Caroline Defrias

Exploring the Mediating Forces Between the Artwork and the Art Observer: an Analysis of the Spectacle of Mona Lisa

Caroline DeFrias

Mona Lisa is a global icon—there exists perhaps no more renowned a work of art. She is a masterpiece by artist legend Leonardo Da Vinci and the object of a global scandal, though these are only said faintly, as if whispered through the walls. It is her placement that speaks for her, that speaks louder than these systems that make it so. Curation is the product of the history and the discourse of a piece—the physical framings are the manifestations of the mental. Yet once established, curation speaks for and furthers itself. The ideologies of importance that surround Mona Lisa translate into a curatorial system that, in turn, cements and furthers their influence, though their existence may be forgotten. Indeed, curation proliferates the status of a piece, regardless of the consciousness of the systems that incite it. Mona Lisa currently stands as a global icon apart from the ideas that make it so. It is her curation, the careful placement and special treatment, that generates the allure she presently enjoys. Mona Lisa is a global spectacle, a piece that is perhaps unparalleled in regards to its fame and this is indebted to its curation.

First, one must treat the painting—to understand the placed object itself. Oil on wood, 77 x 53 centimeters display a young woman seated. She faces the viewer, though her body is angled, presenting a three-quarter view. Her right hand is upon her left wrist, which is resting on the arm of a chair. She wears a dark, simple dress. She has no jewels or other extravagance. Her hair is dark,

67 shoulder length, and covered by a translucent veil. Her visage is soft and round, and directly encounters the viewer, though her brown eyes seem to glance to the right. Her forehead is broad—a feature her missing eyebrows enhance. She smiles.

The background, as historian Donald Sassoon describes, is a “strange and distant landscape: rocky formations, mountains peaks, hills, and valleys; on the left a lake and a winding path; on the right a river crossed by a bridge, the forlorn sign of human existence in a barren landscape.” 1 Mona Lisa is not an obviously glamourous or exciting work, as Sassoon argues:

by the cultural conventions of the twentieth century, she [Mona Lisa] is neither beautiful, nor sexy. The painting is not grandiose, or politically inspiring, like

Delacroix's Liberté Guidant le Peuple. There is no gore, no violence. It does not tell a story. Just a plain woman, smiling a little. 2 Furthermore, the palette that presents this visual information is monotonous; its mute and limited colour scheme homogenizes the piece. The work is swampy—an unintense array of yellows, greens, and browns. It is neutral—neither warm nor cold, though its layers of aged varnishes create an overarching yellow hue which cohesively unifies the piece. Mona Lisa is uniform: none of its parts stand out and demand attention. Furthermore, even its technique blends the scene. Leonardo utilizes his sfumato, a careful and smokey blending that quiets the contours of figures, which unites each component of Mona Lisa into a cohesive whole. There is a passive flow of the eye about the piece, there is no object or aspect that demands attention through harsh contrast or dynamic colour. Mona Lisa is not an aesthetically exciting work—in fact, it is quite the opposite: it is an undemanding piece.

The subject of Mona Lisa is of popular speculation. 3 Mona Lisa is a portrait with an unspecified sitter. The consensus is that it is of Florentine lady, Lisa Gherardini, the wife of Francesco del Giocondo, a wealthy merchant, 4 but there is no confirmation as to her iden-

tity from Leonardo, which inspires speculations. Sassoons posits Mona Lisa’s indeterminacy to be both intentional and consequential:

The uncertain identity of the sitter adds to the interest, and empowers the viewer. Such uncertainty ZDV deliberate. Leonardo refrained from providing any of the usual clues painters used to identify who they were painting, such as getting them to hold a medallion or a symbol. 5 Leonardo’s visual withholding allows one to find whatever they please in the sitter; the lack of formalized identity allows Mona Lisa

to be an object of speculation. The various rumoured identities of Mona Lisa show the extent to which her ambiguous subject invites interpretation. Some believe she is Leonardo’s amalgamation of a variety of subjects to create the ideal woman, or that she is his mother, or even still that she is Leonardo’s gender swapped self portrait. The identity of Mona Lisa is, as Sassoon states, “an inexhaustible source of popular and press interest,” 6 yet her doubtful identification is not enough to account for her fame. Sassoon argues that Mona Lisa’s mysteries are nothing particularly novel or exciting, for such unknown variables are common in old works of art: there are many mysteries surrounding many old paintings: doubtful attributions, inexplicable gaps in their histories, uncertainties over who commissioned them or what they represent. For instance, hanging not far from Mona Lisa, is Raphael's La Belle Jardiniere c. 1507- 08. The origin of this much-praised painting is even more mysterious than that of Mona Lisa: we do not even know who commissioned it and how it got in the royal collection of King Francois I. 7 Mona Lisa’s allegedly mysterious subject matter cannot constitute her spectacle, for if this were so, countless works would experience the same treatment. Indeed, speculations of Mona Lisa, like countless other works, exist solely within the artworld. Mona Lisa smiles with the same indeterminacy as her identity.

69 Since her inception, her smile continues to be a point of interest—a beautiful question to marvel. Art historian Giorgio Vasari describes it as such: “in this portrait was depicted a smile so beautiful that it was, to behold, more heavenly than human, and all who saw it thought it was wonderful and as real as life itself.” 8 Her smile is beautiful, and is often a question for many spectators, but this is not a primary element of the piece itself. Reflecting on Vasari’s comment, Sassoon is careful to note that in Vasari’s description “the smile is beautiful, not enigmatic or mysterious. The painting was praised because it was realistic, natural, true to life.” 9 Sassoon is not

arguing that Mona Lisa’s smile is not worthy or asking for contemplation, only that she is primarily a beautiful work and further questions into such nuance are historically confined to the work of art historians and not casual spectators. Mona Lisa does possess subtle qualities that upon inspection do invite compilation—Sassoon writes of this point: the sfumato technique pioneered by Leonardo, the delicate blurring at the corners of the mouth and of the eyes, gives it a slight indeterminacy. As [art historian]

Ernst Gombrich pointed out in The Story of Art: we are not certain of her expression, she is smiling but not quite, perhaps she is wistful. 10 Indeed, Mona Lisa and her smile dwell within a delicacy that does invite contemplation, albeit in a secondary capacity. Qualities of speculation find themselves in further engagement, within the realm of the artworld—leaving the question of why the public would continue to engage with this work and its questions. Mona Lisa is a subtle, undemanding piece that possesses the same mysteries as countless other works. What sets her apart, making public such further contemplation, is her curation. The framing of Mona Lisa is such that it demands attention from her viewers, thus extending her allure into public consumption. However, one cannot treat these structures of curation without first understanding what brought them into existence.

On 21 August 1911 Vincenzo Peruggia steals Mona Lisa, 11 unwittingly inciting her status as a global icon. The theft was an international scandal: contemporaneous papers write “the story that the Mona Lisa has been stolen from the Louvre and a copy substituted in its place, is on the most sensational which, so far as art matters are concerned, has ever made its way into print.” 12 Peruggia’s theft catapults Mona Lisa into popular imagination. Sassoon chronicles this spectacle:

There was an immediate reaction which set the world press buzzing. The Cabinet met. The Director of

paintings of the Louvre resigned. Parisians realised they had lost a masterpiece they did not really know they had. Many flocked to the Louvre to look at the empty space where it had been hanging. Postcards were printed, cartoons appeared mocking the security of the museum, songs were composed. 13 Indeed, Mona Lisa, a work previously unappreciated by the general public, suddenly became the subject of widespread speculation. Sassoon describes Mona Lisa as the “the subject of enormous press interest” 14 after her theft. Countless sources flocked to comment on this event—another contemporaneous paper wrote: “scores of writers have risen up to declare that this picture is a marvel.” 15 Peruggia’s theft brought forth Mona Lisa’s status as an it is “certain [that] the theft had given the Mona Lisa substantial publicity and mass press exposure, but it did not create a stable collective memory.” 16 Her theft created scandal and interest, but it was the resulting curation that generated and solidified her present day fame.

Prior to her theft, Mona Lisa was lost. She hung salon style, in a room and on a wall with dozens of other works. 17 She possessed little to no spatial weight—there was little pull from the painting and much interference from the space itself, 18 and as a result Mona Lisa was forgettable and easily overlooked by casual viewers. In fact, Martin Tröndle et al. posit in their study “The Effects of Curatorial Arrangements” that the audience’s engagement with a particular

71 piece depends on that piece’s placement. They postulate that a viewer’s engagement is contingent on curation and not the piece itself, stating: “it is clear that the cause of increased attention does not lie in the phenomenology of the artworks. Instead, attention is dependent on whether artworks occupy a particular position.” 19 The pull of an artwork hinges on its placement. Regarding Mona Lisa, her pretheft placement diminished her engagement by drowning her in a sea of other pieces, with each vying for the viewer’s attention. As established, Mona Lisa is not a particularly grabbing piece aesthetically, and before her theft she was adrift amongst dozens of other

works. Mona Lisa’s current curation is effectively the antithesis of her initial subdued placement. Tröndle’s study finds that “it was always the first work that received the most attention,” 20 that spatial primacy is key to viewer engagement. Indeed, “The Effects of Curatorial Arrangements” finds that there is a hierarchy of attention, wherein the first pieces receive the most (and the later, the least) engagement: the first artwork and, to a certain extent, the second artwork were examined by visitors in detail. Thereafter, visitor interest began to dwindle and grew weaker, independent of the hanging order. Not surprisingly, a hierarchy can thereby be deduced, in that the first painting in a relatively balanced series will receive the most attention, and this attention and the visitor’s affected state declines considerably as the visitor moves along the row. 21 Pre-theft Mona Lisa could not garner substantial visitor engagement; her placement was of minimal consequence. She was neither the first nor the central work on an already crowded wall, and as such pre-theft Mona Lisa received little engagement from viewers. Post theft, however, she did. Once back at the Louvre, Mona Lisa received her own wall, a special central spot, a curatorial decision intended to showcase her return. 22 She was mounted on a dramatic

red wall, outlined architecturally by two white panels of molding which focus the eye. There were two smaller landscapes on either side of Mona Lisa, which served to visually accent her. Certainly, her placement commanded visitor attention—as Tröndle’s study shows, “context is crucial for visitors; only when the visitors enter into a different viewing mode is the esthetic experience intensified.” 23 Mona Lisa's highlighted placement was a curatorial shift that gave her an importance and communicated such to her audience. Indeed, “The Effects of Curatorial Arrangements” shows that the room or larger space a piece is situated in greatly impacts visitor attention,

stating: “visitors’ shift in intensity occurred precisely upon entering Space 2 [a room with a bolder wall colour], changing the mode of perception into an ‘esthetic mode of viewing.’” 24 The space in which a piece resides directly signals to, and creates in viewers, the importance of a piece. Upon entering a different space, one that is pronounced, visitors engage more critically with work. The curation that results from Mona Lisa’s theft monopolizes visitor attention.

The resulting popularity of a piece of such spatial weight is unprecedented. The Louvre estimates 6.6 million annual visitors come principally to see Mona Lisa—roughly eighty percent of its total. 25 To reduce this crowding, the Louvre created a new placement, one that was even more pointed than the last. Indeed, Mona Lisa’s current, and to date final, placement is the most manipulative. Alan Riding, in his article for The New York Times describes her prestigious position in her gallery as such: “[Mona Lisa] is accompanied by 52 works from the Venetian Renaissance, including paintings by Titian, Bassano, Tintoretto and Lotto, and others by Veronese. The Louvre has turned the gallery into the highlight of its extraordinary Italian collection.” 26 She is among masterpieces, which associates and furthers her own status—within this collection of master works, Mona Lisa stands alone. Significantly, she is the sole owner of a giant wall in the centre of the space, and is the only piece to receive such treatment. Mona Lisa is quite literally the centre of attention, and as such visually grabs viewers. There is even “a tiny

73 spotlight on a shelf in front of the painting [to] compensate for reflection [from the glass that protects her] and bring out colors that were lost in the somber display of the past.” 27 The space is designed in such a way as to enhance and point to Mona Lisa as a piece demanding of attention.

The large crowds Mona Lisa draws find their inception in her curation, but they in turn, maintain and further the justification for such curation. Millions flood to see her, and unwittingly further her fame and status, perpetuating the very crowd they are a part of. The sight of such a spectacle is visually exciting, Sassoon writes:

The refraction from the flash of the cameras— bouncing continually from the glass [...] adds to the feeling that the object is a popular celebrity from the world of the cinema, television, fashion, and music or a member of the royal family. 28 The crowds that gather to see Mona Lisa ground her importance— they make her into something of a celebrity or royalty—they produce an icon. In fact, according to Abhijit Banerjee’s psychological study, “A Simple Model of Herd Behavior,” crowds serve as great influence over a work’s perceived importance and therefore how likely one is to engage with it. Indeed this phenomena is called “herd behavior” and Banerjee shows it to be the driving force behind most decisions. The perceived popularity of an object, manifested by the crowd, leads others to make the same decision, regardless of their personal inclinations:

The equilibrium decision rule in the above model is characterized by extensive herding; agents abandon their own signals and follow others even when they are not really sure that the other person is right. The first person always follows her own signal if she has one, and [...] all subsequent decision makers will also choose the same option. 29 Banerjee argues that once a group of two or more people gathers, viewers are compelled to follow and abandon their own impulse or

signal. The curatorial structures that frame Mona Lisa need draw in only a couple of viewers for her to become the spectacle she is, and given that the structures that frame her are as strong as they are, her status as icon and the millions that flock to her are inevitable.

Curation plays a vital role in the status of a work. Physical and ideological framing impacts artworks, facilitating the understandings of a piece. How a work is treated in a gallery creates its reception in the minds of viewers. Indeed, the preferential treatments Mona Lisa publicly enjoys, such as careful containment and solo placement, serve to reinforce her importance and present Mona Lisa as a work of great importance. The crowds that gather to snap pictures and see her create her as the spectacle she is, and posit her to be worthy of the attention and status she possesses. It is the structures of curation, the physical draws and therefore speculative allure, that assert her importance more than Mona Lisa herself.

1 Donald Sassoon. ““Mona Lisa”: The Best-Known Girl in the Whole Wide World”. History Workshop Journal 51 (Spring 2001), 1. 2 Sassoon, 3. 3 See, for example: Zachary Davies Boren, "500-year-old Mystery of Mona Lisa's Identity on Verge of Being Solved," The Independent, September 25, 2015; Harry De Quetteville, "Identity of Mona Lisa Revealed, Researchers Say," The Telegraph, January 15, 2008; Derek Scally, "A Da Vinci Code Broken as Mona Lisa Identity Revealed," The Irish Times, January 15, 2008. Google “Mona Lisa identity” to see the swirl of rumours that are still in a popular subject in 21st century media. 4 Sassoon, 2. 5 Sassoon, 6. 6 Sassoon, 3. 7 Sassoon, 3. 8 Sassoon, 6. 9 Sassoon, 6. 10 Sassoon, 6. 11 Sassoon, 12. 12 “The Alleged Theft of the Mona Lisa”. 1910), 122. Fine Arts Journal 23, no. 2 (August

13 Sassoon, 12. 14 Sassoon, 12. 15 “The Mona Lisa Stolen.” Fine Arts Journal 25, no. 4 (October 1911), 223. 16 Sassoon, 13. 17 See Figure 1: Anonymous. Untitled. Mary Evans Picture Library, 1911. 18 Martin Tröndle, Steven Greenwood, Konrad Bitterli, and Karen van den Berg. “The Effects of Curatorial Arrangements”. Museum Management and Curatorship 29, no. 2 (2014), 162. 19 Tröndle, 151. 20 Tröndle, 161. 21 Tröndle, 161. 22 See Figure 2: Anonymous. Untitled. Mary Evans Picture Library, 1929. 23 Tröndle, 151. 24 Tröndle, 151. 25 Alan Riding. "In Louvre, New Room With View of 'Mona Lisa'." The New York Times, April 06, 2005. 26 Riding. 27 Riding. 28 Sassoon, 2. 29 Abhijit B. Banerjee. “A Simple Model of Herd Behavior”. The Quarterly Journal of Economics 107, no. 3 (August 1992), 807 Images Cited Figure 1: Anonymous. Untitled. Mary Evans Picture Library, 1911.

Figure 2: Anonymous. Untitled. Mary Evans Picture Library, 1929.

Bibliography Boren, Zachary Davies. "500-year-old Mystery of Mona Lisa's Identity on Verge of Being Solved." The Independent, September 25, 2015. https:// www.independent.co.uk/news/world/europe/the-real-mona-lisaresearchers-think-theyve-found-the-remains-of-lisa-gherardini10516410.html. Banerjee, Abhijit B. “A Simple Model of Herd Behavior”. The Quarterly Journal of Economics 107, no. 3 (August 1992): 797-817. De Quetteville, Harry. "Identity of Mona Lisa Revealed, Researchers Say." The Telegraph, January 15, 2008. https://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/ worldnews/1575669/Identity-of-Mona-Lisa-revealed-researchers-say.html. Riding, Alan. "In Louvre, New Room With View of 'Mona Lisa'." The New York Times, April 06, 2005. https://www.nytimes.com/2005/04/06/arts/ design/in-louvre-new-room-with-view-of-mona-lisa.html. Scally, Derek. "A Da Vinci Code Broken as Mona Lisa Identity Revealed." The Irish Times, January 15, 2008. https://www.irishtimes.com/news/a-davinci-code-broken-as-mona-lisa-identity-revealed-1.928567. Sassoon, Donald. ““Mona Lisa”: The Best-Known Girl in the Whole Wide

World”. History Workshop Journal 51 (Spring 2001): 1-18. “The Alleged Theft of the Mona Lisa”. Fine Arts Journal 23, no. 2 (August 1910): 122. “The Mona Lisa Stolen.” Fine Arts Journal 25, no. 4 (October 1911): 222-24. Tröndle, Martin, Steven Greenwood, Konrad Bitterli, and Karen van den Berg.

“The Effects of Curatorial Arrangements”. Museum Management and Curatorship 29, no. 2 (2014): 140-173.