Mona Lisa, forever protected behind bullet proof glass at the Louvre, was modeled not after Lisa Gherardini, the wife of a wealthy Florentine silk merchant, but Leonardo da Vinci’s “companion” Gian Giacomo Caprotti, art scholars are claiming. Caprotti joined the artist’s side around age 10, in 1490, and his slim fem appearance and curly hair were the basis of the Mona Lisa, as well as two paintings of St John the Baptist and the drawing “Angel Incarnate,” insists Silvano Vinceti of the National Committee for the Preservation of Cultural Heritage. “Salai was a favourite model for Leonardo,” says Vinceti. “Leonardo certainly inserted characteristics of Salai in the … Mona Lisa. … Salai was very handsome and probably Leonardo’s lover. He stole from Leonardo and caused him many problems, but the artist always forgave him.” Not that all art historians are in agreement, of course. But like any other gender-defying person. Ms. Mona Lisa is subject to unprovoked attacks.
j
“They came not to look at the mona lisa, they came to have seen it”, an always applicable quote when it comes to any news story surrounding this painting. Also the Salai as mona lisa idea has been floating around for a very long time (and I’m talking years if not decades) so I really fail to see why this is news. Also its common knowledge that like most Italian renaissance painters leonardo believed in improving upon nature and like the greeks introduced an ideal and general facial type which can make his models hard to distinguish. Why not just say he used salai’s face for saint anne in the virgin with saint anne and the christ child? Although I agree from his writings and the writings of his pupils that salai was leonardo’s lover and that the androgyny of his models and the explicitness of some of his drawings points towards leonardo being gay this particular story just seems like modernist scholars poking their noses in things they don’t understand. They should run back to pollock and warhol and leave the renaissance to people who aren’t so willing to drink the koolaid.
the crustybastard
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