objet to 2D"; then with "values", you reintroduce 3D. When the drawing of a girl is difficult, I consult "contours" in Paint Shop. Because of the "sfumato", Paint Shop's "contour" of Mona is unexpected! She's plain, isn't she? >>>


	Copying predecessors was the school of all painters. Trying to portrait Monna from different angles was my way to understand the genius and perfectionism of Leonard. Now, your opinion: It is possible to deduce, to imagine the profile of Monna? I doubt it: everything was so calculated to present Monna like a raising sun on a world in creation that on her profile she would be Moon Lisa.

Therefore, I conclude on another pre-rafaelite, (by choice),Burns-Jones, that painted very few ladies, because od his cult of feminine beauty: . I accept Monna as a hymn to feminine beauty by the pre-raphaelite by fact.

2.5 A Smile in the Eye?

One day, I remarked that I could recognise a face, (more easily), after seeing its caricature. And caricatures are made of lines. And Leonard invented caricaturing! And one day, the miracle happened: something common in Lisa's mouth and eyes!

The lines for Mona's eyes are practically the lines of her mouth!

"Put a caricature of the mouth in the eyes?"
Leonard suppressed her eyebrows
to dissimulate the "smile" in her eyes! >>>

<<< producing this total harmony between the expressions
and this "expecting, questionning look",
giving an angelic air to a mature woman.

Si no e vero e bene trovato!

Eye => Mouth

But does this argument
explain the real mystery,
of one billion people
fascinated by a plain girl
Not at all!

Mouth=> Eye

this doesn't explain the mundial attraction, (maybe the Pokemons will reduce the pressure?), the comments so contrary to each other: "happy surprise, hidden disgust, polite repulsion, controlled wrath, tiredness, need to expel the visitor without hurting, amused and lightly bored, interested and indifferent", "attracting and refusing"... a "see-saw-girl".
The more promising comment is surely: "She's going to speak..." Therefore: "Put yourself in the place of the Joconde..." We'll have sure our 200 proposals:
"The affaire of my life? Poh!... I din't say 'YES' nor 'NO',.. You, again!... This time I'm in troubles... Whom do you say I am?... Not yet found?... I'm not cheap..."

As I painted by night, I asked a shadowed corner for my paintings at the Exhibition. Light changed them too much.
Vinci probably counted on the change of light from one visit to the other. If this is true, it should be demonstrated with a "Paint Shop"! Look well at these "animations": not convincing? they probably contain the path to the true Monna Lisa!

        The exercice on de Bono's Black Tube was so stressing that some people tried to rob it. Just a case of "auto-projection", easy to imagine in any branch of knowledge. In religion, Jesus. In history? "Greece", both the true, (enlighted Zenon and friends) and the false, ("divine" Plato the slavist theorician and his maker, Augustine the theorician of Inquisition and Dark Ages). In philosophy, I'll choose "Freud", (or Fraud?), because any "psy" and any "phi" has reacted en pro or en contra. More, as most philosophies are hyper-intellectual, artificial, not prepared to analyse a domain of pure feeling, some analysts, (Platon, Hegel, Heidegger...), seem pure astrologers.
    Black Tube effects in Politics? de Gaulle: if Roosevelt's scorn for this fellow was explained, the history of France would be changed!
       Because of the "black tube syndrom" Mona receives eggs and caricaturing. Our problem is solving this problem. I disagree with Popper: instead of "Solving a problem prepares you to solve a bigger problem", I say: "It prepares you to see bigger problems". So my question is now: "What kind of facial expression Vinci created, that provokes so many and so different comments? a "primary" or "secondary" expression? One word".

The six "universal" expressions are provoked by an unexpected event. Surprise is the immediate reaction, immediately changed into joy, wrath, disgust, sadness, fear. The last one is already cultural, at least in painting: no teeth please, except for robbers, and beggars, whores and fighting warriors. In all six cases, we can't be self-conscious.

<<< Did Vinci draw this angry man without eyebrows as a challenge or as a message?
Who tries his recipe with President Pompidou?

        But self-conscience is our normal condition: we are always speaking to ourselves, at times aloud, preparing to explain to others, "I am a good guy, I am sorry...", often with unconscious mimics.
        Travelling in a train, Charles Darwin, the prosopamnesian founder of prosopology, once remarked a sadness at the corner of the mouth of a lady. Then she dropped a tear.
        What drawing, what name do you propose for this expression forgotten by books on portraits? for a self-concious girl ready to change to any other expression, with the polite comment: "enough is enough!", "little prof!","away with you!", "you thought of it alone?", "I'm not what you think..."
        Si no e vero, e bene trovato.

3. "BREAK!"
(Spencer de Bono chose "POH!" as a slogan for his "lateral thinking". I prefer "BREAK!" because this word sums up all the trainings I invented: "stop it!", "destroy!", "rest!", "relax!")

In Maintenance, to be sure a breakdown is repaired we reproduce it. Therefore, let's try to "MonoLise" ordinary girls, (I hope to do better!)

Strange: WHERE DID I SEE THAT GIRL?

3.1 "Who's who?"
Who was the model? Ten names were suggested. It adds to the mystery,
         "... about ten models have been suggested more or less justifiable... the favourite of Julian of Médicis, one Pacifica Brandano or signora Gualanda ; or one of the mistresses of Charles of Amboise; or Isabelle of Este, the marchioness of Mantua; or the duchess of Franca Costanza of Avelos, because a poem evokes an unknown portrait that would have made by Vinci... Some suppose it could be the portrait of a man, or even one self-portrait of the artist, without wrinkle nor beard, under an appearance feminine... none researcher brings an incontestable proof... all continue to say: La Joconde.
(Serge Bramly, Léonard of Vinci, Lattès, 1995, page 398)
    Outside France, she is "real Mona Lisa" and could be "imaginary Madona Lisa". This accumulation of "Monabili" contributes to the mystery.
       "Time-Break" to see the "solutions" of big thinkers!

4. A challenge for "thinkers"

No comment on the poverty of Bergsonian intuition:
"... the secret we'll never finish to undecipher, phrase by phrase..." Over!

Most unexpected explanation:
attraction due to a circle!
(Dr Goldbaltt)

René Huyghe, had the opportunity to question Mona every day:

"With his Joconde, Leonard, by the only power of her appearance, produced a fictional and yet intensely present person .
No gesture, no expression just an imprecise smile and a sort of emptiness due to the music heard by the model during the hours of pose. And from this chosen absence of all psychic life will spring the mirage of her existence... All this remained stupendously intellectual. All spontaneity seems controlled, even excluded. More: the illusion of her soul, is the fruit of scientific mechanisms calculated in view of a precise effect..."

Nice litterature but not an explanation! Some rewriting of over-known facts plus an evocation of Faust, though Mona doesn't need Marguerite to exist.

Diderot! help! I'm frightened at the idea that this Huyghish style (more ) could contaminate our ladies guides, so naive that they regularly ask us: "Did I satisfy your Great Expectations?" We just need your competence and your enthusiasm to transmit. In arts, WWGWWPG!"What We Get is What We are Prepared (to get)". And when two of you disagree on a portrait, it's just because painting is three-dimensional.

Immediately, "à tout freudeur, tout honneur!"

4.1 Freud de la Mirandole:
      I, for one alone, always thought that Freudy's artistic pretensions were a proof he had read Schopenhauer. I think that Freud is just a QI, (Quotient of Imbecility for VIPsys), false translation, abuse of symbols revealing a mentality primary, mythology doubtful, doubtful biography...
       Roy McMULLEN, "Mona Lisa, the picture and the myth", MacMillan, 1976, correctly treat Freud's contribution in 8 pages, (184-192).
        Read also Comment of Daniel Arasse, page 488-489: "A bright game of mind, tendency to explain complex phenomena by a unique data, little attention to customs, to history... The historians of the art consider Freud's interpretation as aberrant... some psychoanalysts defended the bird, (with beak and tail), but Freud himself didn't see it...
        Freud's case should be solved inside a whole change of minds.
        Anybody can collect more comments.

4.2 Chastel, a French historian more Freudian than Freudy!
"Kenneth Clark probably saw rightly when he thought that she had become a case of the fascination and repulsion that Leonard felt for the processes of procreation... Leonard, facing the panel on which he deposited Mona Lisa, was "struck of stupor, in presence of an unknown thing", feeling "fear and desire, fear of the dark and menacing underground cave, desire to see if it didn't lock some extraordinary marvel in..."

4.3 Gombrich, "Historian of Art":
         "... But only Leonard found the true solution to the problem. The painter must leave the beholder something to guess. If the outlines are not quite so firmly drawn, if the form is left a little vague, as though disappearing into a shadow, this impression of dryness and stiffness will be avoided. This is Leonard's famous invention which the Italians call 'sfumato' - the blurred outline and mellowed colours that allow one form to merge with another and always leave something to our imagination.
      ... Everyone who has ever tried to scribble a face knows that what we call its expression rests mainly in two features: the corners of the mouth, and the corners of the eyes. Now it is precisely these parts which Leonard has left deliberately indistinct, by letting them merge into a soft shadow. That is why we are never quite certain in what mood Mona Lisa is really looking at us. Her expression always seems just to elude us. It is not only vagueness, of course, which produces this effect. There is much more behind it. Leonard has done a very daring thing, which perhaps only a painter of his consummate mastery could risk. If we look carefully at the picture, we see that the two sides do not quite match. This is most obvious in the fantastic dream landscape in the background. The horizon on the left side seems to lie much lower than the one on the right. Consequently, when we focus on the left side of the picture, the woman looks somehow taller or more erect than if we focus on the right side. And her face, too, seems to change with this change of position, because, even here, the two sides do not quite match.
         ... Long ago, in the distant past, people had looked at portraits with awe, because they had thought that in preserving the likeness the artist could somehow preserve the soul of the person he portrayed. Now the great scientist, Leonard, had made some of the dreams and fears of these first image-makers come true. He knew the spell which would infuse life into the colours spread by his magic brush..."

4.4 DROMART-MAIROT, docteur-ès-lettres:
        "Le fonds de la Joconde...", 1933:
         Page 3: The "ONE and SIMILAR", of Pythagore directs the research of Vinci toward the "unit-duality" principle, generator of all. On one side, unit, equality, concord, sympathy in one absolute; on the other, discrimination, multiplicity, analogies, pictures, identity in the variety, projection of points in the space, generation, of lines and surfaces, shapes and volumes, notions of reports, propositions and harmony... By the ONE and the SIMILAR", Leonard joined the organic and the biologic to the logic of a Creative God ...
         Page 58: "The eternal feminine breathes in her as in the landscape the soul of the world: she is the lyre, with varied and sensitive ropes not yet touched by indifferent or clumsy hands... Possessed by the caresses of the brush like an astral flesh, she probably belonged only insofar as his mastery made her his property to give her to immortality... She remains the monument of the sublime duel between matter and mind, let by one the deepest searcher of the mysteries of life, and of the minuscule world each of us carries in himself... "

5 Ask the Judge of Peace:


3/ Long list of all the possibilities of language, to indicate love, friendship, mistakes, insinuation, interior trouble, resignation, wrath, sadness; even in want to apologise and when drunk ! "The smile is also the expression of nuances. The current emotion transported by a smile is subtler than in any other expression. The smiles can be carriers of emotions different of joy, as the sadness or even the anger, creating faces fascinating of complexity. As for sadness, smiles are capable to transform the very face when they are hardly outlined. They can constitute a very explicit sexual message, but also to reveal that the person who smiles is drunk, nervous, or frankly on the border of madness. Yet, the smiles sometimes have no particular significance. It is the only expression of the face that possesses a social function (although the photographs where we try to smile on order show a stupid air), or that can be used to professional ends. "Finally, some smiles are impossible to decipher; they challenge all analysis. When we look at a portrait of Vermeer or Rembrandt, if we feel a big emotion, it is very difficult to us to explain the reasons of it, as much as to define the difference between the smile appearing on an authentic Vermeer and the one of a faithful copy. We can explain some things by the theory and the demonstration, but the mystery stays; thanks God ... It is worthwhile however to try, so much it is possible to suggest things on a face where appears the trace of a smile — dreaming, the mischief, the sensuality, or merely the heat or the open-mindedness. It is also true that the artist reveals a little himself and his/her sensitivity when he chooses to underline such or such aspect of the personality of a model... In the pages that follow, I included some examples of masterpieces including this type to smile; I explain why some of them seem successful to me and of others less, however my opinions remain entirely personal..." 4/ Obviously, some small facial muscles escape our will. "We can lie with our mouth, not with our eyes".... "Why is this fold so important for a smile to seem sincere? Because it says the truth whereas the mouth can lie. The shrinkage and the fold of the eye is an involuntary reaction, of the same type that a sneeze or a curl, whereas the fact to stretch its mouth to smile is voluntary. Whatever we feel indeed, we can smile but we cannot crease the eyes more to cry on order. Some people can cry or laugh on stage — but it needs practice. 5/ We expect our author on the "most famous smile in the world and in history", (page 211): "The real mystery of this famous picture of Leonard of Vinci resides in a minuscule movement with an enormous power of suggestion. While contemplating this masterpiece we realise what the mind can show on a face by the magic of minute physical modifications... "You cannot understand this type of smiles if you have not studied the open, large smile before. All face feature of the open expression do exist at the latent state in the sketch to smile, like the first buds on the trees in the spring prefigure the summer. A lot of them are so subtle that they escape the observation, like a lip hardly raised or the rounded light of a cheekbone. However, if you know that they are the signs to look for, you will notice these details more easily. 5.1 "The most famous smile of the world inspired the admiration and the most passionate conjectures. One wondered for a long time about the personality of the model (that is not always really determined), on the asymmetry of the smile, supposed to bring all her mystery to the portrait. We can only admit a very ambiguous expression as everything is suggested; her power is very strong because it awakens our curiosity and let the free field to the imagination. 5.2 The author has not yet integrated the "bicameralism", (but the role of the computer is to help so wonderful a technician on faces-drawing, (he proves my second golden rule: "if your theory gives more than expected or required, it's perfect AND usable-teachable): "The smile is more pronounced on the right (half smiles are generally asymmetric). The shades underline the cheekbones; the fold of the lower lid rising slightly on the iris agrees with the movement of the lips. The centre brings vitality and mystery to the expression. (When the author says "the right", he means "the left cheek of Mona", moved by the right hemisphere, the one that manages most of the pictures, (compare with Ghirlandaio"s Virgin showing her right cheek managed by her left hemisphere) 5.3 Not surprised of some capital conclusions: Indeed, the less to see, the more we project our personality on a work; it is well obvious that nobody will project the same emotions on this masterpiece. 6. Conclusion: Thanks from MONISSIMA VINCI for the first real help, to build, in this FIFTH CENTINARY of LA JOCONDE "un Tombeau digne de la Grandeur de son Papa Leonard".

5.1   The double case of Paul Valéry,
maybe the poet of the XXth century, ("Le Cimetière Marin"):
        Why he was not fascinated by Mona's fascination on the "grand public"?
        "I don't think we could have a more amusing illustration of the common opinions on painting that this "smile of the Mona" , to which the epithet of "mysterious" is unreversibly stuck. This fold in a corner had the fortune to suscitate phraseology... It deserves more serious studies. Leonard did not use unprecise observations and arbitrary signs. Mona Lisa would not have existed..." (more )

6. How did Vinci's brain work?
          and how did Valéry perceive the real mystery?
6.1 Paul Valéry: "Introduction à la méthode de Léonard de Vinci", page 54:
         "As said before, the phenomena of the mental imagery has not really been
studied. I am certain of their importance. I pretend that some laws concerning these phenomena are essential; that the spontaneous production of pictures-answers permit to join other worlds as distinct as the world of dream, mystical state, deduction by analogy...
        "... But it was reserved to Faraday to recover in the physical science the method of Leonardo. After the glorious mathematical works of Lagrange, d'Alembert, Laplace, Ampère, and others, he proposed bold and admirable conceptions, that were literally only the extension, by his imagination, of the observed phenomena; and his imagination was so remarkably lucid that his ideas could be presented under mathematical forms and compared to those of the profession" mathematicians..."
       Where did he find his note? Probably in a foreword of Maxwell for the book of FARADAY, (his teacher): "Experimental Researches in Chemistry and Physics". (more )
Maxwell wrote "introduction to the method of Faraday",
        More linkings: in a re-edition of Faraday's book, in 1991, Popper is mentionned:
      "This book is suffused with the very essence of the scientific method that Karl Popper advocated a hundred years later in his book "Conjectures and Refutations". It also reveals many aspects of Faraday's character, in a manner that reinforces the long-recognized example he provides on how properly to pursue science..."

7. JUST AN INTRODUCTION TO MY COURSE!
        Popper, in a "miscellaneous" book, "THE MYTH OF THE FRAMEWORK", mentionned Faraday and Maxwell:
         "The revolution of Faraday and MaxwelI was, from a scientific point of view, just
as great as that of Copernicus, and possibly greater... Yet il did not lead toan ideological revolution, though it inspired a whole generation of physicists...
        Then he adds Thompson and Rutherford:
      "Thomson's discovery and theory of the electron was also a major revolution...
when Thomson announced it, physicists thought he was pulling their legs. But it
did not create an ideological revolution".
opposing, (as Valéry did for French mathematicians and Maxwell did for the great German) : "Also. the quantum mechanics of 1925 and 1926. of Eisenberg and of Born, of de Broglie, of Schrôdinger and..."
         (thanks for mentionning Poincaré, who gave MV2!)
     "Great science and great scientists, like great poets, are often inspired by non-rational intuitions. As Poincaré and Hadamard have pointed out, a mathematical proof may be discovered by unconscious trials..."

       In fact, everybody has two brains but most people used one only and partially. We should re-write all this chapters starting from Descartes' Geometry, the first application of bicameralism, from Pascal, "finesse and reason", and from "Animus-Anima" of Jung.
    But Popper's chapter, in my opinion the most interesting, is his description, ((page 3), of the "Bases-for-Thinking" to be engraved in our right brain, :
       "On all three levels, (genetic adaptation, adaptive behaviour, and scientific discovery), the mechanism of adaptation is fundamentally the same.
This can be explained in some detail... On all three levels, the instruction comes from within the structure. If mutations, or variations, or errors occur, then these are new instructions, which also arise from within the structure, rather than from without, from the environment...
        Should we be surprised by an extension to arts, (page 9):
         "Of course, I conjecture that darwinism is right... and that is right even beyond, on the level of artistic creation..."
        To conclude, the role of the philosopher is to sum up and to show the obstables to true thinking:
        "To sum up, frameworks, like languages, may be barriers. They can even be prisons. But a strange conceptual framework, just like a foreign language, is no absolute barrier: we can break into it, just as we can break out of our own framework, our own prison. And just as breaking through a language barrier is difficult but very much worth our while, and likely to repay our efforts...", (page 61).
        and to show the next step to improve our limited capacity to update our knowledges. The computer could help, is we program it for this "kind of thinking". The philosopher's problem is not to be in advance like Newton or Darwin, or too much in advance, like Vinci or Schopenhauer. He should at least be up to date!

The conclusion could even be: "In the present mundial mess, two brains, (half-failures in their times), could be the guides for a last jump: Arthur as a "restarting-block", Leonard "first on the rope"; these two geniuses did not create a "noodigm", because they dominated their contemporaries; because "Discovering all the science of the IIIrd Millennium in an island, would't be science."

Post-scriptum 1: Paul Valéry continued:

     "Léonard semble avoir eu la conscience de cette sorte d'expérimentation psychique, et il me paraît que, pendant les trois siècles après sa mort, cette méthode n'a été reconnue par personne, tout le monde s'en servant, — nécessairement. Je crois également, peut-être est-ce beaucoup s'avancer! que la fameuse et séculaire question du plein et du vide peut se rattacher à la conscience ou à l'inconscience de cette logique imaginative. Une action à distance est une chose inimaginable. C'est par une abstraction que nous la déterminons. Dans notre esprit, une abstraction seule potest facere saltus. Newton lui-même, qui a donné leur forme analytique aux actions à distance, connaissait leur insuffisance explicative.
     " ... Les combinaisons régulières que forme la limaille autour des pôles de l'aimant furent, dans son esprit, les modèles de la transmission des anciennes actions à distance. Lui aussi voyait des systèmes de lignes unissant tous les corps, remplissant tout l'espace, pour expliquer les phénomènes électriques et même la gravitation; ces lignes de force, nous les apprécions ici comme celle de la moindre résistance de compréhension! Faraday n'était pas mathématicien, mais il ne différait des mathématiciens que par l'expression de sa pensée, par l'absence des symboles de l'analyse. « Faraday voyait, par les yeux de son esprit, des lignes de force traversant tout l'espace où les mathématiciens voyaient des centres de force s'attirant à distance; Faraday voyait un milieu où ils ne voyaient que la distance".
      "... Une nouvelle période s'ouvrit pour la science physique à la suite de Faraday; et quand J. Clerk Maxwell eut traduit dans le langage mathématique les idées de son maître, les imaginations scientifiques s'emplirent de telles visions dominantes... Pour Lord Kelvin, par exemple, le besoin d'exprimer les plus subtiles actions naturelles par une liaison mentale, poussée jusqu'à pouvoir se réaliser matériellement, est si vif que toute explication lui paraît devoir aboutir à un modèle mécanique.
         "... De tels hommes nous paraissent avoir eu l'intuition des méthodes que nous avonsindiquées; nous nous permettons même d'étendre ces méthodes au delà de la science physique ; nous croyons qu'il ne serait ni absurde ni tout à fait impossible de vouloir se créer un modèle de la continuité des opérations intellectuelles d'un Léonard de Vinci ou de tout autre esprit déterminé par l'analyse des conditions à remplir...
         "... De même, la plupart des désespoirs d'artistes se fondent sur la difficulté ou l'impossibilité de rendre par les moyens de leur art une image qui leur semble se décolorer et se faner en la captant dans une phrase, sur une toile ou sur une portée... l'analyse s'achève parfois, comme celle de Léonard, en sourires mystérieux, a établi clairement sur la psychologie, sur la probabilité des effets, l'attaque de son lecteur...

Post-scriptum 2: MAXWELL on FARADAY,
(in Experimental Researches in Chemistry and Physics, in a translation to French in 1881), page XIII:
      "... A mesure que j'avançais dans l'étude de Faraday, je m'apercevais que sa manière de concevoir les phénomènes était aussi mathématique, quoiqu'elle ne se présentât pas sous la forme conventionnelle des symboles mathématiques. Je reconnus que ces idées pouvaient être exprimées par les formes mathématiques habituelles, et être ainsi comparées à celles des mathématiciens de profession.
        "... Par exemple, Faraday, dans ses conceptions, voyait les lignes de force traverser tout cet espace où les mathématiciens ne considéraient que des centres de force agissant à distance; Faraday faisait intervenir un milieu là où ils ne tenaient compte que de la distance; Faraday cherchait l'origine des phénomènes dans des actions réelles s'exerçant dans ce milieu ils se contentaient de la trouver dans une propriété d'agir à distance attribuée aux fluides électriques.
       "... Lorsque j'eus traduit sous forme mathématique ce que je considérais comme les idées de Faraday, je reconnus qu'en général les résultats des deux méthodes sont concordants, en sorte que les deux méthodes rendent compte des mêmes phénomènes et conduisent aux mêmes lois mais la méthode de Faraday se rapproche de celles où l'on part. de l'ensemble pour arriver aux parties par l'analyse, tandis que le principe des méthodes mathématiques ordinaires est de commencer par les parties et d'élever tout l'édifice par voie de synthèse.
         "... Ainsi l'ensemble de la théorie du potentiel, considéré comme quantité satisfaisant à une certaine équation aux différences partielles appartient essentiellement à ce que j'ai appelé la méthode de FARADAY. Dans l'autre méthode, le potentiel, si tant est que l'on fasse seulement intervenir cette considération, doit être regardé comme le résultat de la Sommation des quotients obtenus en divisant chaque masse électrique par sa distance à un point fixe.
         "... C'est pourquoi bon nombre de découvertes mathématiques de Laplace, Poisson, Green et Gauss trouvent leur place dans ce Traité et leur véritable expression au moyen d'idées empruntées pour la plupart à Faraday..."

Post-scriptum 3: René Huygue, "Les puissances de l'image", Flammarion, page 102
        Dans la mémoire, Léonard de Vinci s'est inscrit comme un vieillard, dont le visage ascétique est prolongé par une grande barbe de prophète, de vieux mage. Tel Faust, il nous apparaît comme l'homme qui a vécu par-delà les temps et qui, déjà, expérimente les ténèbres et la mort. En lui, les frémissements de la sensibilité, qui passaient encore sur le monde de Watteau, se sont éteints. Il n'y a plus qu'un esprit froid, lucide, qu'une intelligence avide de curiosité et ambitieuse, lourde d'expérience.
       En peignant la Joconde, on pourrait croire qu'il a voulu saisir le sourire de la jeunesse mais c'est celui d'un Sphinx hors des âges où filtre quelque chose de sourdement inquiétant, une énigme, menace. Sa fascination se tapit et guette en silence l'obscurité qui, déjà, sourde de toutes parts. Certains ont pu épuiser l'attrait de ce tableau trop souvent reproduit; certains ont pu s'agacer de sa gloire qu'ils jugent excessive. C'est qu'ils ne le regardent plus, car ils s'apercevraient que Léonard a pu préserver la lueur de la présence humaine jusqu'au seuil où commence la nuit. A travers l'espace qui s'ouvre derrière l'éternelle jeune femme, des chemins pierreux ou des fleuves desséchés traversent une planète morte, hérissés de roches usées. Dentelées, parfois en surplomb comme des ruines, elles semblent s'effriter et tomber en poussière. Sans doute n'y a-t-il pas plus d'eau dans les lacs que d'air dans le ciel. Cette planète inconnue a un accent étrangement lunaire. Sa lumière ne peut parvenir que d'un astre très lointain; elle est étouffée et froide, ombreuse comme celle des soleils de minuit. Léonard a noté lui-même, dans ses manuscrits, précieusement conservés, combien il aimait les approches de la nuit et combien il goûtait la douceur subtile que donnait aux visages l'heure indécise qui n'appartient déjà plus au jour.
        Le jour, d'ailleurs, il le fuit dans les cavernes, dans les grottes où il aime s'enfoncer pour chercher à la fois les demi-ténèbres et un monde inconnu, un monde souterrain, dont il a eu également la hantise scientifique on a pu désigner en lui le premier des géologues et il s'est complu à découvrir sur les roches anciennes la trace des déluges oubliés...

Huyghe, page 116
        Là où Rubens, d'un crayon puissant et ardent, aurait fait rouler 'les musculatures et les draperies, s'épandre la richesse inépuisable des cadeaux royaux, onduler les cortèges pressés, là où il aurait imposé la présence torrentielle de la vie, Léonard établit au tire-ligne une épure d'architecte; il calcule presque abstraitement la mise en place géométrique de l'espace, où s'ébauchent à peine les figures prévues. Il n'y a, tendues avec rigueur, que les lignes et les mailles du filet intellectuel où la réalité n'aura plus qu'à tomber comme une proie dans un piège.
          Mais cet homme n'est pas qu'une intelligence; où sont les aveux de sa sensibilité? Il semble que dans ses œuvres achevées comme dans ses croquis, il n'ait voulu laisser place à aucun abandon, à rien qui trahisse une émotion incontrôlée. Pourtant cette muraille derrière laquelle il s'enclôt et que dépassent, seuls visibles, les monuments qu'il entend édifier, qu'est-elle sinon une façade, donc un visage, qui révèle la nature d'un être?
        Léonard se veut secret. Il aime la pénombre, à la !imite de l'obscur., où l'imprécision ajoute le voile de la grâce; il aime la grotte ouverte comme une cachette dans le secret de la pierre; il aime la pierre, à son tour, pour son immobilité, pour sa froideur. Et cette forme, dont nous lui voyions tout à l'heure chercher les analogies surprenantes, c'était toujours le nœud, l'entrelacs revenant sur lui-même, trompant, dépistant le regard dans la complication de ses tours et détours, dissimulant et son origine et son but. En eux, Léonard choie le lien noué qui emprisonne, immobilise, referme...
           ... Se projetant dans sa peinture ou y cherchant la fuite, l'artiste ne peut échapper à son sort qui est de s'y livrer.

G. Lelarge, "philoManager",
Ingénieur informaticien, (Poly of Enfield, National Computing Center, 1970-1973),
inscrit expert au Bureau international du travail, (1971 à retraite) suite à contribution informatique, (1965), jugée exceptionnelle par spécialistes du Management. Intervention comme consultant dans 175 entreprises, (50 à 80.000 employés): Philips, IBM WORLD TRADE, SONATRACH, Ministères Algérie, Venezuela..., Mines du Zaïre, etc...

**Articles written to celebrate the 500th anniversary**
__ Aussi créatif que Vinci... ___Monna's Gift to all Children ___A tout Ministre de la Culture __ Mona Vinci's 500th anniversary ___Le sourire de la Joconde _Una Hermana en el Prado ! _The challenge for portraitists..	CarNaseValait Si leur nez eût été plus court. La palette pauvre de Monna Lisa Léonard de Vinci Vinci à Nogent/M Popped Sister! Un Mausolée intra Museos