Over spring break we all went to Paris. The purpose of our trip was simple: Cindy's OECD project, the same one we went to Baku, Azerbaijan, on in December. They had to present their report, and defend it/negotiate with the Azeri delegation. So she worked Sunday afternoon, Mon., Tuesday, and Wednesday. But she had a few days to tour.
Taylor and I were tourists the entire time. I took her to the Louvre because I thought it was a cultural requirement. She will now be able to say, truthfully, that she has seen Mona Lisa. I believe that's all the residual value the excursion amounts to. I remember 40 years ago when I first saw Mona that I walked from one room to another, and there she was, hanging on a wall without much ado about nothing. I could see brush strokes -- could have taken her off the wall. But I think after the guy in Rome attacked Pieta with a hammer that authorities got a little concerned -- now Mona is covered in what looked like plexiglas, bulletproof no doubt, hanging all to herself on one end of a large room, with guards on either side, a rather ingeniously designed counter-top looking thing protruding from the wall beneath her (so one can't just walk up and look at brush strokes or take her off the wall), and a semicircular crowd-control barrier about 20 feet away. Security is not this tight at an inner city bank. The crowd pushes and jostles and eventually you can make your way to the front, although it takes patience. After all, you're competing with 35 busloads of tourists who came to see Mona. The flashes going off are constant. After one couple has their picture taken in front of Mona and you think they're leaving, and now is your chance to approach the barrier, you discover they are simply changing subjects; one of the recently photographed becomes the photographer. I learned quickly that a three-person entourage would require four posing iterations, the fourth one being a group picture with an impressed photographer. I served that function for two groups before they all left and Taylor and I at last made it to Mona's feet, or at least the crowd barrier 20 feet away from where her feet would have been if Leonardo had been interested in that part of her. My advice would be to look in a good fine arts book in your local library, and when you go to the Louvre, head straight for the Sumerian statues in the basement, where crowds and crowd control are minimal.
I remember the first time I read of the drive-through viewing window at a local mortuary, it seemed a little gauche. The glass pyramid entrance way I.M. Pei designed for the Louvre is really quite stunning, but I think he really missed the point. He should have made a drive-through tunnel on either side where you could pay your 8 Euro, and then continue on to see Mona on a revolving window, revolving to accommodate buses and pedestrians. It would be wonderful on at least three fronts: tourists could see Mona; tourists wouldn't clog the Louvre, and Dave could have seen "The Marriage Feast at Cana," a great painting (and a huge painting) which occupies the entire wall opposite Mona. (As an aside, where did Veronese buy a canvas that size? How did they make them? What sort of tractor-trailer rig hauled it around? Mrs. Winters taught me a lot, but I don't remember covering this.) I couldn't see it well, because tourist groups would use the space in front of it as a staging ground, gathering below the lady with the yellow or red or blue flag, waiting for their final push, the final Mt Everest-like ascent to the Mona base camp.
Francis I, King of France, somehow got Leonardo to come to France to do some work for him, which Leonardo did for three years until he died. It probably wasn't a hard deall to close: Francis conquered Milan, where Leonardo was living. Leonardo brought Mona with him from Italy. (Unframed? Rolled up? No, not rolled -- it's painted on a piece of wood. Stuck in a saddlebag?) Francis bought Mona from Leonardo, and years after they both died Mona became part of the Louvre collection. If Leonardo wasn't such a genius in so many other fields, we might think of Mona as a one-hit wonder. There are only 15-20 Leonardo paintings in the world, and two of them are Mona and the Last Supper, and the Last Supper is painted on a wall and has a doorway cut through it. But those two are probably the most reproduced paintings of all time (not sure where Durer's Praying Hands comes in.) Way more than Blue Boy or Monet's lilies. And Praying Hands -- Hands of the Apostle, originally, had a head start because it's a print. I think Durer was the first famous and successful printmaker. But Durer was an early adopter -- the printing press was inventing in Germany shortly (20 years) before Durer, who was a contemporary of Michelangelo and Leonardo, but it hadn't made it to Italy, so they didn't get a chance to be early adopters.) At one time Leonardo, Michelangelo and Raphael were all living and working in Rome for Cesare Borghia, son of the pope, both reprobates. What a world that must have been.
Anyway, a word of advice. If you go see Mona, and you're behind a class of 28 14-year-olds, do the math. 1x2x3x4 ... to 28. And that's only the probability of the possible pairs. Then you have threes and fours, and the mandated group picture -- I'd suggest you go see the Sumerians and look up Mona in a book.
