• English
  • Русский
  • Cats and Arrt
  • Gallery
  • Shop
  • About this site
  • Contacts

The secret of Mona Lisa’s smile revealed!

Leonardo da Vinci, Mona Lisa

Leonardo da Vinci, Mona Lisa, True version

Mona Lisa’s smile is a mystery no more.
She smiled because We were there. Let you have on your knees 10 kilos of the immeasurable grandeur and have no smile.
Afterward, Leonardo reluctantly painted out Our image. He was afraid of the reaction of the art critics and gallerists who were normally treating the pictures with cats as not serious.
But the smile of Mona Lisa remained on the painting.
That is the true story.

P.S. IMPORTANT UPDATE!
After long efforts, We restored the original look of Mona Lisa’s true version. We removed the old varnish from the painting to the possible extent.  Leonardo used the glazing technique: he applied layers of thinnest semi-transparent glaze (a mixture of pigment and oil) to the painting’s surface. Leonardo da Vinci began painting the Mona Lisa about 1503, the year We visited him. But it was still in his studio when he passed away in 1519. Can you imagine how many layers of paint he put on his masterpiece? The light fog on the mountains, Mona Lisa’s transparent veil, her tender skin, and her hair, and Our magnificent fur, all these took years of persistence, patience, and skill. Then the picture was covered with a varnish that got old with time and obscured and yellowed the picture. It’s impossible to remove it just because of the chemical components of varnish are too close to the glazing oil, and the risk of removing a painting layer is too strong. Already it happened once: during its initial restoration in 1809, the Mona Lisa’s top layer of paint was destroyed, causing the artwork to appear more washed out than da Vinci had painted it. But what is not possible for museum restorators, is possible for Zarathustra the Great:

Leonardo Da Vinci, Mona Lisa. True version

Leonardo Da Vinci, Mona Lisa. True version, restored

We left just a little bit of old varnish, to keep the top layer of the painting safe. Now you can see what is not visible in the Louvre museum: blue mountains, red sleeves of Mona’s dress, and of course, the ginger cat. Enjoy!

You can even purrchase the meowsterpiece, for your precious self, as a CANVAS PRINT or as a POSTER

Our humble assistant went even further and recreated the original look of the painting using oils and the glazing technique

Happily she finished it in several months, not years, just because kind people came to take it far away from her in order to prevent her applying infinite layers of glaze with her brush instead of brushing Our purrecious Majesty.
Thus speaks again Zarathustra the Cat

Comments

comments

6 Comments
  1. orbit Thursday January 19th, 2012 at 06:50 AM Log in to Reply

    Это пять! Спасибо за картинку!!! :D

Leave a Reply Cancel reply

You must be logged in to post a comment.



Categories

  • Masterrpieces Masterrpieces
    Grreat worrks, grreat arrtists. RReal aRRt.
  • Russian Classics Russian Classics
    We know these works by heart from Our childhood. Or do we just pretend We know?
  • Portrait Portrait
    We know their faces from childhood. What’s new?
  • Still Life Still Life
    Resumes of our postprandial meditations saved for Eternity
  • Moderrn Moderrn
    What art is really modern? Is modern art always contemporary? That is the question…
  • Meowvies Meowvies
    Famous movies improved by cats. We reenact human film stars and make it better
  • Classics Classics
    We studied the painting techniques used in these great works. We are so glad to see them again.
  • The burning issues of our days The burning issues of our days
    Cats in politics, cats in society. How We change everyday world
  • Arrrt CRISPticism Arrrt CRISPticism
    Studies in arrrt theory, trrrends in contemporary arrrt, exhibitions crrronicles

Highlights

Fat Cat Art book: the celebration of the Cat and Art

15 Oct 2020

"Meows in Museums!": Fat Cat Art comes to real life

30 Oct 2016

The Exhibition that shook the world

20 Jun 2014

Who we are

  • “Our life as Mews to the Great Artists We admire” by Zarathustra the Cat

Follow Us!

Follow Us on FacebookFollow Us on TwitterFollow Us on InstagramFollow Us on PinterestFollow Us on YouTubeFollow Us on Tumblr

Artists, museums, projects

Aivazovsky Cats and the City cinema Edgar Degas Edvard Munch Edward Hopper Grant Wood Hermitage Museum Hermitage Museum Hieronymus Bosch Jaques-Lois David Klimt Kunsthistorisches Museum Leonardo da Vinci Louvre MoMA Monet Musee d’Orsay National Gallery of Art Washington National Gallery of Denmark National London Gallery National London Gallery Peter Paul Rubens Pieter Bruegel the Elder Prado Museum Prado Museum public art René Magritte Rijksmuseum Russian Museum Salvador Dali sculpture Tate Gallery The Metropolitan Museum of Art The Metropolitan Museum of Art Tiziano Tretyakov Gallery Tretyakov Gallery Uffizi Gallery Van Gogh Museum Vatican Museum Velazquez Venetsianov Vincent van Gogh Willem Claesz Heda
© 2011- 2015 - Great Artists' Mews -FatCatArt.com
Site design