Monday, 14. April 2003

Topic: - on April 14, 2003 at 3:11:44 PM CEST

So that explains the smile
La Gioconda aka Mona Lisa turns 500

The most famous painting in history celebrates her 500th birthday this year. Over the centuries, Leonardo da Vinci's Mona Lisa has been denounced as a femme fatale, celebrated as the paragon of womanhood, inspired three suicides, and survived a theft. Yet that serene smile staring at us behind bulletproof glass in Paris's Louvre museum remains mysterious.

But now on the painting's quincentenary, the mystery of the smile may have been solved: Mona Lisa was pregnant.

¬> Globe & mail ¬> WebMuseum

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