Paris - The Orsay Mona Lisa Revealed - 7me

Plate LXIII - Revealed, Mona Lisa of the Orsay…

La Gioconda is a man.

When making an offering to this Mona Lisa the reward was not a fixed, if enigmatic smile. No! Any donor was repaid for their generosity by an impossibly slow and subtle lowering of the left eyelid - so slow that it could not be called a wink. Lasting every bit of five to ten seconds, the Mona Lisa would then return to that famous fixed stare, those eyes that follow the viewer continuing to engage and to haunt you after you had taken your leave.

I have seen many ‘mimes’ in Europe, and have previously given you my thoughts about them, but I was fortunate to see this masterpiece of them all. Quite coincidentally, a few months after my return home I was telling a friend of this experience, and learned that the artist behind the Mona Lisa of the Orsay had been interviewed on television by American talk show host Connie Chung. I caught a rebroadcast of the show, and although I now forget the details I do recall that he, for despite the shadowed cleavage she was a he, was an art student from one of the eastern Europe countries, funding his entire course of studies through this ‘performance’.

On a nearby stall with tourist brochures of Paris I spotted one with the Mona Lisa on the cover. I had not previously noticed the positioning of Da Vinci’s subject’s hands. Her right hand does rest on her left, and the accurately portrayed gap between her right index and middle fingers now intrigues me as much as that smile.

No mime will ever be the same again. The envelope please? …….